Leaving Ft Lauderdale Behind

Since the kids have come and gone I thought I would take a minute and tell you about our experience in Ft Lauderdale.  All and all it was  pretty good place to visit but after two weeks we were glad to be getting out of there.  We got the feeling that the locals really don’t care so much for cruisers.  There are really only two places to anchor, Lake Sylvia and Los Olas.  We spent most of the time anchoring at Lake Sylvia which was a pretty nice anchorage.  We met some other very nice cruisers there, Jean-Luke from Annapolis who was having to have all of his electronics replaced on his one year old Beneteau (under warranty thank goodness) and Norman and Anna.  He is from Ft Lauderdale and she is from Costa Rica.  We did stay in Los Olas one night but didn’t really like it there.  It seemed like the tide brought all of this crap into the area and it didn’t clear out.  I guess it is fairly convenient there to get to Publix and a City Park on your dinghy.  Lake Sylvia was pretty convenient because you could dinghy down the canal by Lauderdale Marina to Southport Raw Bar.  They let you park your dinghy there for $10 but you get a $10 credit if you eat there.  But there is a Winn-DIxie there, a liquor store, dollar store, laundry mat and an Ace Hardware not too far away.  So we did eat quite a bit at Southport but it is very good.  The only other place Wes could find to walk the dogs was the police station which is half way down the canal.  They have a dinghy dock there and they will let you park there for a while for free.  The only problem going down the canal is when the tide is high because you have to go under a bridge that gets really low at high tide and you have to duck down pretty low in the dinghy to get under.  It was fun teaching the dogs what duck means.  Max didn’t quite get it the first time when he was backwards on the dinghy and picture this, he hits his head on every board under the bridge-thump, thump, thump so after that he got the idea.  

The reason we don’t think they like cruisers for one is when we were anchored the police patrolled quite a bit (which is fine) but they stopped to let us know that there is a city ordinance where you can’t hang anything out on your boat-ok what do you do with your wet towels???  Then the same cop stopped Wes when he was taking the dogs for a walk and asked why the dinghy wasn’t registered. Wes tried to explain to him that it was registered but we just hadn’t had a chance to get to the hardware store to buy the letters.  We knew we had to do this because Wes was already stopped in Marathon and they told us that the dinghy had to be registered, which we had no idea, so we immediately registered it in Colorado but we had to wait until the kids came down in order to get the stickers to put on the boat.  We didn’t mind paying the ticket in Marathon but the Ft Lauderdale cop wouldn’t give us a break even though it was already registered.  

All in all it was a great place to visit but I don’t see us spending much time there in the future.  I hear the Bahamas is very cruiser friendly so I can’t wait to get there.