Good things? come to those who wait.....

We have been in North Palm Beach waiting for the weather to turn. After 3 days of North winds a high pressure stalled over the coast bring warm breezy weather with winds from the east about 15K . These have been going on for 5 days. The usual weather calls for these to move clockwise so to the SE, then S then W and finally N. Any thing with S is good to cross Better if winds are not strong . This is of course what we read and hear never having crossed the Gulf Stream before. So we wait and wait and wait. Palm Beach is very nice, great anchorage and a state park not too far away. This park has a cool boardwalk across the mangroves and estuary to the ocean beach. Big surf while we were there. All supplies are close to the dingy landing which is just a strip of sand near highway A1A. We went in often as there is always something needed if you think about it. Supposedly beer is very expensive in the Bahamas so we definately needed that . Plus we kept using up supplies while we waited. One evening as we took the dinghy ashore and started to tie up, we met a police officer. I thought he was a park ranger but he disabused me of that notion quickly. As Tom was trying to get the engine to stay up, he told me when Tom was done he would just do a quick safe boating inspection. I said no thankyou but he said "mam this is not optional". Then he looked for life jackets, whistle, anchor , lights - it was evening- registration etc. of course we had none of the above. After the first couple of requests, he said so you pretty much don;t have any of the reuired items do you? Then he checked with Massachusetts registry for the dinghy and got the message that the fax was difficult to read but it looked like the boat registered was 110 feet long! We discussed that for a while. He gave us a warning for everything except the lifejackets and a 55$ ticket for the lifejackets. He thought he had been very generous. He was a very nice young man but ... So now we can either show up at court to contest this- we could be still waiting for a weather window- pay the fine or have a summons issued for us. We made another dinghy trip with all equipment and paid the fine. A ticket even without a car. I hope it doesn't increase our insurance rates! The wind is still from the east!