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CRUISE Day 9 - Saturday, July 27th – Fort Lauderdale
We puttz around in the morning then went to the Oasis Café again for lunch before heading off on our next leg. Fort Lauderdale Beach just isn’t dog friendly enough for us and we hated to leave Salty alone for too long – even though it was so hot
outside that he would rather be in the cabin anyway. We left Fort Lauderdale and went off toward Miami at around 2:30 pm. We cruised on past Port Everglades and the Inlet to the Ocean. Along the Fort Lauderdale inter-coastal, you see the typical little waterfront restaurants, tourist shops, Marinas/Bait shops and apartment/hotels. In Hollywood, there is a trendy little “waterfront market” where you can dock and get your
groceries - very cool. Along the wateray in Hollywood and all the way down, it is a virtual sea of condos! Going into Hallendale Beach there is a lot of new construction – mostly condos – at a real bargain, just $400,000 and up to over a Million! The waterway starts to open up as we get closer to Miami and the water finally turns a nice light green color. There are “picnic” shoals along the way where boaters beach or anchor off and play water games. There’s Miami in the distance as we go up the “Freighter Channel” where the cruise ships are and onto dock at the
Miami Beach Marina at 5:30. Each time we go on a cruise (on a
real Cruise Ship), we make the same mistake trying to get there by
car. We always make the turn “we think” should take us to the Cruise Ship
and it never fails, we always take the wrong turn and end up going over the wrong bridge. I took a picture of the sign that says “Palm Island” because that is the place where we turn around and go back to Port Everglades and get on the Ship. This is on land of course –
so it would seem that Barry is a much better navigator on the water -
but then, he blames the land navigation on me of course! We settled into the Miami Beach Marina then took a cab to the famous Lincoln Road Mall in South Beach to have dinner and people watch – and believe me – there are many different and interesting kinds of people to watch in South Beach!
Marina Day - Sunday, July 28th we are still at the Miami Beach Marina and have settled in quite nicely. We spent this day as an “R & R” day because it was too HOT to do anything! Stifling to be exact. There is a lot of “concrete” at the dock as well as wooden piers which means if you don’t have shoes on, it’s very difficult to walk for any distance – just ask Salty! Poor guy was practically running to the nearest piece of grass or shade. Most Marinas are quite tolerant of dogs but they don’t make it really easy for them. We finally found a big piece of property out along the breakers as the boats go out into the Ocean – Salty liked it there as he could run around and sniff to his heart’s content. We’ll head off in the morning to another Marina with new people and new things to sniff! We had such a good time at South Beach the night before – off we went again and ate at a wonderful restaurant (name escapes me) but the waitress was very nice, very professional and accommodating – Veronica from Italy, bordering on Switzerland – which is why we couldn’t figure out where her
accent came from!
Marina Day - Monday, July 29th we found ourselves having to stay another day. We had a terrible “wind” and rainstorm last night, which caused one of the rods on the Bimini top to break loose. Even though Barry was up at 5:30 am (minor miracle) adjusting lines, etc. (which is the only reason he would be up at 5:30 am) this must have happened after that. Our neighbor who was also on a Sea Ray, was up around 6:30 am and noticed the Bimini flapping in the wind and so, came on board and adjusted it so that it wouldn’t damage the fiberglass – very nice of him – funny our “guard dog” didn’t notice any suspicious noise or anyone on the boat! It seemed that the “set screw” was broken off and would need to be drilled out and, of course, a drill was the only tool that Barry did not bring with him on the trip. There wasn’t anyone around who had one either (naturally) and that meant he needed to find a hardware store to buy a drill and then a Marine store to buy more set-screws. Of course, the only hardware store within walking (very hot walking) distance was closed for 2 weeks, as they were on holidays – typical. We went for lunch (I’m sure just to get out of the heat) and Barry went off in a cab in search of a hardware store – that apparently was also an adventure. So, after a $40.00 cab ride there and back plus $70.00 for the drill, the whole thing ended up costing over a $100.00 for a 35¢ setscrew! Therefore, a good part of the day was spent trying to get this Bimini top fixed, which eventually was accomplished and we couldn’t bring ourselves to get into another cab so we went to the Marina’s restaurant “Monty’s” and had a relatively good, albeit late, dinner.
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