Guided Discovery: Free at Last - West Palm to Stuart

Reader Note: This article was started on Monday, March 24. It is now Saturday evening, March 29 and I'm finally able to resume. So, what caused the delay? If you been following this blog you know that we have been struggling to resolve punch list issues while at the same time trying to get Guided Discovery ready to cruise.

Then on Tuesday morning my computer was finally overcome by malware. This required that I overnight the computer to my support team in Chicago. To their credit, they performed their arcane magic and had the computer back in my hands on Friday. So on with the story.

The title of this article, "Free at Last," says it all. Our current round of three boat shows finished at 10:01 AM on Monday when Pam and I departed the Palm Beach Boat Show. Further, today's run from the show's location just south of the Flagler Memorial Bridge to Stuart was the first time that we were cruising on our own with no commitments.

Pam expressing the joy I felt as we cast of lines this morning.

Think about it. The cruise from:

Fort Lauderdale to Miami was for the Miami Boat Show.
Miami back to Fort Lauderdale involved the helicopter photo shoot.
Fort Lauderdale to Lark Park was to attend the Passagemaker Trawlerfest.
Lake Park to Fort Lauderdale was to resolve punch list problems and finish commissioning.
Fort Lauderdale to Palm Beach was to attend the Palm Beach Boat Show and permit Passagemaker to conduct their sea trial

The exodus begins at 9:00 AM as the boats to our east depart
The section of the dock where people are standing will be removed so we can leave

Note the open covers. Show Management removed the electric lines prior to detaching the fingers

Guided Discovery and the Sea Ray 370 that almost hit us a week ago

The boats locking us in are gone. Awaiting the starting gun.

A boat backing out of the opening.

We power off using the thrusters - That's me operating the boat fro the boat deck with the remote control

So on Monday, we were truly on our own. Recall that we were told by Show Management that our departure time was 10:00 AM. UNBELIEVABLE, we departed at 10:01 AM. UNBELIEVABLE, we cleared the Flagler Memorial Bridge, which opened at 10:15 and stayed open to allow at least 100 boats to clear the bridge. We crossed under the bridge at 10:30 AM. Usually, the bridge opens for 10 minutes.

Guided Discovery pulls into the bridge line after departing the show.

The 39 nautical mile trip from West Palm Beach to Stuart took 5:30 minutes. Running between 1500 and 1600 RPM we burned 35.3 gallons. Another first, we did not have a big fuel bill connected to "other activities" like helicopter shoots at full throttle or a Passagemaker sea trial running reciprocal courses to correct for wind and current.

A few words about the cruise itself. Once clear of the bridge at 10:30 we followed a long line of boats north along the ICW to the Worth Inlet. At 11:16, we cleared the inlet, turned left and headed north along the shoreline. The forecast for showers in the afternoon proved to be correct and it quickly became wet and cool on the flybridge. No problem. Pam and I retreated to the pilothouse and completed the journey in air conditioned comfort.

This we the first time I had operated the boat from the pilothouse and the experience was WONDERFUL. There is almost no noise. Milt Baker from Passagemaker measured the sound level in the pilothouse at 60 decibels which is the noise level of normal conversation. You can barely hear the engine. Even in the salon, which is directly over the engines, the noise level is only 63 decibels. Outer Reef does an incredible job of insulating the engine room for sound. Further, the visibility is excellent and there is a lovely work surface just to the right of the helm. The variable windshield wipers actually work well, which was not the case on the 48 Sundancer. There is a wiper on each window and each is controllable from its own switch.

We arrived at the Saint Lucie inlet at 2:09 PM. I had called Sea Tow en-route to take advantage of their local knowledge and had no difficulty negotiating the channel (which was being dredged)

Explanatory Note: All inlets are not created equal. For example, Government cut in Miami, Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale and Worth Inlet in Palm Beach are used by ships and are well maintained. Inlets that are not used by commercial traffic do not receive the same level of maintenance and can be tricky. Currents and storms tend to move the bottom around resulting in shoaling. While the Coast Guard stays on top of things by moving buoys to reflect the current channel the charts (electric and paper) are not updated. Hence, the buoys on the chart may have been moved. Local knowledge is essential as is following the buoys as you see them. Running on autopilot on a route through an inlet is not a good practice.

Best practices for running inlets include getting first hand local knowledge from tow operators, like Sea Tow, and using Active Captain, a website that contains up to date information on hazards posted by other boaters (including the date of the report).

Our route to Stuart took us west across the ICW and then north and west along the Saint Lucie River. Here again we entered tricky waters at the ICW junction where the coast Guard had moved buoys due to shoaling caused by tidal currents at the junction of the inlet and the ICW. The run up the Saint Lucie River was well marked although somewhat shallow at low tide.

Explanatory Note: The intersection of the Saint Lucie River and the ICW mark the start of the Okeechobee Waterway that connects the east coast at Stuart to the west coast at Fort Myers via the Saint Lucie River, Lake Okeechobee and the Caloosahatchee River. The waterway itself is 154 statute miles long and saves mariners 165 miles of travel around the tip of Florida (and for us about $1,000: 165 gallons at $4.00 per gallon plus $400 in dockage). We will use the Okeechobee Waterway next November to reach Sarasota for our winter retreat.

We arrived at Sunset Bay Marina at 3:30 PM. To get to the marina you go under the Roosevelt Bridge that allows traffic on US 1 to cross the Saint Lucie River, through a Florida East Coat railroad bridge and past the Dixie Highway Bridge that opens on demand (and did for us). We were met at the dock by Diana and the Furry Kid who had driven up in Pam's car.

We then docked on D-dock as per our reservation. D-dock is a fixed dock and this proved to be problematic. The biggest problem was the pilings that force the boat to be some distance from the dock making boarding difficult for Diana and Kodi especially with tides. We expressed our desire to move and the dockmaster graciously reassigned us to B-dock slip 25, a floating dock. Hurrah!