Wow...what a long day! We traveled 47 miles, but it felt like 100. We had 20 bridges to clear, of which 9 needed to be opened for us. Plus countless no wake zones and slow zones, and so many boat wakes to deal with in rather narrow waterways. It really wasn't a fun day, but one that we'll remember. We ended the day docked in downtown Ft Lauderdale on the New River...action everywhere! And we were beat - on top of all of the very busy navigating, sensory overload from all of the tremendous yachts and mega yachts was mind numbing. Here is just a sampling of some of what we saw...
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| For perspective, look at the lower deck on the left middle portion of the picture...those are crew members standing there. |
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| Typical scene at a bridge opening today...everyone jostling for position. |
This following picture deserves a special note. These types of signs are all over the place, directing you to drive a certain speed or with a certain wake. At the very least, it is confusing sometimes. Not only are you supposed to obey these, you have to interpret what they mean while you are driving by. This one was laughable, as the large print at the bottom was supposed to override all other information. We were getting rocked left and right with 3 foot wakes all day long within sight of these signs.
So now we are settled for a few days, planning to enjoy the vibrancy of this area. We are right on the river (only about 100 feet wide where we are parked,) and boats, yachts and mega yachts of all shapes and sizes cruise right past us all day long...it's like a parade. It is amazing to see the size of some of these in such a relatively small waterway. Perhaps the best challenge that we had all day, was getting docked. There was a $2 million boat in front of our spot, and a $1 million boat behind our spot...and we needed to parallel park between them, with the wind blowing, traffic going by, and only about 4 or 5 feet of wiggle room on either end of our boat. It took us an extra pass to make sure we didn't hit anyone, but not a problem in the end. Now that we're here...we're not moving until we're ready to leave!
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| One of our views from the boat...yes it is windy. |
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| Sitting on our back deck...yes that is a big boat behind us. |
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| The narrow, busy river where we are docked. |
Love following your adventures, especially since I hope to own an American Tug 34 or 365.
ReplyDeleteThanks Gordon. Feel free to contact us with questions about the AT's. We spent 4 years looking before we bought ours. Happy hunting!
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