Boca Raton & Friends!

After leaving Marathon / Boot Key, we made our first turn north and up the east coast of Florida. Since our boat draft is too deep for the rest of the Keys and with Miami not really being our scene, we headed to Boca Raton to see our friends Joe and Bree. We met Joe quickly after we moved onto Nymeria in Kemah, TX. Since he had just purchased his boat about 6 months before us and he since works in the same field as Justin, we quickly became friends. He and his wife, Bree, now live in Boca Raton living the apartment/college life and we had to stop by, since it was on the way.  We went roughly 150nm and 27 hours of equally motor-sailing without wind and sailing with 10-15 knots of wind with calm seas. We arrived at the Hillsboro Inlet to the ICW and were met by Joe and Bree on their dinghy to help us tired sailors navigate the 3 draw bridges necessary to get to our anchorage on Lake Boca Raton. It was great having them on board with their local knowledge of the shallow areas to avoid in the ICW and on where to best anchor in the small, busy lake. 

While we were at anchor, we used the Silver Palm Park’s dinghy dock to go into town and explore as it was free and only a short dinghy ride to the north. We also used Sullivan Park, which is south of Lake Boca, as a dinghy dock but they wanted to charge 5$ per hour and their app didn’t work on our phones so we had anxiety each time we used the facility. We only used our bikes 1x as there was a significant tide of 2-3 feet in the area which made it difficult to get the bikes off and on the dinghy safely at low tide. It didn’t keep us from exploring by foot or by our own personal Uber, Joe/Bree. We took advantage of being in a bigger city to restock on some supplies and get much needed haircuts! We even found a seafood festival, pirate festival  local breweries and a lovely beach with walking/running trails to fill our time. 

Like with most of our stops, we were only planning on staying in Boca a few days to a week but the weather had other plans for us. We had a weather window that closed in with a week of storms and winds up to 35 knots. We ended up spending 2 weeks on the lake and were not able to avoid the Boca Bash. This is an annual lake party on the last Sunday of April which is totally unsanctioned by the city. The anchorage can get pretty busy on a typical weekend but this was a whole other thing. We even had the city police boat come by and tell us that we should leave the lake prior to the party. Unfortunately, all the marinas close by were full and had been for months and the other nearby anchorages were known to have bad holdings in high winds. Luckily for use we had Joe on board to help fend off a 50+foot rental yacht which was dragging anchor with no one at the helm. We are just glad that we still had our wits about us and were able to not cause any damage to either boat, but most importantly, our boat and home!  

After we sufficiently recovered from the Boca Bash, we put Nymeria back into travel mode and prepped to head further north and up the east coast toward Cape Canaveral and Titusville, FL for our next adventure! Skål!

Here’s to tall ships, Here’s to small ships, Here’s to all the ships at sea.

But the best ships are friendships and may they always be!

– Irish Toast