Scott here. We left bright and early this morning and made it to the Yachting capital of the world, Fort Lauderdale! Holy wow are there a ton of super mega yachts here! First things first, how did we do on our planning?

Start at: 7:30 am ACTUAL 7:10 AM
End at: 2:30 pm ACTUAL 2:57 PM
Total Time: 7 hours (4:51 hour travel time + bridges) ACTUAL 7:46 hours
Distance: 43.7 miles ACTUAL 44.4

Neither of us slept very well last night. It was super hot and our forward AC stopped working (it is working now with a quick fix.) I was walking Jazzy before first light and gave her a pretty good walk. The anchor came up very easily and was covered in sand/mud/shells. She dug deep and that is what I like to see.

We had to have 5 bridges open for us. The longest wait was about 15 minutes, otherwise it was a 5-10 minute wait and I also slowed down coming up to the bridges waiting for the opening.

We were moving along when the shallow water alarm went off. The chart plotter was showing only 1.8 to 2’ of water below us. That didn’t make sense as we were in the middle of the channel. We cautiously moved forward, and when another boat about our size passed us, I decided to reboot the chart plotter. Problem solved. Whew!

The slightly terrifying time came when we entered the marina and headed to the fuel dock. Remember this is the yachting capital of the world. I had a spot maybe 70′ long, but with a line from a mega yacht taking up 10′ of that 70′. Mega yachts on all sides. Dang! We made it in and put some more dinosaur squeezing’s into MY Happiness. We have not done that since Fort Meyers!

Now, we have to leave the fuel dock and go to our slip. We decide to throw the bow and mid lines, have the deck hand push the bow out while Rita hangs on to the aft line and let it out slowly while I starboard forward. That should bring the bow out away from the fuel dock while stopping us from going forward thanks to Rita holding the line and letting it out slowly. That was the plan the three of us talked about. Well, the deck hand just threw all the lines to Rita and pushed the bow. Thankfully, the wind was pushing the bow out and with Rita giving a final push on the aft we made it out easy peasy! Now to slip past the $5+ million dollar super yachts to our assigned slip. It was a little tight, but we made it in. The floating dock is a fixed dock, but what the heck!

Good day. Photos below are of a couple mega yachts we saw. The featured image is three nights (about 8 hours each night) of our anchor tracking. Only because I find it very interesting to see our movement overnight.