Bridge Day

Friday April 3, 2015
Hobe Sound, FL

Bridge Day ( 7 to be exact)

We got up intending to listen to the weather guru and catch the Flagler Bridge 8:45 opening. Lee hunted and hunted by the time he finally found him he was almost finished. We were in sight of the bridge so we started the motor, pulled up anchor, with 10 min to make the bridge. When I called to tell the bridge tinder I wanted his next opening he said 9:15. I asked what happened to 8:45 and he said it had been once an hour and that was 15 after for over a year. So we sat and waited 40 min. Great way to start. We arrived early for the next bridge and we saw on the chart a little park on Munyon Island with a dock and it said trash. We pulled out of the channel and dropped anchor. We had too much draft to take the sailboat in but we put our 4 bags of garbage in the dinghy and Lee went over to the dock. You may not think about it but doing something with your garbage is a constant issue on a boat. Lee went with no shoes and only a tee shirt and his cotton knit boxers on to put the trash in a barrel. Yes there were other people around.

Lee came back to the boat and checked the water intake filter. It had not been checked in a while and sea weed etc can clog it and over heat your motor. He started the motor, I brought up the anchor and we started off. In a few minutes the over heating alarm went off. Lee had closed the thru hull when he checked the filter and not opened it back up when he replaced the filter. If you know Lee very well you know he does not always close what he opens or open what he closes, turn off what he turns on, or replace what he gets out. Stopping to deal with that caused us to miss the bridge opening that we had been so early for that we had time for the garbage and filter check to start with. After that things went better.

We managed the rest of the bridges with no more than a 10 min wait and pulled into an anchorage area in Hobe Sound for the night. We were both feeling a little crappy. Maybe a delayed response from the overnighter, who knows. His back was worse than yesterday or day before and I was running a little fever.

Tomorrow we had hoped to go off shore a while in the afternoon but no wind. This being Good Fri weekend there is a lot of traffic on the waterway and some of them are crazy if not tanked. Lots of partying going on. We should make Ft Pierce or maybe Vero Beach tomorrow.






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