Day 14 Offshore

 The choice between going through 13 drawbridges and going offshore 2 miles for 40 miles was an easy one. Plus, the Lake Worth inlet was close to the anchorage, too. Katmandu handled the 3-5 with occasional quartering seas well. The sea azure was beautiful. The boat, sky and sea were shades of blue and white. Schools of flying fish, as many as 20 or 30 at a time, taking flight so not only do they swim together but they fly together, too.  We tacked several time to arrive at Port Everglades inlet before twilight. This is the big ship entrance to Fort Lauderdale and we certainly saw our share of them. We sat for 30 minutes on the wrong side of the 17th Street drawbridge as darkness approached and became increasingly concerned we would not make our Anchorage before dark. As it turned out our Anchorage became more complicated than we initially expected because of several low bridges over the canals that led to the lake. We were very fortunate that a commercial catamaran loaded with people helped us find our way into Lake Sylvia where even though it was dark we were able to find a good secure Anchorage with multiple other boats. Another quiet night on the anchor and unfortunately the weather does not look promising for our last leg of our journey down to the Key Biscayne area because of North winds and heavy seas. We have no choice but to go offshore as there is a 54-ft bridge between us and our ultimate destination and it does not open. We're just going to watch the weather and wait for the right window so that we'll have a pleasant enough passage. Interestingly enough the Key  Biscayne Yacht Club has a reciprocal relationship with the Charleston Yacht Club so we are looking forward to spending some time there. It's on the Bay side of the key and has many amenities that are very appealing including a very attractive swimming pool for serious swimmers such as ourselves. We're being a bit wimpy as the water temperature here is still in the 74to 76 range and we are more accustomed to 82° temperatures. We are really looking forward however to getting into that clear beautiful Florida Keys water so we can start enjoying swimming around the boat and of course finding some places to snorkel and eventually do some scuba diving. High on our list of priorities is to obtain a Florida fishing license so we can take advantage of some of the potentially delicious seafood that's swimming around under our boat.