An Exciting Day

1. My chart plotter quit.
2. Got busted for going too fast in a Manatee Zone.
3. Left the ICW- went Outside from Vero Beach to Palm Beach.

They are all related…read on.

INCIDENT #1:

Five miles south of Vero Beach, my chart plotter quit. Here’s what it’s supposed to look like:

It’s almost like a video game: the black cursor at the bottom is Freedom, and my job is to follow the line between the buoys, which come at you pretty fast. I am so grateful that someone – sometime in the past – plotted the only deepwater path and marked it with these buoys and channel markers. Then the makers of the electronic charts added the line marked right down the center. It actually appears as magenta. Boaters simply refer to it as the Magenta Line!

Contrast that with the photo below. Here’s how my chart plotter looks now: the landmasses are just crude geometric shapes, water depths are not shown, and neither are the channels!

So what do you do?

You go back to basics. You follow your paper charts, and you look ahead for the corresponding red and green markers. Essentially, you are flying by Visual Flight Rules (VFR) rather than instruments. All the kids in my family grew up this way. Chartplotters hadn’t been invented, and we never even had paper charts. We were just kids, racing from buoy to buoy. Time to do that again.

INCIDENT #2:

Because I was glancing back and forth between the paper charts and the actual image in front of me, I missed a SLOW sign for Manatees. In these waters, the speed limit can drop and then revert with a 1/4 mile. I had been so careful, reading the signs with binoculars to ensure I complied. Not just for the law. For the Manatees. Fortunately, I only got a warning instead of a $250 fine.

INCIDENT #3:

Here’s the cool part: I had always planned to go outside once I reached south Florida. This whole area was reported as being very confusing and very congested. Once I saw the weather forecast, I knew we’d go outside today.

So after picking my way along under VFR for about an hour, I exited the ICW at Ft Pierce.

It was gorgeous. Warm sunshine, calm seas. And no channel markers! We ran along the coast for about 3-1/2 hours. Heaven. If it had been the New Jersey coast, you could have seen Lucy the Elephant.

We came back in at Palm Beach (Ft. Worth Inlet), and it was immediately apparent that we’d done the right thing. It was INSANELY busy. Gigantic cruise ship, mega yachts, throttle jockeys in center consoles, and PWC’s (jet skis) all competing for space in a narrow channel. And people just one boat-length to my right lying on a beach under umbrellas.

Once again, some bad luck and some good luck, and the good luck won!

Now we’re safe and dry at Old Port Cove Marina, and the Christmas Boat Parade is tonight. (I hope to send some photos tomorrow.) And the restaurant has New England Lobster Rolls!

Tomorrow we leave for Ft. Lauderdale. I’m staying at the Bahia Mar Marina (home of the famous and fictional detective Travis McGhee). I plan to stay an extra day. I’ll try to get the Chartplotter fixed, and I need a rest day. Also, my nephew Brian is coming to Ft Lauderdale instead of Palm Beach so that I can meet his girlfriend Lexi. And there’s a gorgeous beach for Guinness. Super.