More exciting

Forgot to mention that yesterday we encountered probably the second worst wake we have ever experienced.  It toppled our bicycles over again, along with both of the miniature Christmas trees we put up, and Santa was found face down on the couch.  Linda put up the Christmas decorations while in Vero Beach thinking that we would just be on the ICW so everything should be fine.  Well the Christmas trees have been laying over more than they have been up, so that theory didn't work out too well.
We pulled anchor up out of Hell Gate earlier than we really planned, but decided to just go ahead and get this show going at seven o'clock again.  A few hours into the trip we could see Flagler Memorial Bridge being raised up ahead and debated trying to speed up to catch that lift, or just wait another half hour for the next scheduled opening.  Unfortunately we opted to continue at our slow pace.  Unbeknown to us, the bridge was under construction, therefore on a reduced opening schedule, only once an hour.  So at 10:30 a.m. we anchored north of the bridge to wait for the 11:15 a.m. opening.  Good thing we got an early start.  There ended up being another bridge with the same construction reduced schedule, but thankfully we did not need that one open.

This is where the area homes are enormous.  This particular one had
a boom truck in the back yard putting up the holiday decorations.

Now obviously sailboats need all of them opened, so all day long we heard "Silver Lining" calling bridges ahead of us.  We were laughing at the drunken sounding Captain.  We eventually caught up to them at a point where this bridge was opening and there was another one three miles ahead.  "Silver Lining" thought he was talking to the bridge that we were about to go through on the VHF radio, but was hailing the wrong bridge name three miles up ahead, causing a bit of confusion.  "Silver Lining" apologized for the confusion stating that he did not have a chart for this water he was on, therefore did not know the names of all of these bridges.  Well, the current bridge tender gave him the what-for, telling him he was responsible as a captain of that vessel to know where he was and that he should have a guide book.  We definitely agreed and had already mentioned how scary it was that we are on the same water with these idiots.
When we got to the next bridge though, this same sailboat that did not have a name on the boat, started calling itself "Event Horizon".  We debated telling the bridge tender that all of the sudden now that he got yelled at by the previous bridge tender he changed the vessel name, but decided to just stay out of it.  We also thought, well maybe in his drunken slur, we just misunderstood it all day long.
This last bridge we had to get opened and went through together was at Delray Beach.  There was one more bascule bridge ahead, but we did not need it opened.  Just after that we anchored in Pelican Harbor, about four miles south of town.  We took our time getting the dinghy down to head for the Mellow Mushroom.  It was almost an hour later when we were back on the ICW with the dinghy when we crossed paths with this same sailboat.  We laughed and said maybe they stopped in Delray Beach to buy a guide book.
We enjoyed a pizza and part of the Buffalo Bills football game at Ford Stadium in Detroit while at Mellow Mushroom.  Ray went back to the dinghy once to make sure it was still okay since this is where it got swamped in the spring.