Day 105, Year 10: Learning a Bit More About Fort Lauderdale
Date: Friday, January 23, 2015
Weather: Another Beautiful Day; Temp in the Upper 70’s F
Location: Anchored in Lake Sylvia, Fort Lauderdale, FL
I spent my day learning a bit more about Fort Lauderdale and Mark and Lee successfully completed the installation of Sea Turtle’s new solar panels. The ‘learning’ included both positive and negative things about this city. Our day got off on the ‘not so positive’ side when we set off in the dinghy for Las Olas Marina. As soon as we exited Lake Sylvia we were stopped by the marine police for going faster than idle speed. We thought we were going idle speed, but the marine policeman didn’t agree. As the policeman talked with us, other boats were zipping by, but we were in no position to point that out him–especially since we didn’t have our dinghy registration with us. We did have the required life jackets and sound signal (whistle), so the policeman gave us a written warning and suggested that we go a bit slower and make sure we have our registration with us next time. Uh-oh. Mark has been looking for that registration for days and hasn’t been able to find it anywhere. We traveled on to Las Olas, oh so slowly, and promised to continue the search for the dinghy registration this evening.
Lynda and I did laundry and about the time we finished, Mark and Lee walked into the laundry room announcing that the solar panels were wired up and charging away. Fantastic! Now they were ready for lunch, so we walked about a block from the marina to The Quarter Deck. Lynda, Mark, and Lee have been there for lunch a couple of times, but it was new to me. After lunch, Mark and Lee returned to the marina to make another trip to West Marine while Lynda and I walked on to the beach to catch a bus or trolley to the Galleria Mall. We weren’t really going shopping so much as just investigating what was there. We went to the bus stop and took the bus as it came first. The bus costs $ .85 and the trolley $1, so it really makes no difference which one we take as long as it is going in the right direction. The Galleria Mall was nice as malls go, not huge, but it certainly had lots of shopping opportunities. After looking around and doing a bit of shopping (Lynda bought something for Lee), we got back on the bus and head to Las Olas Boulevard and Andrews Avenue. We got off and walked about, stopping in the Museum of Art, the Library, and the Broward County Governmental Center hoping to find a tourist map of Fort Lauderdale. But no such luck today. I can’t believe it is so difficult to find this. It was so easy in Cocoa Beach and West Palm to find maps, but tourist information centers here are well hidden. Again the bus won out as it came before the trolley, and it delivered it back to the marina.
Lee and Lynda invited us to stay for a beer and then we headed, oh so slowly, back to Windbird. Mark launched another all-out search for the dinghy registration but couldn’t find it. I went through the two file drawers we have, and I came up with nothing as well. Mark then started investigating the possibility of registering the dinghy in Florida. This sounded crazy to me as I felt sure the Massachusetts registration was on the boat somewhere. So I started another search and this time I was successful. We are now legal and can go out in the dinghy tomorrow without the fear of getting a pricey traffic violation.
