TEXAS RANGER: Marathon to Fort Pierce & Boatyard April

     After a whirlwind trip back to Texas to finalize our tax return and attend a CME session in Austin, I returned to Marathon, where Kay had spent the week relaxing on the boat. The wind had been blowing like stink, and was forecast to continue, so we departed and headed north in Hawk Channel between the reef and the keys. It was very rough the first couple of hours out of Marathon (not ocean rough, but just not a fun ride). After that, seas subsided a bit, and we pressed on. The original plan was to anchor off Rodriguez Key, but with the rough north east winds, there was no protection there, so we continued on to Biscayne Bay, dropping the anchor about 9:30 p.m. in the lee of Key Biscayne.
     Then next morning, with cloudy skies and intermittent drizzle, we were northbound through Miami. Fortunately, the weather and the fact that we were early on a mid-week day kept many of the "amateurs" that make this area so crowded and so dangerous at home. We passed through Fort Lauderdale and a number of other cities, and finally anchored in Lake Boca Raton. We spent a day resting, and then met a highly-recommended vendor who was scheduled to change out our water maker reverse osmosis membranes. After watching how much difficulty he had extracting the old ones, I'm certainly glad I did not undertake this project myself. Of course, they had been in place 6 years! He was off the boat at 1310, and we were under the next nearby bridge at its 1330 opening, en route to Lake Worth. Of course, the President was visiting for Easter weekend, and so there was a security zone in place which slightly slowed our progress. We still had no difficulty reaching our planned anchorage north of West Palm Beach an hour or more before sunset, and enjoyed a new (to us) anchorage location.
     The following morning we were underway early, trying to beat some of the casual boaters and the rising wind. We were relatively successful at the first venture, probably due to the second factor. We arrived at our dock in Fort Pierce about 1330 and secured the boat. Now for a couple of days of cleaning the salt off! After a weekend rest, the boat was hauled out at Cracker Boy Boat Yard at 0800 Monday morning. One work crew immediately set about cleaning the barnacles and slime off the bottom of the boat, and soon a second crew was buffing and polishing the hull. The transition is unbelievable! We retrieved the Element from Marathon, and I have worked on some minor projects such as exchanging the engine room fluorescent fixtures for much brighter LED fixtures.  We will "splash" the boat Friday afternoon, and return to our dock. The boat will spend a couple of weeks there getting the upper structure buffed and polished while we return to Texas, and then hopefully we can begin our northward travels by the middle of May.