When Andy Williams proclaimed that this is the hap-happiest season of all, he damn sure wasn’t trying to ship a boat from Fort Lauderdale to Victoria. On some level we know the screw-job isn’t targeting us personally, but the effect is the same. More on that later.
First, one last bit of Yuletide cheer before leaving West Palm Beach over a week ago, because nothing screams Christmas like surfboards and wiener dogs.
Short run down to Boynton Beach, with not much of note along the way. At one point the tow boat Valkyrie ran us out of the channel, but she was doing the Lord’s Work by salvaging a derelict boat so we let it slide.
We also didn’t find a lot of excitement once we reached Boynton Beach. The tiny city marina does sport one of the more pleasing offices, however, and they put us in about the easiest in and out spot possible. Very nice.
We took the second of those photos from the bridge that led us out to the turtle sculpture and the beach. Uninspiring sculpture. Sweet beach. No unsupervised kids running amok and no litter, which probably isn’t coincidental.
Lots of rich people around these parts. This monstrosity looks like it should be a museum but isn’t. We’re guessing the summer air conditioning bill is about as large as the house.
The trip from Boynton Beach to Fort Lauderdale is notable for the bridges. Which mostly suck, except for the ones we could get through without waiting for an opening.
Did we mention that rich people’s houses line the ICW down here like Alabama fans line Tuscaloosa’s main drag for the Tooth Decay Celebration Festival Parade?
This starkly modern beauty is in Boca Raton.
Boca Raton is famous as the town where Kramer ran for board president of Del Boca Vista Phase 3—because the Boca Breeze would’ve eaten Morty alive—but then lost in a landslide when the tip calculators he used as bribes all proved defective.
Some folks actually have modest houses, of course, but then have not so modest boats parked on their docks.
Who does Sea Tow call when it needs help? Certainly not TowBoatUS.
Anyway, we finally made it to the self-proclaimed “Yachting Capital of the World.” A few days too soon, of course, because the nice shipping people pushed the loading date out to the 10th. Of course they did.
Maybe Fort Lauderdale’s claim is true. Maybe it isn’t. But we can confirm once again that there are a lot of enormous boats in the area. For example, here’s Archimedes. This $100 million bad boy carries 16 guests and 18 crew, which frankly seems like an extravagant ratio. However, owner Jim Simons is a mathematician who figured out the stock market so who are we to second guess?
Fortitude charters for $105,000 per week, but maybe more if you’re willing to pay for gas rather than just get towed around.
Yup, huge yachts are stacked up around here like Alabama fans at a pork rind smoothie stand.
Ok, enough about superyachts. Bahia Mar—which means either “Ocean Bay” or “Money Drain”—was the only place with room for us. Not surprisingly they stuck us out on the small boat dock again, although they charge like we’re a superyacht.
And then the loading date for UHL Frontier got kicked out to the 12th. You’ve got to be kidding. Lola Fandango was right: “Life isn’t all beer and roses.”** But we could see that the ship left Morehead City as scheduled, so the 12th should be final. We’ll box and strap and wrap and secure everything on the 11th. Get those plane tickets now, because we have halls to deck and a tree to trim before the girls arrive.
We’re not really the types to photograph food, but last time we were in Fort Lauderdale our Uber driver dropped us off at a place with bruschetta so messy and delicious that we took a picture. Good thing, because we had no memory of the restaurant name or where it was. We literally showed the photo around town until someone told us it was Noodles Panini, which fortunately still is in business so that we could take a new one. Yum.
Here’s the Elbo Room, still rocking some 63 years after Basil offered free beer to everyone and then slowly came around to Connie Francis after the fake Yalies had their way with Mel but before Merritt found true love with Ryder on the same beach we walked up and down repeatedly while killing time until the 12th. The snowman, however, is new.
On Monday, UHL Frontier pulled up to the Port Everglades loading dock just as planned.
Yippee! Green lights across the board. We’re scheduled to load at 1300 hours on the 12th. So we hustled around packing everything away in tubs, took Starlink down, and generally turned Tumbleweed from liveable to shipable. Only after that did the dreaded update arrive: the “routine crane tests are delayed,” so we’re bumped out another day. Change the flights. Change the hotel. Swear a lot. Grrrr.
Even worse, the new date came with predicted winds in excess of the loading standards. And rain. WTF! We haven’t seen rain since before we left for Thanksgiving, and it picks our new shipping day to return? And it’s only predicted to get worse through the weekend: 40 knot gusts every day. Now this is foul.
Speaking of fowl, here’s a pelican on the dock and a funky Muscovy duck at the Mexican joint. They probably won’t mind the rain.
We tried for one last Atlantic sunrise before the storms rolled in, but had to settle for what would be one last Atlantic sunrise if the clouds weren’t in the way.
The next Atlantic sunrise we’ll see actually will be a Pacific sunset.
This morning we awoke to the high winds as predicted. The rain started about two hours before our loading window, which sketchily remained open. Eight-foot waves at the inlet we had to cross. But even before that, we had to get out of our slip, in 30 mph wind gusts, without hammering the shiny new $2 million Sabre that shared the well. Oh yeah. One more thing, as if we needed one more thing. As we prepped to leave the slip, the bow thruster stopped working. But our choices were go to the ship or go broke, so we rigged a bow line to allow the dock guy to pull our nose around the piling, and we snuck out with very few inches to spare between us and not one, but two expensive boats.
On the way down to the loading berth, we passed a sight that seemed oddly familiar, yet oddly different. Who does TowBoatUS call when it needs a tow? Certainly not Sea Tow.
Anyway, a terrifying story that felt like days made short, after three thrusterless tries we finally landed Tumbleweed alongside UHL Frontier. Unbelievable. And frankly, we’re the lucky ones. We were relatively early on the first loading day of three. Twenty-one boats left to go after ours. With confidence borne of experience, the tender guy predicted that they’d have to suspend loading any minute, leaving everyone else until at least Sunday.*** Absolutely horrid weather for that sort of thing.
Now about the Panama Canal. The man with the first real plan—a Frenchman named Ferdinand de Lesseps, by the way—probably didn’t anticipate global warming that would deplete Gatun Lake and slow international shipping to a dribble, but that’s what happened. And we’re caught in the thick of it. In fact, as of post time UHL Frontier still is dithering about whether to wait indefinitely for canal passage or just suck it up and take Tumbleweed through the Strait of Magellan, which is as close to rounding Cape Horn as possible without actually rounding Cape Horn.
Whatever. We’re just glad to have the boat safely loaded and be on our way.
Since that time back on April 12, 2018 when we finally broke free from Deltaville’s evil clutches, we’ve traveled over 20,000 miles around the east coast. Hundreds of stops in villages and towns and cities. From the Florida Keys to Prince Edward Island, around all of the Great Lakes, up and down rivers and through canals. We’ve boated to 26 of the 50 states and five of the ten Canadian provinces. Although almost all of it was epically awesome, we’re ready for something new. Our next reunion with Tumbleweed will be in Victoria.
So that’s a wrap on 2023. Happy Holidays and all that.
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*Wooo! We finally get to work in one of the great palindromes of our time! Also, Toby Harrah was the first Major Leaguer named with a palindrome. And if that’s not enough, Dana recently bought a Taco Cat shirt at Chuy’s.
**Yup, while we were killing time we finally watched the original Where the Boys Are, which isn’t at all Oscar-worthy but is significantly better than the first 30 minutes of The Hotel New Hampshire, which is all we could stomach that time we suckered for it after visiting the filming site in Tadoussac, Quebec.
***To be clear, we’re talking about the guy who drove us back to shore on the tender. We have no idea about his personality.
