May 4, 2009: Old Bahama Marina to Palm Beach, Fl

We heard the fishing boats pulling out around 7:30 am this morning. Tom has been discussing fishing line rigging with the guys on the dock.

We left West End a little after 9 AM. By the time we were 5 miles out, we water had dropped to 2000 feet deep and the color was that midnight blue of the big ocean. The wake made a symmetrical pattern across the surface marking our path of exit from the archipelago of the Bahamas. The stern is mounting huge waves of our own on either side of our path with the crests highlighted by the eastern sun.

The ride seemed amazingly calm compared to the trip over with less wind and our direction running with the wind behind us. I have this metric for roughness of the water that relates to whether or not it is possible to type on my laptop. Typing is really a fine motor skill and requires not necessarily stillness, but a smoothness of motion in order to hit the right keys and move the mouse to a precise location. Today passes the “able to type” test. Amazing! The spray from our bow is white and lacey over the navy blue water under blue skies with puffy white clouds. Watching the spray, you could see an occasional rainbow. The bridge of the boat was not steady enough to get good pictures of various boats that we passed along the way, however. We actually had to slow down and change our direction to miss a huge tanker ship cruising due north. As we neared Palm Beach, we saw a large cruise ship .

After about four hours, we pulled into Lake Worth Inlet Channel and turned south into Lake Worth. We passed marinas that convinced us we had entered the land of gigantic cruisers. We checked out the water clearance for the Henry Flagler Bridge, but 16 feet was not enough for us. The bridge opened at 1:45 and we passed through, under the Royal Park Bridge and to the West Palm Beach Docks.

We had to make a round trip by taxi to the West Palm Beach airport to go through customs. It wasn’t

quite as convenient as when we returned from Canada, but we had all the correct paperwork and we are home again. Tom took our Bahamian courtesy flag down, and went out and bought us a new American flag.

We found a wonderful bike trail that runs by the city docks, so we took our bikes out to a pizza place for supper near the water in West Palm beach. We passed a beautiful fig tree in a small plaza in front of a Florida pink apartment builing. There was a large triangular fountain in front of the public library with the water surging up in various patterns.

After supper we made a trip to Publix to restock the

galley. We had taken a lot of food stuffs to the Bahamas and eaten up everything in the past two weeks. The Bahamas do not have any farming since the islands are mostly rock. Tom used a large travel backpack to carry a cart full of goodies back to the boat. It was getting dark by then, and we passed a gorgeous lighted mansion near the shore of Lake Worth which was the Henry Flagler Museum. We also enjoyed the lights along the narrow lake that forms the ICW here and the Royal Park Bridge that connects West Palm Beach with Palm Beach.