Days 293 - 301

Santa Barbara Harbor- Delray Beach City Marina Delray Beach FL

• Start 8:07 AM
• End 10:05 AM
• Underway 2:34Hours
• Distance 14 Miles
• Total Miles on Trip 4770
• Av Speed 5.7 knots
• Draw Bridges 2
• Weather Sunny , 80 Degrees, Wind Knots 8 E

We had another beautiful travel day. We pulled anchor at 8:00am to catch the 8:15AM bridge opening, even though we knew it was only a 2 minute ride to the bridge. You never know if there is going to be a problem pulling the anchor and I would rather be 10 minutes early for the bridge then miss it by 1 minute and have to wait 30 minutes for the next opening. Traveling the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW) in Florida, you have to pay close attention to the bridge opening schedules and the no wake zones. Between the two it can very easily make traveling a short distance take a very long time.

Delray Beach City marina was a great find, that I found by pure luck. After two night anchoring out, we decide that we want to stay in a marina so we could get off the boat. Dan and I called at least 10 marinas and none of them had slips for two boats. Dan (Cherri Baby II) found one marina that had a single 100 foot slip but they would not let us both use that slip, even though we would both fit. Also in that marina you pay by the length of the slip at $4.00 per foot. No thank you. When I call Delray Beach City Marina, they had two slips for one night, perfect we booked it. As soon as we arrived, Dan decided to see if they would let us stay a second night (They told me the only had room for one night) to both of our surprise they had room, for two more nights. The marina was perfect; the slips were perpendicular to the ICW in a no wake zone. They just reopened last year after being completely rebuilt. The docks were very wide and stable floating docks, and the slips were easy to pull into. The location was awesome, we were one block from main street downtown and two blocks from the beach. The best part of it all, the slips were $60 per night, including electric. There are definitely the cheapest marina we have found in Florida.

We spent three days checking out the restaurants, stores and the beach. We did not spend any time on the beach, other than to walk down to check it out. Walking to the beach made me very glad that we can travel the ICW. From what we could see the ocean was very angry with four foot plus seas, we were very glad we were able to travel on the ICW, or we would not be moving for several days. The one great advantage of the ICW is it is very well protected, allowing us to travel even when it is windy and the ocean is rough.

Our dock neighbor's Jeff & Melissa on Flip Flop, were nice enough to let us borrow their truck so we could do a grocery run. We had planned to use a free Uber type service the city has called FreeBee, but this was even easier. Dan, Cherri, Angel & I were never so excited to go to Walmart. It has been a long time since we have been in a Walmart. Most of the grocery stores we have been in since we left Clearwater have been very expensive and not a lot of choices. The boat is fully stocked again, at least for now.

On our way back from shopping we got stopped in traffic waiting while the draw bridge opened. DAM BRIDGES!!! HAHAHAHA. As we were sitting there friends of ours Dan & Karen (Online) sent us a message with a picture of our boat from the water. They were the reason the bridge was open and we could see the top of their boat as they went under the bridge. It was funny that we now have had to wait for the same bridge both on land and in the water.

One of our favorite stops in Delray Beach was the Silver Arcade. It was another pinball museum, you pay an entrance fee and the games are free. It was all vintage pinball and arcade games, we spent all afternoon playing games.

Our next stop is Stuart FL, Pirates Cove Marina & Resort.