Venice of America

We cautiously entered Lake Sylvia.  Hug the left shore of the entry channel until you are abreast of the No Wake Zone sign, then cross over to the right shore to avoid the shoaling as you enter the Lake.  We circled around the perimeter and found a niche among the boats at the south end to poke our nose into and drop anchor.

There are precious few locations to anchor in or near Fort Lauderdale.  In a way, it's remarkable that there are any.  Lake Sylvia is the primary anchorage.   There are a few liveaboards here, but most of the boats are doing what we are doing, waiting for a weather window to go somewhere offshore.

Lake Sylvia is surrounded by mansions.  You can't dinghy to shore.  The nearest dinghy landing is a mile away at Southport Raw Bar.  You can tie up to their dinghy dock for $10.00 a day, redeemable in food or drink.  It's a good bar/restaurant, so it's an OK deal.  To get there, head out of Sylvia, ducking (literally) under one of it's six surrounding bridges, dash across the busy ICW channel, and putter down to the end of a half-mile long canal, lined with boats of every age, size and condition, past marinas, yacht clubs, boat landings, boat repair services, the police dock and the under-construction high rise automatic boat storage building.  I don't know how the automatic part will work, but your boat will be lifted from the water and stored indoors on racks that may be 6 stories up.

I can't figure out what kind of rap to write about Fort Lauderdale.  Its official seal describes the city as "Venice of America."  The city has 165 miles of canals, the greater area has over 300.  It's touted to be the boat service center of the hemisphere.  New River forks away from the ICW and runs west through the heart of town.  New River is not the Mississippi.  It's probably no more than 150' wide in some downtown sections.  And, it's crooked.  Major vessel services are on the far side of downtown, so there is the regular spectacle of a 200'+ megayacht being towed, with tugs fore and aft, through downtown's narrow fairway.

The trouble I have with Fort Lauderdale, shared by F I think, is the money.  I recognize I'm a snob.  I don't have too much money, but others do.  A lot too much.  And, many of them live in America's Venice.  The display of wealth in realty and vessels is simply staggering.  It doesn't seem right, somehow.

A couple of items I sent out by email while we were there:

January 5:

We've left the modest (upper middle class to simply rich) neighborhoods of the north to enter the realm of the ultra-inequals.  A nice custom 60'-70' custom motor yacht parked in the canal caught our attention.  It was parked in front of a new, modern design home that stretched along the canal.  Clearly, 3 so-last-season mansions must have been torn down to make room for this upgrade.  Nice cantilevered deck on the second floor with glass railing overlooking the canal.  Then, we realized there was water behind the railing.  Yep, a cantilevered second story swimming pool, with glass sides.  Then, we recognized the flat stream of water, 'bout 6' wide, running down a slope at about 30 degrees from the roof, into the pool.  (How do they build that, in a state with no bedrock?)

January 6:

Knock on the hull.  Pull on some shorts.  It was Craig, from Hideaway, lying on our starboard quarter.  Mr. Magoo’s anchor had popped.  She had drifted on the wind from the north end of the lake, bounced off one boat, and was about 20’ in front of us, with Hiatus dead center in her sights.  I hopped into Craig’s limp dinghy.  He gave the permanently attached air pump a quick dozen pumps, and we headed out to the morning’s project.

We are transients on this lake.  There are residents.  It takes a day or two to see them.  We then start sizing them up.  First, their boats.  They all share a common look.  Unbelievable growth at the waterline.  Dirt staining all of the structure above.  Incomprehensible piles of gear on deck.  Then we get a feel for the residents’ patterns.  For example, the guy in the little Catalina 22 seems to be gone at night.  He spends much of each day with his head poking out of his companionway hatch.  A C22 was our first “cruising” boat.  It usually comes with a “pop top”, so you can create standing headroom.  Our neighbor’s C22 has no pop top, or no operational pop top.  So, if he wants to stand, we see his head.

We had a breakthrough in meeting residents yesterday.  I called the local West Marine for a piece of gear (a backup to the macerator I replaced).  Timing’s important, I explained.  I’m at anchor at Lake Sylvia, waiting for a weather window to cross over.  “You’re my neighbor.  I’m anchored at the north end.”  So, we met Weston, on sv Endless Summer.  He’s got “a wife, kids, house and all that” onshore, but he likes living on the boat.  He just got back to her recently, after they gave him a new heart valve.  He promised to find me a macerator within 48 hours, and he’ll bring it to Hiatus.  He swung by last night to say hi, freely giving us his tooth gapped smile.  He begged off a drink offer.  He was headed to his friend, on our starboard quarter, for coffee.  I waived to his friend, who today I learned is Craig.

Craig grew up on a farm in South Africa.  The pop up head on the C22 is Joe.  Joe has one leg.  Joe first saw Mr. Magoo making its way through the anchorage.  Mr. Magoo is a true derelict.  She was towed into the lake last week.  No one has been aboard.  Joe yelled and got Craig’s attention.  Craig dinghied to Magoo, found another anchor on deck and dropped it over the side, slowing but not stopping her.  He needed more help and knocked on our hull.

We pulled up one of Magoo’s two anchors and quickly ran it forward, hoping Magoo, on one anchor, did not drift back on Hiatus.  The anchor caught.  We pulled Magoo forward.  We pulled up the second anchor, now angling behind Magoo.  This was the anchor Magoo was left on.  It turned out to be a nice sized danforth on very short scope.  We kedged it forward of the first anchor and pulled Magoo further from Hiatus.  We left the first anchor down and tightened up her scope.  It will act as a backup and limit Magoo’s swing.  Two anchors set in this fashion is not a good long term set up.  They will eventually twist around each other and can become hard, or impossible, to clear.  But, the sheriff’s deputy now at hand, talking by phone with Magoo’s owner, said the plan is to tow Magoo out of the lake and junk her.  Craig warns that the plans of a captain who buys a boat like Magoo are often “flexible.”  So,  Joe, Craig, Weston, Francine, I, and the guy in the nice cat on our port quarter (another transient, like us, who dinghied over to offer help), will keep an eye on her until she’s gone.  After all, it’s our neighborhood.

Here's one-legged Joe.  The picture pretty much captures the dissonance in my feelings about this Venice. 

And, here's Mister Magoo.

 

Enough kvetching.  What the heck did we do in Fort Lauderdale?  

We arrived January 4th and departed before dawn January 12th.  We hung out on the boat.  We dinghied to the Raw Bar a few times, which is a short walk from a Publix, Ace Hardware and Lab Doctors, the lab that provided the COVID PCR tests required for our entry to the islands.  We dinghied up the New River to downtown, poking into canals, stopping at a museum, and having a meal out, our first in two months.  We waited for our weather window.  When the European and US weather models agreed that Tuesday, the 12th was our window, we checked into the Bahia Mar marina for two nights.  We could shower, do laundry.  And, the marina gave us access to the Atlantic beach.

Here is the New River.