Fort Lauderdale to Cape Canaveral

We enjoyed a week of intermittent rain and sunshine in Fort Lauderdale and managed to have our refridgerator /freezeer repaired once and for all...too much freon, even after having some taken out in Key West. So now our freezer stays happily at 18 degrees vs the 34 degrees previously. We had a marvelous sail to Lake Worth, 10-12 knot winds and a friendly gulf stream and anchored in a large anchorace with about 50 other boats just south of the harbor entrance. The following day, we motorsailed to Fort Pierce and found a tiny anchorage next to an intercoastal bridge where we tucked in for the night. Here is a picture of Rick, planning the next sail, just after sunset.

On June 5th, after dodging two large thunderstorms at sea by using our Sirious Weather system, radar, and the chart plotter, and manuevering cleverly across the seas, we were feeling pretty cocky. The rain shower in the picture was our only rain. It was actually very pretty. Each heavy drop causes a tiny splash that gives the whole ocean the appearance of endless blue water with dry ice floating just above its surface. We lost our cockiness shortly after. Just as we entered the Cape Canaveral channel, an intense thunderstorm erupted, a sudden shift and burst of wind, lighting and thunder everywhere and rain so intense our only option in a strange channel was to stay, almost motionless within sight of the one channel marker we could still see. Just as the rain eased and we could make out the dim shadow of the shoreline again, we received a radio message asking all vessels in the channel to contact the cruising ship "Monarch of the Sea" which was leaving the dock to sail through the channel.....we did make it past the ship and to safety, but the chief engineer (Rick) had to spend some time trouble shooting some of our electronics, which seemed to have reacted poorly to all the lightning discharges nearby.