Hanging Out in Lake Worth

Day 8:  April 2, 2014



A View of the Royal Park Bridge from our mooring



Basically what we are doing is hanging out waiting for a favorable weather window so that we can make a jump across to the Bahamas.  We need a couple of days of light winds that blow from any direction other than one of the northern points.  North winds blowing onto the north flowing Gulf Stream, which is a river about 25 miles wide, causes a steep sharp chop that is most uncomfortable.  Everything we have read and everyone with whom we have spoken advise us to stay off of the water in northerly breezes.  So we will be hanging out for a few more days.   The winds yesterday were fairly strong from the east and we made a brief trek out through the Lake Worth Inlet to see what it was like and it was really rough with waves at 5 to 6 feet right on our nose.  We banged around a bit and turned around for the serenity of the ICW. The forecast is for more favorable winds over the weekend. We shall see.

Damn Dink Ready and Willing

We started the day with our typical sausage gravy/tortilla breakfast and spent the rest of the morning cleaning up little glitches that we encountered in our boat and boat instrumentation.  This part of the trip was planned to be a shakedown cruise to get accustomed to the new boat and solve any unforeseen problems that crop up.  We have a new sophisticated chart plotter/GPS that has a lot of bells and whistles, many of which were hidden in the details that we needed to ferret out. 

 

Derelict Boat.  One of many.

After lunch we went out into Lake Worth to orient/calibrate the two electronic compasses that are on the boat.  One is an electronic compass and the other is our tiller pilot (auto-pilot).  The orientation process requires that you make two wide slow wide circles in 3 or more minutes.  We started with the tiller pilot and it appeared to be successful.  We then went to the compass and were not successful.  Upon checking, the tiller pilot was also not calibrated.  We spent the next couple of hours redoing the circles but were still unsuccessful so I called the Raymarine tech reps for assistance.  We waited on hold for close to 20 minutes before we got a live person and we began working through the problem.  We got right to the crux of the problem when I inadvertently hit the mute button on the phone and I heard

Another of the big beauties

the guy say, “hello, hello,” and then he hung up.  Ugh!  I called back and waited the maximum 20 minutes that they allow you to hold before sending you to voice mail.  I probably recalled them 5 times over the next several hours but was unable to get through to them.  We had gotten close enough to the problem for me to know that the problem was one that I could not fix without their help, according to the owner’s manual.   So I will try again first thing in the morning. 

And another

We sailed around on Lake Worth for another hour or so before heading back to the spot where we anchored last night and dropped in for another night stay.

We again grilled brats and had a fine leisurely evening meal and rest .