Escape From Indiantown

Aaaahhhh….we finally escaped the friendly grip of the Indiantown Marina Party Posse! After a relatively uneventful 19 mile motor down the St. Lucie Canal on the Okeechobee Waterway, we dropped the hook in the Pendarvis Cove Anchorage in Stuart, Florida. Hard to believe that it had been almost nine months since the last time we were resting at anchor, and we had a celebratory prosecco toast to commemorate the occasion. Another 31 miles (and eight opening bridges) the next day and we were back in the very familiar anchorage in the northern end of Lake Worth.

We spent five nights in the north end of Lake Worth and hit all our favorite spots. As a matter of fact, within an hour of dropping anchor, we were back at Asian Street Sushi Thai Bar ordering our favorite dishes at this great restaurant. We spent the next few days doing a lot of walking. We hit up Trader Joe’s for some last minute goodies provisioning, stopped in at a couple of gourmet markets (mostly to enjoy their free samples!), went to West Marine (we have a boat…it’s pretty much a requirement!), shopped at Publix almost daily, enjoyed the beautiful John D. MacArthur State Park, and last, but certainly not least, we frequented Twisted Trunk Brewery. We may have a bit of an obsession with their beers, as we ended up there three of the five days we were anchored in Lake Worth, including on Super Bowl Sunday. Hey – it’s always more fun to watch football at a bar!

It was then time to leave the comfort of our oh so familiar anchorage, as there was a day with good weather for hopping out of the ICW and into the Atlantic for part of our trip south. We were thrilled because this meant that we were able to go out the inlet at Lake Worth, head south, come back into the ICW at Fort Lauderdale and drop anchor in Maule Lake 11 hours later. That may sound like a long time to go a mere 55 miles, but consider this. Last year, the same trip (without being able to leave the ICW due to weather) took us in excess of 15 ½ hours over two days. So, by going outside, we were able to not only save a day of travel, but more importantly, we were able to skip 20, yes, you read that right…20, bridges which needed to open for us. I was one SUPER happy camper!

We ended up spending six nights at Maule Lake. We weren’t in any hurry to get further south because there wasn’t a weather window for crossing to the Bahamas any time in the foreseeable future, and we were one of only two cruising boats anchored in this large lake, which we knew wouldn’t be the case in Key Biscayne, where we’d eventually anchor before crossing the Gulf Stream. And, an amazing thing happened during our stay at Maule Lake. We were tooling around the lake in our dinghy looking for somewhere safe where we’d be able to tie it up and leave it while we headed into town. We had gone down one of the many little canals and a man standing out behind his condo called out to us and offered us a beer, so we stopped and made some great new friends.

Not only did our new friends, Sergio and Rose (from Brazil), let us tie our dinghy alongside their boat, they also gave us their gate key so that we could come and go as we pleased. This was after we had known them for all of half an hour. I sometimes forget how many good people there really are in this world, and then I get a reminder like these great folks! We ended up spending the following three evenings with them and some of their friends. Conversations were held in Portuguese, Spanish and English. We watched Carnavale on Brazilian TV (amazing costumes, floats, etc) as our new friends explained what was happening. They shared their favorite foods with us and we experienced our first Brazilian barbecue/feast/churrasco. On the grill were chicken wings, some kind of sausage we’d never had, chicken hearts, picahna (sirloin cap) which we dipped in spicy farofa (a toasted cassava/yuca flour mixture), grilling cheese, and garlic bread. They also prepared pão de queijo (Brazilian cheese bread) for us one evening and O.M.G.! I could not stop eating those little puffballs of deliciousness! We were fed like kings and they opened their home to us as if we were family. We were invited to stay the night and use their shower, and while we did take them up on the offer to shower (and do some laundry!), we declined the overnight invitation. On our last night there, not only did they feed us and show us a great time, they also gifted us with a bag of farofa, some grilling cheese and a bag of pão de queijo. We exchanged contact information and they made us promise to give them a call the next time we are in Miami. If we’d still been stuck in the corporate grind instead of following our dreams, nothing like this would have ever happened. It’s one of the things we love the most about this life we are living.

And then FINALLY, it looked like there was going to be a weather window to cross to Bimini! On Valentine’s Day we said good-bye to Maule Lake, headed back out onto the ICW and south through a handful of bridges, and a short four hours later were anchored in the Biscayne Bight anchorage in Key Biscayne. Two days later, assuming no major weather changes, we would rise early in the morning and be on our way out the Biscayne Channel a couple of hours before sunrise. But, in the meantime, we had a day to explore the area, so we headed over to check out Stiltsville, on the edges of the channel that we’d be heading through in the morning. We’d gone through the same channel last year, but it was also in total darkness, so we hadn’t yet had a chance to see these cool structures in daylight. Also, seeing the channel in the daytime somehow made me less anxious about transiting through before dawn the following day. A yummy pasta dinner and then it was early to bed in anticipation of tomorrow’s crossing to The Bahamas!