Palm Beach/Lake Worth.

Happy new year. It's dark, and it must be warm, because this spleen queen is sitting in the cockpit in shorts and flip flops. A deep breath is very rewarding in terms of nice smells and warm air. There's lots of lights on in the homes of the beautiful people on the shore in Palm Beach. In the afternoon, we can sit and watch children's heads bob up and down above a hedge ashore. We have deduced that there's a large trampoline in someone's yard. New Year's Eve there was lots of fireworks, amateur and dangerous looking for the most part (let's light this and skip it over the water just by that multi-million dollar yacht, okay Chip?) Tonight it feels like the last night of the hols, and all the kids ashore are screaming and sounding just a wee bit out of control.

Someone else has an automatic bird scaring system that plays a tape of ravening hawks ripping pidgeons to bits. Over and over. Every 5 minutes on the weekend, but boosting up to every minute come Monday morning. It's not that bad for us - the wind and the current tend to move us around so we get some variety in views and audio, but we're scratching our feathers over the programming of that tape. Moving around also affects our wifi reception. We do best on an incoming tide.

We've been here for two days. Really nice trip offshore from Fort Pierce to Lake Worth -- the first bit was a serious trudge through a inlet with a wicked current. It was Florida Rush Hour: a jillion big and small sport fishing boats, some sailboats, some honking motor yachts, some small open boats, everybody who had had their coffee was headed out through this roiling bit of water. Those without boats were fishing on the breakwater and laughing at the gas-sucking traffic going almost nowhere, quite slowly against the current (I'm guessing). It added about 45 minutes to the trip that we hadn't counted on, so we ended up getting into Palm Beach just in time to watch the last parasailing boat hauling in their last customer.

But we had a few hours of great sailing with all the white stuff up (not mouldy after all), then the breeze came around forward, and we slowly took in sail and ended up motoring the last half of the long day (55m). But there were two great turtle sightings, really great, and porpoises shooting straight out of the water and doing flips. They do it for fun, not just at Seaworld for fish treats. What a blast to watch. It just wakes you up and makes you happy to watch it, albeit from a distance.

We travelled from Vero Beach to here with Paul and Denise on Vixen. Travelling together means we sort of stayed in view of each other -- about 3 or 4 miles apart -- but it's fun to check in on the VHF every once in a while and discuss the progress. Lovely people. They came over for a drink last night, and we discussed computer problems and ate Denise's crab dip. They're going to be stuck here for at least ten days while their computer makes a trip to CA and back again for repairs. Our other pals from Vero Beach, Alan and Anne on Freya, are heading straight off to the Virgins. It's nice to think that we'll anchor somewhere and look around and see boats that we know.

New years eve was great. We toyed with the idea of eating leftovers after the long day on the water, but heck, we gave that up and had a terrific meal and great wine and balanced it nicely by retiring to the bunk at 9. Woke refreshed and ready for champagne and mango juice and a big breakfast. How sensible is that? Much easier to do in warmer climes. Something about new year's eve in frigid temp leads to excess. I'll let you know if this theory lets me down in the future. Okay, just assume.

We'll likely head out in the morning, either on the ICW or offshore, depending on how Randy's tarot cards interpret the weather, and it's only a one or two day trip to Ft. Lauderdale either way. Tom is rejoining the ship on Friday, and we'll restock all the stuff we've been eating and drinking in the last week or so, and then we'll head Seriously South. The first weather window to the Bahamas, and we're hauling anchor (something I'm getting better at).

Happy new year to you all.