Day 45 - North Palm Beach

At our captains' meeting last night, we discussed how long it might take to travel from Ft. Lauderdale to Palm Beach, about 52 nautical miles. As Kite is usually the slowest boat, we estimated that 10 hours would be a reasonable estimate, although it had taken us 11 hours during the trip south. Consequently, we decided to depart Ft. Lauderdale at 08:00 this morning to hopefully arrive by 18:00 at Soverel Harbor Marina, our destination in the Palm Beach area. Promptly at 08:00 we were pulling away from our moorings and heading for the Port Everglades inlet in calm winds and glassy seas.

Kite was in the lead, the pace setter, being the slowest boat when motoring. Leaving the inlet, she headed at an angle for the three mile limit, expecting to encounter some help from the Gulf Stream as we were traveling north. To our great surprise and pleasure, by the time we got to 2.5 miles off shore, our boat speed increased from its usual 5.8 knots to over 9 knots, and we settled for that. The rest of the 45 nautical miles to the Lake Worth inlet was done at 2.5 miles off shore and at an average speed of 9 knots. The wind was so light that the seas were nearly glassy and smooth, so our transit was comfortable and fast. Unfortunately, we were motoring all the way because there simply was not enough wind to propel the boat at a reasonable speed.

During the trip we saw lots of flying fish. It is amazing how far they can fly before they have to return into the water to breathe; typically 50 to 100 yards in 10 to 15 seconds skimming above the waves without touching the water. Peter attempted to photograph some, but most of his pictures were out of focus. The best one is shown below. We also saw two sea turtles swimming together, but were unable to photograph them. By 14:00 we were entering the Lake Worth inlet and by 15:00 we had arrived at Soverel Harbor marina. That is a full 3 hours ahead of our estimated time, thanks to the Gulf Stream being in so close to land.

Flying fish