Thursday, May 15, continued… We traveled south down the channel, taking in the scenery as the sun rose. The barrier island between us and the ocean was the infamous Palm Beach. Palm Beach was the first tourist destination in Florida, with three fancy hotels that catered to high end guests. As it blossomed into a city, it became known for wealthy and powerful inhabitants, including former President Kennedy and current President Trump. Initially, we passed mostly lower buildings that looked like houses, though we did eventually pass a cluster of larger buildings (though no hi-rises) that looked like they may be hotels.

The mainland side was West Palm Beach, which, in the early days, was purpose built by one of the hotel owners to be a blue-collar area where the hotel staffers lived. Nowadays, it’s also an expensive zip code. It had a lot of high rise towers with an assortment of other types of structures in between, as well as several marinas.

We approached a draw bridge. Eric called on the radio to ask the control tower to open it. This bridge opened at :15 after and :45 after the hour, but only if the boats called and asked.

We station kept until 0645. Just as the sun was beginning to poke out from behind the buildings on Palm Beach, an alarm went off to notify cars that the bridge was opening, then the bridge began to open. There was a boat on the other side who was also waiting on the bridge. We let him come through first.

View from under the bridge

The bridge closing behind us.

And the sun becoming visible behind the bridge.

We anchored just a little south of the bridge, closer to the Palm Beach side of the channel, directly across from downtown West Palm Beach. We got Kosmos situated, got the dinghy down, then showered and got ready to go to shore. The plan was to have our traditional meal out to celebrate another successful passage. However, we still hadn’t gotten our clearance from Customs. We were debating about simply waiting longer or calling Customs to follow up when the text came through from Customs that we were cleared into the US and free to go to shore. Yay!

While in the dinghy, we noted that the water was brown and gross. Eric was concerned about making water here. We told ourselves that it was fine; our perception was skewed now that we’d spent two months in the beautiful, clear water of the Bahamas.

The public dock was quite large. It was one of the few free dinghy docks in the area. Here was the view of Kosmos from the dock.

Across from the public dock was a park. According to the sign, West Palm Beach had been master planned as a community in 1893, and this park had been designed as the city center.

We followed the tree lined street that paralleled the park.

At the western edge of the park was a fountain for people to play in.

The road continued beyond the park.

Not far beyond the park was our destination, a French bakery called Panterie, which according to Apple Maps, was the closest breakfast restaurant to the dock.

Our breakfast was great. After eating, we all agreed that we needed a nap, so we went straight back to Kosmos. The anchorage was calm when there were no wakes, but much to our frustration, many speed boats passed at high speeds — and it could be seriously uncomfortable when the speed boats zoomed by. Also, there was a strong current that pushed us around a lot. There were points in time when the direction of the winds was different from the direction of the current, so sometimes wind came in from the back door instead of the front.

And then there was the radio… much to our disbelief, people arguing over the radio was not uncommon. And the people could be foul-mouthed and obnoxious. When the coast guard would reprimand them, they’d just ignore the coast guard.

Eric’s cousin, Johnny, and his wife, Joanne, had moved to the Palm Beach area more than a decade ago. In the evening, Johnny picked us up at the dock and took us back to his house for dinner.

We hadn’t seen them in a few years, and it was wonderful to see them again. Joanne made a fantastic dinner and we caught up on all the happenings since we’d last seen one another. While we’ve met many wonderful people on our boating adventure, there is a lot of comfort in being with family. Since it had been so long since we’ve seen any family, this was an especially joyous reunion for us.