I just re-read the post from the last time we were hanging out in Lake Worth waiting on a weather window to cross to the Bahamas and…not much has changed!

It’s a busy anchorage and there’s always lots of boats running around for entertainment. This yacht is literally the size of a football field: meet Aquarius, the $200m yacht owned by Steve Wynn, complete with elevator, swimming pool, beach club, helicopter landing pad, massage room, beauty salon, deck jacuzzi, and gym. As we were watching it, a large hatch opened up near the water line and it released A SMALLER YACHT.

You thought that was a big deal? Wait until you see the literal mother ship below, she came carrying a bunch of little baby yachts. After she docked, they released all the babies right into the water and they swam off one by one. Isn’t nature amazing?

I’ve pretty much perfected my on-board sourdough recipe, last week’s loaf was a disaster because bread doesn’t really rise when it’s 50°F out, so I had to make this loaf to prove I hadn’t lost my touch. I’m mostly including this because I was just getting started with sourdough last time we were in this anchorage.

After a few days on the boat I started feeling trapped, so we made plans to go to Peanut Island, a nearby park only accessible by boat. Instead, it poured rain, so we stayed home and filled up every single bucket we own.

With all those buckets of water, and no easy way to get our laundry to a laundromat, I faced reality and got to work. This is the first laundry we’ve done since we left NC, we were a little desperate! Plus it’s always good to announce to the neighbors exactly what kind of people you are.

Now, nearing maximum stir-crazy boredom levels, we opted to move to the West Palm Beach anchorage. It’s a busy anchorage right between two drawbridges, but there’s a free dinghy dock right the heart of downtown. It’s a very walkable city, with library, grocery, and lots of happy hours within close walking distance. I took this photo from the bridge, we are the boat on the far left.

Kyle got some fantastic news, he passed his PE exam! So we went out to celebrate. We started at Steam Horse Brewing, which was amazing beer but two miles was way too far of a walk for our sea-legs. It was also 100% humidity and occasionally raining.

After that we took an Uber (we are so weak!) back downtown and stopped at a local burger bar for happy hour and some seriously amazing huge burgers. We sat outside under the awning, completely dry from the downpour but perfectly placed for some excellent people-watching.

We got to see the Christmas tree all lit up – we were here right before the tree lighting last week but we didn’t want to dinghy home in the dark so we missed it. I was excited to see it after dark! Now that we’re anchored right by downtown, I will tell you that it is one of the most obnoxious things about this anchorage. The playlist repeats every 15 minutes, and a strobe light dances around from 6-10pm, which lights up all the nearby buildings and just happens to shoot a laser beam right into our boat every night as well.

We’ve been having some major power issues. The big problem with this time of year is that the sun is so low in the sky that it cuts our solar power production roughly in half. We’ve done everything we can to mitigate our power usage and we still are drawing more than we’re making. We’ve had to run the generator every few days to keep up, which is an ugly way to make power but we don’t have a choice. The biggest non-essential power draw we have is the inverter, which we use to run the TV and our laptops. We’ve stopped watching TV and Kyle ordered a 12V power adapter for his laptop so he could use it without the inverter. This is a fun story in itself, because we obviously don’t have an address right now. Here’s what we had to do to get our Amazon order. First, dinghy in to the free dock!

Second, we were planning on using an Uber but at the last second Kyle found a free trolley to Whole Foods. It has very limited days/hours, so we were lucky it happened to be in service when we went in.

Ride the trolley to an outlet mall that has a Whole Foods, which is owned by Amazon, which means they have an Amazon Locker on site. Input the code Amazon gave us, then pick up our box from the locker!

Incidentally, the trolley ran every 40 minutes, and picking up our adapter took about 5 minutes. We wandered around one of the outlets to kill some time, intending to be back at the trolley stop 10 minutes early. As we exited the outlet we saw the trolley go by and ended up running down the busy sidewalk to catch the trolley back!

Okay, one last story. Saturday morning we made plans to get groceries, since I’m dying to see a fresh vegetable again. That just happened to be farmers market day, what a happy accident!

At the farmers market, I got $4 worth of joy, aka two basil plants. Now even when we don’t have fresh veggies, I can still get some fresh herb flavor!

Then we wandered over to a “Goodwill Boutique/Embassy,” which you’ll be shocked to find out is not anything like Goodwill as we know it. Kyle looked at one pair of shorts, saw that it was $25, and we promptly walked back out. The clothing there seemed to cater to a very specific demographic as well, certainly not my economic tier or age group. Now we know! Finally, groceries, a walk back over the bridge, and back home for salads and watching the weekend boaters!

It looks like we won’t have a weather window anytime soon, so we may be spending Christmas in West Palm Beach. The weather here has been gorgeous and there’s plenty to do here, but waiting is hard. The price of entering the Bahamas doubles on January 1, so we’ve been pushing hard to make it ahead of the price increase, but we’re not willing to force a weather window just to meet that goal.