Arriving West Palm Beach, Florida
Swiftwing
Tue 19 May 2009 11:01
 Our first view of the USA. The high-rise
hotels of West Palm Beach from 17 miles out.
 The Palm Beach Princess, a floating
casino which sails out twice a day.
 This yacht is at 'Cracker Boy Marina' and
is called Virgin Money. Her keel is on the hard giving her a draught of at least
twenty feet.
 This is the fuel station. There were
two types of petrol plus diesel available at the extortionate price of £1.80 per
gallon.
 Looking North up the Intra Coastal
Waterway. As far as I know these high rise buildings are all
hotels.
 Some of the mansions that we were
anchored in front of at West Palm Beach. There were dozens of these
multi-million dollar houses but at night there were no lights on, they are
holiday homes only used during the winter.The Kennedy's have the' Kennedy
Compound' here, bought in the thirties. There is also a museum to the Kennedys
which we hope to visit when we get back.
 On the opposite shore there was a
container port and every day ships like this came in through the narrow
entrance, past our anchorage and manoeuvred alongside better than I could park a
car. There was always so much going on that we found it really hard to sit in
the cockpit and read our books.
 Multi-million dollar mansions maybe but
this is their view, the huge container port of Riviera Beach.
 The Americans love big roads. This is the
road to the marina from Broadway. It's a duel carriageway and we never saw more
than one car on it at a time.
 In the words of the Beach Boys song:
"There will be no more fun fun fun fun fun when Daddy takes the 'T'Bird away".
This is an early sixties Ford Thunderbird which the Florida climate
has been very good to. The average American was driving something like this when
we were driving Ford Anglias and Morris Minors!
 Designed from the Space Craft school of
design. The tail lights are supposed to look like rockets with the required fins
above.
 Bev liked this one, a 1953 Chevy. It's
not painted brown that is a very light coating of rust. Note how the power boat
is stacked on the racks. By Monday morning these racks were all full again. The
yard has 375 alongside berths and 500 stacked berths. On Friday afternoon a fair
sized forklift was launching one every five minutes.
 The Americans think of it all. This is
the floating church.
 Another one of these fantastic houses
that people seem too busy to live in.
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