Well we spent a lot of time at Lighthouse Point Yacht & Racquet Club, some by design and some not. The most significant was with Candy. She was in the cockpit a week ago and I was reading. It was near lunchtime and I decided to go down to make some lunch and invited Candy to go down. She had trouble getting up and could not walk a straight line and was stumbling. We asked the Dock master Zack for help finding a vet and when his was not responsive to the emergency he got the number to the Club Manager’s vet and then he drove us there. They were able to rule out several things but felt it was more of a neurological issue and sent us to Lauderdale Veterinary Services. They did some x-rays and gave her a shot but their diagnose was that it was an inner ear balance issue similar to “vertigo” where you have a difficult time maintaining your equilibrium. By this time Candy was showing definite signs of improvement and they gave her a bottle of pills for motion sickness. It took a couple of days but she is doing much better but not quite all the way back.
We also had an issue with the freezer on the boat. We had a repairman come out in Islamorada and he diagnosed the problem as a leak and he ordered parts under warranty from Uline the manufacturer as the freezer is only 18 months old. Well the parts did not come in until after we left the Keys so we had them forwarded to Lighthouse Point and Zack gave me a recommendation for a repair company. Once we received the parts I was able to get a service call scheduled and they came out. The gentleman took about 5 minutes to determine it was not the compressor and was the fan. Can you imagine, there was too much dog fur on the fan. Fortunately he had a spare fan motor on the truck and in about 1/2 hour the freezer was repaired (after 7 long weeks).
Lighthouse Point is a delightful marina/Club. They have probably 100 slips that are full with members and when the members go out they keep tabs on when they will return and they have transients come in and use the open slips. The Club restaurant is open for dinner Wednesday thru Saturday with a great brunch on Sunday morning. Zack turned out to be very helpful in many ways and the facilities are top notch. It is located in a little community called Lighthouse Point that sits between Pompano Beach and Hillsboro Beach and Federal Hwy and the ICW. I do not think I have seen more Porches, Bentleys, Maserattis, Ferraris’ in another place except for maybe Miami Beach.
We had a great visit with Jerry Knapp and his wife Sue. Jerry is a past President of HRC and has been retired for a number of years. Jerry and Sue are residents of Florida now even though they still have some roots in Michigan. We had a good cocktail hour on the boat and then went to dinner at an excellent restaurant that Jerry and Sue recommended.
The weather was great during the stay with a little rain the night before we left. Once we were on the ICW we pretty much had it to ourselves for the morning. It was kind of nice not to have a lot of other boats around that you needed to guess what they were going to do. The wind was up a little from the North but we were on the ICW and only the part around West Palm Beach gets a little wider but no real waves.
As we passed the Port of West Palm Beach we caught a glimpse of a yacht being loaded on a freighter. That is how some of these boat get transported across the Atlantic so they can cruise the Mediterranean. You need to look at the photo closely and probably enlarge it a little,
Old Port Cove Marina is a great facility to stop at. We were here last year and they have been sending me emails with their weekly specials since then. When Candy and I went in the office they had us on file and even noted on the card was Candy. This is the first marina that ever gave me a bottle of wine for stopping at it. Candy enjoyed all the treats in the office.