Day 99, Year 10: Green Market, Palm Beach, South Cove
Date: Saturday, January 17, 2015
Weather: Mostly Sunny, Warming Up Again—High in the 70’s F
Location: Anchored Between the City Docks in West Palm Beach, FL
Today was our last full day here in West Palm Beach. Tomorrow afternoon we will go back up the waterway a couple of miles to the Lake Worth Inlet. We will anchor there for the night and then head out of the inlet on Monday morning to sail south to Fort Lauderdale. We hope to be tucked into the Lake Sylvia in Fort Lauderdale before sundown. If time permits, Lee and Lynda will continue on to Las Olas Marina where they have a slip reserved and then on Tuesday they can begin preparations for installing solar panels on Sea Turtle and cleaning out their water tanks. They have some sort of algae growing in the water tanks which makes the water unusable for anything but showers. So they need to be at a dock with water to fix that problem. We reluctantly leave West Palm Beach as it has been a FANTASTIC stop along the way. And we have been forewarned that Fort Lauderdale no longer welcomes cruisers unless you are in a mega yacht. The marine police there are being dogged these days and giving tickets to cruisers in their dinghies for such things as not having a whistle aboard. But we’ll get there and see for ourselves how comfortable or uncomfortable it is. We can always move south of Miami if Fort Lauderdale just doesn’t work out. But for now the basic plan to get there and give it a few days before deciding on whether to stay or move south to Key Biscayne to wait there until Feb 2 when we will head on around to the West Coast of Florida for a couple of weeks.
We started our day today with a Skype call to Heather. Sam is getting over a stomach virus which Jed now has, but Heather, Jonah, and Ollie have avoided thus far. Ollie had a different issue. Last night and this morning he had pink urine which was quite disconcerting. But then he ate a ton of beets yesterday, so the hope was that beets had caused the discoloration. When we talked to Heather this morning, she was getting ready to take Ollie to the doctor. Later in the day she called to let us know that the doctor is pretty certain the pink urine was a result of the beets, but they are running tests to make sure. But this morning Ollie was feeling great. He didn’t say much to us for the first few minutes, but then he decided to up upstairs to his bedroom to get the book that he and his Granddad love to read together. Today he ‘read’ it to us and we thoroughly enjoyed the time with him. Sam and Jonah were busy building with Legos and playing with the castle they got for Christmas, but we got to see them and talk to some. Sam will be eight years old on Wednesday of this week. I can hardly believe that he is going to be that old.
After the Skype call, we got in the dinghy and went to shore. There were a couple of running races coming into the finish line right at the end of our dock, with all sorts of excitement happening. But we walked on down to the Green Market. This is a Saturday morning market and it was huge. There were wonderful organic farm stands with beautiful organic produce and stands selling everything from honey to orchids to stone crab legs. I bought some potted herbs to put in my cockpit planter and was so excited to find them for only $2 a pot. I now have basil, chives, lemon thyme, cilantro, and chocolate mint to add to my lonely rosemary. Mark hurried back to the boat with the plants while I went to meet Brad. He drove up this morning to bring us mail Heather had sent and then offered to take us over to Palm Beach and show us the sights. As soon as you cross the bridge, you can feel the difference in the two Palm Beaches. West Palm is bustling with lots of street traffic, people, and restaurants while Palm Beach is sedate—no bustling and not even any restaurants that are recognizable. There are loads of big homes with sculpted shrubbery and the business ‘district’ buildings look just like the homes. Stores like Saks Fifth Avenue, Louis Vuitton, Emilio Pucci, and Nieman Marcus are all tucked neatly inside buildings and you have to look very hard to see the names of the stores on the windows. Brad drove us by Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago Club, along the Atlantic beach front, down Worth Avenue lined with the high-end camouflaged stores, and then down Royal Palm Boulevard to The Society of Four Arts where he dropped us off. Again a great big thank you to Brad and to Sue. They have certainly taken good care of us while we have been here. The Society of Four Arts is a beautiful place with many venues. Today we toured the free botanical gardens and then ambled through the sculpture garden. The plants were beautiful and the whole place gives you a sense of inner peace. After our tour, we walked back across the bridge to West Palm where ‘real’ people live. On the way back to the city docks, we walked out the 556 foot-long elevated boardwalk at South Cove. West Palm has built little islands on the side of the Intracoastal Waterway and planted mangrove trees and saltmarsh cordgrass to return a bit of their waterway back to its original state. These little islands are just south of the city docks and they now protect the anchorage between the docks from the extreme tidal current. We returned to Windbird, had lunch, and then I did a bit of cooking. Mid-afternoon we headed out again to make one last trip on the free trolley to do some food shopping at Publix. It was definitely time for Happy Hour when we returned and Lee and Lynda invited us over for sundowners. Since our view to the west is filled with the tall buildings along the waterfront, we really don’t have great sunsets here. But that is made up for by all of the other perks of this anchorage. It has been great.
 |
| 150117 Day 99 Florida, USA–Green Market, Palm Beach, South Cove |
