Our most recent stop finds us in the Las Olas Marina – one of 3 official Fort Lauderdale city marinas. This marina is right in the middle of the action: we’re surrounded by superyachts, multimillion dollar channel homes, and a short dinghy ride to the famous Fort Lauderdale Beach.
This marina has mooring balls – floating balls connected by a huge rope or chain to a concrete block at the bottom of the river/lake with which we hook the boat. You can hook yourself on this ball for a fraction of the price of a slip in the marina. So naturally, Scott loves this concept. You can still enjoy the amenities of the marina, but you need to use your dinghy to get to them (e.g., WiFi hotspot, garbage disposal, laundry, hot shower and a captains’ lounge with TV, if you so choose).
The other cool feature of this particular mooring field is that it is next to one of the busiest draw bridges in the city – the Las Olas Bridge. On busy days (weekends usually), the bridge alarm sounds and the draw bridge lifts every ½ hour to allow any vessel that is taller than 25 feet to pass through. So, you can imagine the kind of boat show we’ve been getting a mere 30 feet away.
In addition to the endless stream of magnificent boats, we also caught the following interesting sights. Probably the coolest thing was being serenaded by bagpipes in the afternoons! The Celtic Dreams Pipes and Drums were stationed on the other side of the bridge. Yes, I know Brad, more of that can be arranged.
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Las Olas Bridge during a quiet spell |
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| Lovely vista on the other side of the bridge |
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| We saw this group paddling on the surf board; what's more impressive is that one of the young men was texting before he resumed paddling again. That's multi-tasking Florida-Style |
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I call this one "go/no-go" - boat got half-way through before backing up and asking for a bridge opening. You can just see that the antennas will not clear easily |
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We heard before we saw this bag-piper on the other side of the bridge |
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| Miami Beach Pointe Park looking over to Miami |
Bagpipes.... BAGPIPES... Did someone say Bagpipes??? Hmmmm.... I hear the sunny beaches callin me n mee peeps n kilt. Gotta love it. There's nothin more sweet over the water... right SUE?
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