We travelled north on the ICW today. It was a day of drawbridges, eighteen to be exact. It definitely takes more active driving. Most of the bridges have set schedules. They usually will open at half hour intervals if a boat is present. Some open on the hour and half hour marks while others open on the quarter and three quarter marks. Knowing the schedule helps make for a smoother ride. You calculate the distance to the next bridge, adjust speed up or down to arrive just–in–time. This way you don’t have to hold still in current and windy conditions for too long waiting for the span to go up. Once you get through a bridge, you start all over again for the next bridge.
We got some photos and borrowed some others from internet. We didn’t get a picture of our final bridge of the day, the Southern Boulevard Bridge in West Palm Beach. It has some interesting attributes. It is under construction so there is a huge crane occupying part of its channel. It is currently a temporary lift–bridge which means the center span gets lifted up and you go under. The lift can only go to 65 feet of clearance at low tide. It wasn’t low tide! This is also the bridge next to Mar–A–Lago and President Trump is coming in today. So, in addition to the hairy conditions squeaking under the span, we also got to have a nice chat with some very professional Coast Guard Officers in a zippy boat with a very big gun mounted up front. They explained that there was an exclusion zone around the bridge and that passing boats weren’t allowed to stop. They gave us a friendly escort to the edge of the zone then went back to escort another vessel. We didn’t think it would be wise to take a picture of them either.
No comments:
Post a Comment