A couple months ago Wanderbird was struck on the New River. It’s a busy river; at least one captain on Waterway Guides suggested it could be ‘The Most Challenging Waterway on the East Coast‘.
After a long, hard refit it’s been painful to haul out again to repair the damage. To keep busy I completed my Part 107 FAA license to fly the drone and started putting together a guide for the New River from the Stranahan River to Safe Harbor Lauderdale Marine Center. I found a Google map and modified that to show each of the bridges and plan to add the various radio call markers.
While we were docked downtown I started flying the drone to watch the large yachts move up and down the river. One of these took off on YouTube and resulted in over 130,000 views, which was fun.
Inspired by this growing and attentive audience, I spent more time and energy on subsequent videos and was feeling proud to create a story from something as mundane as boat traffic. This video garnered a mere 1,500 views and was far more interesting than than the earlier one.. so the algorithm continues to be a mystery!
Now I have a pretty good collection of Yacht traffic on the New River. Eventually we’ll be back on the river and hopefully I’ll get the next episode of the Wanderbird Chronicles up – where we lose the starboard anchor in a storm off the Jumento Cays! In the meantime, here is my playlist of New River videos. Note the button in the upper right – opens a side bar with all the videos to choose from and if you like this kind of video, please do subscribe on YouTube and click the bell to be notified when I post new videos.