Sun just about to poke over the horizon on Monday, May 19

As we were doing our morning chores, Eric noticed that the water quality being produced by our water maker was not good. He was worried that something in the dirty water here had damaged the membrane, so he shut off the water maker. He also didn’t want to try using the DC water maker, for fear that the same thing would happen to the DC unit. The reality was that it wasn’t viable to stay in an anchorage long without being able to make water, so Eric immediately started trying to find a slip in a marina. 

Eric checked marina pricing and availability online. It looked like the best deal was at a marina named Havn. We felt like that was meant to be. He made an online reservation, then did some calculations. Due to the shallowness of the channels and the difficulty docking in the strong current, we needed to get there at high slack tide. We also needed to be cognizant that the bridge only opened at 15 after and 45 after. He determined that we needed to pull up anchor at 1230 to make the bridge opening at 1245 and then make it to the marina at high slack tide. 

Since we had some time to kill, we went to shore and had lunch at a burger place called Lindburgers. It was good and relatively quick.

On our route back to the dock, we walked along the other side of the park. We snapped a photo since it was taken from a better angle than the one previously posted.

We headed back to Kosmos to get her ready for the short jaunt up the ICW. We were moving from the purple dot near the bottom of the map to the blue dot near the top.

Unfortunately, we ran a little bit late and didn’t start pulling up anchor until 1240. The wind was strong and was blowing Kosmos in the opposite direction that the current was trying to pull her. Of course, this conflict was typical for this location, and over the last few days, Kosmos had been pushed around, creating a weird pattern of anchor chain on the ground. We had to do some serious maneuvering to get the anchor chain back up. We probably looked like drunks swerving around recklessly in half circles. We didn’t have the anchor up and secured until 1245. We were worried that we were too late to make the bridge. Eric radioed the controller. Fortunately for us, they were lifting it anyway for other boats, and they confirmed they’d hold it open for us. Phew!

A boat came through from the north first, then when it cleared the bridge, we followed another boat through.

Here are a couple of photos to give a sense of what the ICW looked like.

As we cruised along, we noticed the Manatee Discovery Center. We made a mental note to come back and check it out.

Even though it was a short ride of only about 5 nm, we found the ICW to be stressful. There was a lot of traffic. The channels were narrow. Boats went way too fast and got way too close. Big wakes were frequent. Here was another shot taken near the Lake Worth Inlet, which gives a sense of the traffic on the water.

We noticed that near the Lake Worth Inlet, the water was clear and bright blue, almost as pretty as the Bahamas were. We routed around the west side of Peanut Island into the small channel between Peanut Island and Singer Island.

We know that in the photo above, it looks like a big wide channel. However, most of the water that you see is quite shallow and the dredged portion is quite narrow. Just to give you a sense of how shallow it is outside the channel, here are some people walking with their paddle boards.

Havn Marina was near the bridge that is visible in the photo above. Online, we’d read that the marina had been newly renovated, so we were hopeful that there would be floating docks. We were disappointed to see that they were fixed docks and that we tied up to pylons instead of cleats on the dock.

As anticipated, docking was tricky. Fortunately, a marina staff person was there to help guide us in. If docking was that tough at slack tide, we can’t image how hard it was most of the time. The marina was attached to what was an apartment building that was currently being renovated into condos.

We walked a few blocks through a residential neighborhood to a nearby shopping center for dinner. It looked like the homes were originally built in the 1950s and were modest middle class homes of the era. It also looks like the area has been gentrifying.

The shopping center had several restaurants to choose from.

We picked a Japanese/Thai restaurant called Wok By The Beach. The food was good and great value for the money. Eric and Keith had dessert at an ice cream shop called Sweet Treats and Ice Cream on the backside of the same shopping center. Visible from the backside was a lovely park and a walkway to the ocean.

On our walk back to the marina, we stopped by a local little grocery store. We were pleased to see that it was sufficiently stocked and the prices were reasonable, and we picked up a few groceries. It was another colorful twilight.