The Los Olas Marina is on the side of the ICW and gets a lot of wave action from the passing boats. The boat rocks an awful lot so it was good that we only spent one night there. The location relative to Fort Lauderdale and the beach was great so life is full of trade-offs.
We got started at noon because we needed to make sure they had a slip for us at Lighthouse Point Yacht & Racquet Club. Traffic on the ICW was relative light at first and started to pick up as we went along.
The day was nice and sunny with temps in the high 70’s. The scenery was really good with the ICW all lined with well kept homes and many new places being built. Many, many large homes along the way with lots of workers around tending to the landscape, etc. around the houses. The season is still on here so the canals are full of boats in front of all the houses.
This was not going to be a long day except that we needed to go thru 3 bridges that had their clearance listed as 15′ in the chart book, but they were less when we actually arrive at them. Each bridge has tide boards that show you the minimum clearance. The Champ III needs a little over 12′ for clearance and I like to see 13′ before proceeding. The first bridge’s tide board read 11.5′ so we waited. The second bridge was at about 12′ so we waited. The 3rd bridge as we approached had 2 other boats waiting to go north and there were 4 boats waiting to come south so we had a 10 minute wait.
After we passed the 14th Street Bridge the bridge tender said we could have cleared and did not need to wait. I am not quite sure how I was to maneuver thru traffic to look at the tide boards and take the chance that this bridge was like the previous 2 bridges.
Anyway we moved north in the procession of boats and a large, probably 70′ sport fisherman, backs right into the ICW and then proceeds north toward the Hillsboro Inlet. At the inlet all these boats we are following stop and start drifting waiting for the bridge on the inlet to open so they can go out to the ocean. All the boats are effectively blocking the ICW. I finally went on the radio and asked the captains to make room as I wanted to proceed north on the ICW, Almost surprisingly they moved over to allow passage.
It was only another mile or so to the marina turn off. Lighthouse Point Yacht & Racquet Club is set one canal west from the ICW so it is protected from the wakes of the boaters on the ICW. No rocking during the day. Our slip was right across the dock from a boat from Sandwich, MA that had been at Plantation Yacht Harbor about 1 1/2 weeks ago, small world.
The plan right now is to stay here 3 nights as we will be visiting with another HRC retiree, Jerry Knapp and his wife Sue.