Boats, We See Boats
The tall ship Bounty
One benefit of cruising is the opportunity to see every imaginable type of vessel. If it floats we’ve see it. As we entered the anchorage south of Lake Worth inlet, the tall ship Bounty, as in ‘Mutiny on the Bounty’ departed a dock and backed across our intended course giving us a close look. We’re not sure if Captain Bligh or Christian Fletcher was at the helm but we did notice that this replica seemed to have large diesel engines powering her unlike her namesake back in the 1700’s. At least they had the decency to forego the bow thrusters. Given our predicament with the inoperational head I wondered if they had a nice oak bucket we could borrow. If you’d like to tour The Bounty she is currently docked on Peanut Island. Pitcairn Island would have been so much better. Arghhhhh!
The next morning we hauled anchor at 5 am and inched Yoohoo out of the cluttered harbor with no moon to illuminate parked barges, dredging pipes as long as a football field, navigation markers, manatee signs or unlit anchored boats. This tense crawl paid off in a smooth departure through the inlet right at slack tide and an Atlantic sunrise accompanied by wisps of golden mist billowing across the waves.
We passed another interesting vessel, on the trendy end of the nautical time continuum, anchored off busy Fort
Dockwise Yacht Transport ship at anchor
Lauderdale waiting to enter Port Everglades. This Dockwise Yacht Transport ship does nothing but cart recreational boats around the world to the “most desirable cruising grounds” so their owners don’t actually have to cruise anywhere to “go cruising”. The ship is “semi-submersible” in order to lower its cargo deck below water allowing boats such as ours to be driven straight onto its deck. When all the boats are loaded its deck is raised back up and away they go.
We know of people who used Dockwise to ship their boat back to the States when their cruising was interrupted by real life. We also know of people who shamelessly speak of their “circumnavigation” when, in fact, their vessel was shipped on certain legs via a Dockwise Transport Ship. We don’t know where this particular one was headed but since we just encountered The Bounty I’d like to imagine they were making a breadfruit run to Tahiti.
It was a long debate to decide whether we stop in Miami Beach to commence head repairs or continue on to the Keys. In the end, Miami Beach, with its new, free, city-wide WiFi system and easy access to a marine goods store won. We hope to retire our little plastic bucket soon!
