Adventures in Ft. Lauderdale, FL |
Monday-Feb 4thWe had a leisurely morning aboard after we an early shower in the modern city marina facilities. With internet access in the captains lounge and an easy walk to the beach, this is an excellent location for a short stay. At $30 per day, it's expensive relatively to other moorings, but a steal relative to the $2.50-$3.00 per ft. charges at other marina's. We need to perform several maintenance actions (oil and filter changes) soon, and also need to replace the horn button at the upper helm. We thus decided to stay a few days and advised the dock master to extend our stay. After lunch onboard, we caught the local bus going in the direction of a grocery store and large shopping area. The dock master gave us a small map marking the location of major stores, and we attempted to find the West Marine. We did not understand the scale of the map and soon found the walk to the West Marine would be about three miles. We choose to visit the Boaters World store next the Publix market. We returned to the boat about four-thirty with our purchases, then headed in the dinghy to Coconuts a local restaurant with courtesy docks. Joe had a very nice piece of swordfish with crab meat on top. I had jambalaya with was good as well. We made it back to the boat by twilight. Tuesday-Feb 5thA day for maintenance. Oil and filter changes in engine and generator. While running the engine to warm the oil we noticed the fuel filter alarm, and believed that we must change the primary fuel filter. Guess what - no spare onboard. Also, we are using the last spare oil filters for engine and generator so a shopping trip for spares is necessary. Maybe tomorrow. After completing the maintenance tasks and reading the Yanmar fuel filter maintenance instructions we determined that the filter alarm light was on due to a short between two wires. This engine model uses a fuel filter with an internal float to measure the water level. both wires were broken from the filter and were touching the engine block causing the alarm. It appeared the wires had been broken for many months, probably caused when the filter was changed. The sender unit must also be replaced. Boat and yacht maintenance is a large portion of Fort Lauderdale's economy. Virtually every boat or boat component manufacturer is represented here and we were able to find the distributors for Yanmar and Westerbeke through several phone calls. They are located in industrial areas near the airport and we thus made arrangements for a rent-a-car to visit these distributors tomorrow. Wednesday-Feb 6thThe car rental company picked us up at the marina and we were soon on our way to purchase the needed supplies. I generally keep everything needed for the next maintenance cycle onboard. We will have at least two maintenance cycles during the remainder of the cruise so we made several purchases. Expensive. I was shocked to pay $60 for the primary fuel filter. We ended up visiting five different parts houses and about $400 later the trunk was full and we were able to see some of Fort Lauderdale. We found our way to the west end of Las Olas Boulevard which contains numerous high rise office buildings, condominiums as well as restaurants and shopping of every kind. This reminded us very much of the street scene in Delray Beach. We had lunch at the Cheesecake Factory and walked around finding our way to River Walk which runs along the New River winding and curving inland. It was interesting to see so many huge yachts tied to the bulkhead. There was barely room for two boats to pass in the narrow river. We saw a huge yacht being towed by a very small boat. Homes, hotels, marinas and restaurants lined the waterway. We drove back to The Fort Lauderdale Municipal marina stored our purchases and had dinner on the boat. Thursday-Feb 7thWe got up early today. I told Joe I need to learn to drive the dinghy. I had my first lesson early before the boating world got going in the waterway. It went well except I had to circle three times to line up docking the dinghy at the back of Surprise. It was fun. For those of you who don’t know my history regarding a dinghy, a few years ago I was adamant that I would never get in something that little. Just goes to show you, never say never. It’s supposed to be very warm today. Joe changed the primary fuel filter on the engine as well as the primary filter on the generator before breakfast, then quickly showered before before setting out to return the rental car. The plan was to get breakfast on the way. As things go, we could not find a typical breakfast restaurant and ended up at a French bakery to share a slice of quiche and had a cup of coffee. We then made quick stops at several places to pick up a few last minute items, returned the car and were back at the boat around one in the afternoon. Over the past few days we have not been satisfied with the house battery performance. This is our first long term mooring of the trip and we have needed to run the generator often to re-charge. We searched for someone to replace two to the large batteries which Joe cannot lift. We ended up arranging with Jackson Marine Services to install them Friday morning. This will be interesting as they are located on the New River west of downtown Fort Lauderdale. Our care package from home arrived this afternoon consisting of our mail and videos from home. We watched a move before retiring. |