Above is what is referred to as “rafting up.”  Today in Lake Sylvia, this was just a small example of the craziness that went on.  It’s not that we begrudge the local boaters an enjoyable day on the water.  However, sadly most of the ones we encounter should use a little boat etiquette.  They are out to have a good time and don’t really care how their party affects everyone around them. Most of the boats in here are small and harmless.  They drop their anchor, let it hit the bottom, put out another couple of feet of rope and figure they are now “anchored.”  Uh....not so much.  We have 95 feet of rode out, all chain.  The minimum amount of rode (chain or rope) you should put out is 5:1.  That’s the depth where the anchor drops times 5.  The depth where we dropped our anchor was 15 feet, so that’s 75 feet of chain. We like to put out 10:1 but with the number of boats we knew would be coming in here over the weekend, that wasn’t going to work.  Of course, you can always use the “anchoring for dummies” method we heard today when a guy was letting out rode as his friend at the helm was backing up the boat.  The guy at the anchor yelled to his friend, “Hey, how do I know how much to let out?”  I expected his friend to say, “Just keep going until I almost hit this boat behind us.”

However, the small boats are not the ones we are worried about.  It’s the 70 ft. cruisers like the one in the photo at the left who pull in close to us to drop their anchor and don’t get that it’s very windy and the current is very strong, especially when the tide is going out or coming in.  One girl in a little bikini sitting on the deck of the cruiser (Where else would a girl in a bikini be?) in the photo above said to us, “You’re moving.”  How about that?  It’s a boat.  Boats anchored in the water move and swing around with the tide and wind. Their boat is probably worth about $700,000+ but they didn’t seem to mind that they were about to hit us, at one time floating five feet from us.  That’s when we got out the fenders. Rather than use fenders, they got friends in small fishing boats to raft up next to them so if they floated near us, the small boats would hit us, not them. Very clever.

We knew it would be crazy today, and Memorial Day will be worse if that is possible.  Many of the boats were blasting music, all drowning each other out.  Lots of people were swimming.  I would never willingly swim in this water, but that doesn’t stop the locals. It is filthy, part of a system of a heavily traveled river, the ICW, and lots of canals. Besides all the huge commercial ships and megayachts traveling on this water, there are thousands of smaller boats dropping trash and leaking fuel.  Even though any boat can get free pumpouts from multiple marinas, there is no doubt that some anchored boats dump their waste overboard. 

Daisy doesn’t seem to mind all the commotion.  As long as she has a comfortable place to rest, she’s OK.

She seemed to ignore all the noise, even dogs barking from other boats and kids screaming.

The plan was to leave today to avoid all of this commotion. Last night we changed our plans.  Unfortunately, along came “Sub Tropical Storm Beryl.”  First, what’s with the name  “Sub Tropical Storm?”  People who have boats hate how storms become “named storms” because insurance deductibles go up if there is damage from a named storm.  Beryl didn’t really meet the requirements for a tropical storm, so someone in their infinite wisdom decided to start naming “sub tropical” storms, which apparently have some characteristics of tropical storms and some of plain old storms.  Thanks!  I think the weathermen are frustrated because there haven’t been many hurricanes in recent years and they aren’t getting the attention they like. As it turned out, for awhile Beryl did become a real tropical storm.  It even came close to having the characteristics of a real hurricane.  Since the various predictions put landfall for Beryl anywhere from St. Augustine to points north, we decided to wait here until it all settles down, hopefully by the middle of the week.  By “settling down” we also mean the congestion on the water, especially the ICW.

Yesterday we paid for a dinghy dock pass to a nearby marina, Las Olas.  That enabled us to use their dock to go ashore.  We were going to take the Sun Trolley, which is free on weekends, to the grocery store but the traffic was so backed up on A1A with people going to the beach, we gave up waiting and took the dinghy to a public dock near the store.   We also used the facilities at Las Olas to get enough water to replace what we’ve used from our tanks this past week, do some laundry, and take long showers.   All this for a mere $15.  Actually, that’s about the most we’ve ever paid for a dinghy dock pass, but this is Ft. Lauderdale.  The mooring balls are $35 a night at Las Olas, which is a “cheap” city marina.  That’s also the most expensive we’ve seen.  Oddly, the price for a slip at Las Olas has dropped to their off season, summer price, $1.25 a ft with 15% off if you have Boat US.  That doesn’t include metered electric hook-up, but is still very reasonable for south Florida.

The sunny skies ended at about 5 pm today.  Many of the boats in the lake decided that the big black clouds coming towards us were nothing to worry about.  The smarter people pulled up their anchors and headed home.  If they didn’t have radar on their boats, I’m sure most of them had smartphones and could see the storm coming from a radar APP like the one on the left on my iPhone.  As for us, we were happy to see the crowds disperse early as I’m sure the parties would have gone on for many more hours. After the rain stopped and all the locals had left, there remained 13 boats, most if not all of us are waiting for better weather to move north or south to our destinations.  The lake was totally silent, the skies were clear and it was very peaceful as the sun set and the sky turned dark.  Tomorrow will probably bring another day of rafted boats, loud music, and anchors dropped within feet of us.