A clear and sunny morning greeted us ready for our sail to West Palm Beach Florida, our exit out of the entrance was bumpy but once we were past the cross currents we unfurled the main sail and we were happily sailing down the coast it was only a  50 nautical mile sail and by 2pm we were motoring in to West Palm Beach, the sky clouded over as we approached land, it was smoggy too.

Craig has to go up front and flick a switch every time we have to pull up or take down the mainsail

West Palm Beach from the ocean, cloudy and smoggy

Another busy harbour this time there is a constant stream of cruise ships coming in and out.

There was actually plenty of room to anchor, that's Doriana Peter and Joyce's  boat in the foreground

We dropped the anchor with mansions on one side and as we found out when we went ashore, the exact opposite on the other.  

The West Palm Beach Sailing Club allows transient boaters to tie up at their dingy dock for a fee, $18 US per visit, this provides you with a secure place to leave your dingy, showers and Wi-Fi and its only a short walk to the main road that has the number 21 bus run past.  

The area on the sailing club side was mostly Hispanic and kind of rough to say the least !!  On the second day we were just about to exit the bus when a big muscled white guy stops me and says "you are not from around here are you?" "no" I said   "don't get off the bus here its a really bad unsafe area"   he said, "We have to" was my response "we need to go down that street" he just shrugged as if to say well I did try to warn you.  We literally ran back to the sailing club suddenly noticing that all the houses had their windows either boarded up or full bar security screens on them.  While we were scurrying home a car pulled over in front of us on and angle and a Hispanic man jumped out, he ran past us into the house quite innocently being dropped off after work but it made my heart race seeing the car pull over next to us.

On our last day there I chose to stop at a laundromat while Craig caught the bus to the marine shop, really the neighbourhood was ok during the day, just not so safe at night.

The girl sitting next to me had an ankle band on she was obviously out on parole and not allowed to wander too far. 

On the streets there were spaced out drug addicts and prostitutes, a homeless man that lived at the bus stop with all his worldly possessions spread around him.  We did try to chat to him one day, but we could not understand him, there was a closed up service station/garage that had a bit of a shanty town behind it and every morning there were crowds of men on the street corners I'm guessing there would be trucks come past and pick them up and ferry them to job sites around the city.

We bought all our fruit and veg from the local supermarket and found the cheapest  Mexican cans of sweet corn, we tried their shop made tortillas (I thought they tasted weird but Craig enjoyed them) and shopped like a local.
I discovered Trader Joes what a great shop, it has unusual and cool foodstuff and really cheap wine,  the family on the catamaran next to us offered to take me with them when they went as Craig had helped them out with a lift back to shore when they had water in the petrol tank of their dingy motor after the most torrential rain we have ever experienced.

The Ray marine chart plotter that came with the boat is almost out of date and cannot be updated so buying the charts for The Bahamas - and the rest of the world- was proving to be a problem so we had no choice but to purchase a new one.

Part of the conversion was the face of the new plotter was smaller than the old one this meant we had to find a plastic cutting factory to make a frame for the screen, so on the bus we went, this trip took 2 buses there and back, we discovered the next day that we could buy a $5 all day pass rather than the $2 per ride we had been paying.  The screen took a couple of trips to get right, but once it was fitted it was perfect.

The new frame also makes the plotter waterproof

It felt like we were pulling the boat apart

The next drama was we had to feed the new wires through the body of the boat to the power source, well that was a job and a half but eventually after much cursing - the wires were fed through without having to pull the lining off the ceiling, Craig had been emailing the Hunter factory for help that's how difficult the job was.

We had a visit from Cherie and her husband she had very kindly allowed us to have parcels sent to her home and even more kindly delivered them to us, we had enjoyed Cherie's hospitality at her  Airbnb on our first visit to Miami.  I don't think Cherie expected to be ferried  by dingy to Adriana, we were actually anchored quite a long way out but she coped very well, we sat and chatted over a glass of wine and some nibbles she not only brought our parcels but gifted us a selection of Christmas tree ornaments and some beautiful star fruit from her garden.

Its so lovely to catch up with people we have met along the way 

We also had a visit from Jay and Corrie whos boat was anchored next to us in Wiarton, Jays parents have a house about 40 minutes drive north from where we were and they took the time to come and see us, it was so lovely to catch up with them, Jay admitted he follows us on AIS and his phone alerts him every time we move on - and he is so envious.  When we left Wiarton he had mentioned he would be down this way in late December but we never imagined we would still be here in the US.
Corrie very kindly agreed to take all the chart books and maps back to Wiarton to return to Bill whom we purchased Adriana from.  This was something that had been worrying me as we had said we would return the books but there was no way we could afford to pay the postage for the huge pile we had.

I'm sure we are going to see Jay and Corrie again somewhere on our travels

Christmas came and went with no window of favourable winds to take us down to the Bahamas so we made the most of our time on anchor I found a great thrift store along the bus route everything was donated from the mansion side of the river so many designer clothes and grand furniture even Craig was impressed.

We invited Peter and Joyce an Australian/Phillipson couple and Matt and Josie an Australian /American couple to join us for Christmas lunch.  Matt and Peter are ex air pilots and good friends who were very excited to catch up.  Matt and Josie arrived around midday with lunch due to be served on Adriana at 1pm. 

Craig cooked up a storm I don't know if he will attempt it again in such a small kitchen.  We had roast turkey, roast potato's, cauliflower and cheese sauce, gravy, honey carrots and green beans. Joyce and Peter brought the glazed ham and a beautiful egg custard pudding and Matt and Josie contributed a huge slice of camembert and crackers what a feast oh yes and we made egg nog, we drank champagne and white wine it was a lovely day I had picked some red flowers and palm leaves for the table and  a few little presents from the thrift shop to add to the fun.  The thrift shop had everything half price for the holidays

so I think I spent less than $10 all up including the half price roll of wrapping paper. I had taken the bus and gone to a big normal supermarket to look for bonbons and plum pudding but the Americans don't seem to have these as Christmas traditions.  At the end of the day we sat and played a board game that I had given Peter, it was a fun day.  

Getting ready for Christmas lunch

Craig even whipped up my birthday cake while cooking lunch 

Arriving is easier than leaving, after a few drinks 

It was the full Christmas spread 

We missed our family but making new friends is always fun

Facetime is great and we caught up with family in Australia, Angus my nephew even put us on the big tv screen we had timed it so that everyone was there to say hello, it was hard and I must admit I did shed a few tears afterwards.
I celebrated my Birthday with a beautiful cake and more facetime and so many lovely messages from home.

Happy Birthday to me

We caught up with Alexi and Craig spent a little time helping him with his engine problem, Stella has stayed in US heading to Florida Keys to catch up with friends.

How did we end up spending 18 days in West Palm Beach ?  there was just not a good weather forecast to get out of there.  Off the coast of Florida there is the gulf stream that runs up from Mexico to Greenland it has an incredibly strong current sweeping  in the opposite direction of where we needed to go. The prevailing winds that hit Florida are onshore Easterlies,  The combination of wind against tide can produce HUGE rough seas that are no way suitable for small yachts to go out in, the big cruise ships cross everyday but not the smaller vessels.

So we had to wait for two days in a row that have good westerlies, one to let the sea calm down and then head out the next day.  There is a guy called Chris Parker who dedicates his time to forecasting the best time to cross, and this time of year is very busy as the Northern States get cold the Canadians and north American retirees head south. so we had lots of information to guide us  

Steve and Jane were sending us Chris Parkers forecasts daily, then the tropical storm came through, there was a tropical storm forecasted to last for a few days, torrential rain with thunder and lightening thrown in, luckily we didn't experience any lightening.  Pam Beach is the lightening strike capital of the world.  The rain was incredible. We did get caught by it a couple of times walking back from the bus.  

On one occasion, after the first initial downpour we opened up the caps to our freshwater tanks and placed tea towels to cause a pool to form and divert the rainwater into our water tanks - bonus

At least the weather is warm - average 25c -  22c overnight

One day we were on shore about to catch the bus to West Marine when a lovely man called Cal offered to drive us there, he is a boat broker and his schedule for the day had changed and he had nothing planned so in we hopped and were chauffer driven there and back with a stop off at the Yanmar dealers as well.  Cal was telling us he has been struck by lightning 4 times with different boats so much so that his insurance company rang him up to tell him his costs for the next year had to increase when his policy ran out in a few days and the next day he was struck by ightining again !!

We were glad to leave there.

Finally there was a suitable weather window we had filled the boat with dry food, dry goods, cans, frozen meats and as much fruit and veg as we thought we could use before it goes off.  

We motored to one of the marinas and filled up with diesel, then we dropped the anchor almost at the mouth of the entrance and waited until late afternoon, the optimum time to leave as we would travel through the night and arrive in Lucaya at sunrise.