Post #53: Miami Bound!

Saturday, January 16 to Tuesday, January 19, 2021 

We stayed one more day in Hobe Sound, taking it easy and reading up on how best to time the 7 bridge openings we would need to pass through before reaching Palm Beach. I think we both agree that the passage on Sunday was the most nerve-wracking and anxiety-producing 20 miles (5 hours) of this entire trip.  We were really, really, really glad that we’d be heading out to the Atlantic on Monday and far away from the ICW traffic that churned up the water like a Maytag.

Sunday’s travels took us along the western side of narrow Jupiter Island.  The houses got larger and larger, and so did the “yachts in their backyards.”

(At first, I thought this was two houses. How silly of me.)

Just for kicks, I looked to see if there were any homes for sale.  Turns out that the Jupiter Island Club is an extremely exclusive golf community but does have at least one residence on the market. For a mere $28,000,000 you, too, can decorate 13 bedrooms and clean 17 bathrooms...and hobnob with neighbors Tiger Woods and Celine Dion in your free time. Nice neighborhood.

Our anchorage was near the Lake Worth Inlet at Port Palm Beach and a bit busier than the two nights before up in Hobe Sound. There were marina and repair services for large vessels, including cruise ships, as well as a cement manufacturing plant that was lit up like a Christmas tree but fortunately was quiet by 8 p.m. Notice the white-roofed building on the shore (with no lights). That’s the Manatee Lagoon Educational Center.  As we moved closer to the Center, a small patrol boat with a flashing blue light approached us and asked us to slow down (gee, we were only going 5 mph!) because “there are manatees everywhere around here.”  We gladly cut back our engine and were well pleased to watch the officers approach every boat on the busy ICW, asking them to take caution and be on the look out to avoid disturbing the manatees.

West Indian manatees, also known as sea cows, are enormous aquatic mammals.  The average adult male is about 10 feet long and 1000 pounds.  They live in shallow, slow-moving waters such as quiet rivers, peaceful saltwater lagoons, and calm coastal canals from spring to fall. But in the winter they search for warmer water, heading to inland springs or even the heated outflow of power plants (and cement factories?).These slow moving giants are herbivores and, like all mammals, need air to breathe.  They sleep about half the time but still surface to breathe even while dozing.  They are protected by state and federal regulations, including the Endangered Species Act of 1973.  We have yet to actually see one on this trip but they sure look prehistoric! 

Ah, the Jupiter Island Club was only a prelude to the excess that is West Palm Beach, land of work-famous golf courses, oceanfront estates with sea walls and tiny strips of beach, Henry Flagler’s iconic hotel, The Breakers, (the photo below with two towers) and Mar-a-Lago.  We took in the views from about a mile offshore, enjoying the freedom of the open air breeze and clear waters of southern Florida.

I’d been to West Palm Beach once before back in the spring of my senior year at Cornell.  At one of our sorority chapter meetings, Joan invited “anyone who’d like to come” to West Palm for spring break.  This was an offer too good to refuse!  Some of us went to Disney World first for a few days, rented a car (how did we do that when no one was over 21??) and drove to Joan’s parent’s winter vacation home.

Now, when I had invited “anyone who’d like to come” to Boston for the Bicentennial the year before, I meant that there was room on our living room floor for anyone with a sleeping bag and their own pillow.  Joan meant there would be an actual bed and for some, en suite accommodations.  She also meant that when we came downstairs in the morning, the cook would make us breakfast as opposed to being handed a bowl and a box of Cheerios at my house.  I remember thinking, hmm, I could get used to this.

Turns out the house had once belonged to William Randolph Hearst, had a ballroom, servant’s wing, and a fabulous pool surrounded by lush plantings.  Starved for warm sunshine after a cold and depressingly gray Ithaca winter, we lounged by the pool for hours, devouring romance novels by the gulpful. Wondering if there might be a municipal tennis court nearby where we could go for a bit of exercise, I asked Joan’s mother about the plock, plock I heard in the background.  “Hmm, I think that may be the Whitney’s on their court—or maybe the Doubledays.  I could call and ask if you could come by for a game.”  Since most of my tennis experience had been hitting a ball against the back wall of the Gardner Morse School, I quickly demurred and buried my head in another Barbara Cartland novel (probably The Earle Rings a Belle or The Kiss of Paris or In Love in Lucca or.....)