West Palm Beach to Peck Lake

Day 32:  Friday March 27, 2015

Our anchorage was sound last night but the thunderstorms and rain continued through the night. Our anchor held so although the boat tossed all night, when we hit the sack, we both slept soundly.

We had pancakes with Tyson’s bacon for breakfast and messed around the boat until 8:00 when we called the US Customs and Border Patrol to do our official reentry screening.  You may recall that earlier we signed up for a Small Recreational Vessel System through which we filled out paperwork, submitted it for their inspection then presented ourselves for face to face interviews.  It was somewhat of a hassle but the program is supposed to cut the paperwork and inspection processes when a boat returns from a foreign port. 

Immediately before leaving the States, you are to fill out a float plan and submit it to the SRVS folks.  I did that and since I didn’t have a printer, I could not make a personal copy of it.  I dug out the paperwork for the program yesterday when we returned and it said that you were to report between 8:00am and 4:00 pm Monday through Friday.  So before I called them at 8:00, I went on line looking for my float plan and the site said that I had no float plan.  I assumed that this snafu would cause me to go before the tribunal for lashes or the rack!

So, at 8:00, I made my call and got a guy in Miami.  He asked a number of questions including where we were at that moment.  I told him and he said OK then he wanted to know when we arrived and I told him yesterday afternoon and he let me know in no uncertain terms that I was required to report immediately upon entering the country.  I told him about the 8 to 4 office hours and he said that some of the smaller offices had those hours but his office was open 24 hours a day.  (I received no penalty points for that one)  I told him about my attempt to file a float plan and he said OK.  (No penalty points for that one either.)  He then asked a bunch more questions before becoming very chatty.  We talked for quite a long time and he finally said, “OK, you are free to proceed to your next destination!”  WoW!  We were assuming we would have to take the boat to a specific location for a search and interview but the SRVS program is such that if you dot most of the :”I”s and cross most of the “t”s, you don’t have to go through the customs hassle.  He finished the conversation by offering that if I ever had any questions or problems, I could call his office and they would be most willing to help us.  Amazing!

Our destination for the day was to be Stuart FL which is by way of the Intracoastal Waterway.  We got underway at about 10:00 and immediately began having trouble getting the drawbridge sequence down.  We would arrive 10 minutes after they opened and have to wait in a following wind for 20 minutes until the next opening.  At one bridge, we arrived at 7 minutes before the hour and began calling to request passage but to no avail.  The bridge had a sign that said that it would be opened on the hour and the half hour but since he did not respond to my calls, he did not open it.  We could see him walking around in the control house.  At 10 after the hour, I tried again at 10 after the hour and he answered.  He said the next opening would be at 11:30.  I asked him what happened to the 11:00 opening and he said that he did not receive a call therefore he did not open the bridge.  I told him that I tried 8  times and he replied that his radio was working.  “Sorry for your inconvenience!” 

As we progressed through the afternoon, the wind became intense, there were thunderstorm crashing around us and finally we were hit with an intense driving rain.  We were about 5 miles from our final destination when we swung into a wide spot in the waterway, dropped the anchor on the fly and crawled in the boat as the storm raged on.  Luckily, the anchor set well and held for the rest of the night as the wind howled and the rains fell.  We were both still quite tired for our overnight passage so we had no difficulty convincing ourselves that this was the place to spend the night.