Dec. 5 - It's finally sunny and warm and we do a bunch of chores and then walk around town in the afternoon. Not a bad town but like most, all of it is the ICW facing main street, after which there isn’t much. There’s a humungous new library and playing field complex. A lot of money has been thrown at the downtown lately. There’s also a terrific art deco Post Office. Except for being much smaller, it really reminds us a lot like the Lexington Avenue Post Office in NYC. When we return to the boat both of us toddle off for a nap. This traveling really gets to you after a while. Tomorrow we head to Titusville, which is near Cape Canaveral and the Space Center.
Dec. 6 - We leave the Daytona marina at 8:00 a.m. and have an uneventful trip to Titusville, but the stress of staying where there’s enough water for us in the ICW increases incrementally over time. I’m so intent on a small view of the plotter to stay in good water as we approach the Haulover Canal that but for Kryss’s screaming at me (my eyes were on the plotter not the land that showed the canal entrance clearly) we would have run really hard aground. Kryss is doing more and more of the ICW operating of the boat and I think she’s better at it than I am in most instances. It’s a great relief not to have to do it for eight hours and to be comfortable when I’m not at the helm that we’re where we should be. I really don’t know how people make this trip on the inside year in and year out. On the outside, that would be another story. We pick up a mooring at Titusville and tuck in for the night.
Dec. 7 - We leave early for an anchorage in the Indian River far enough South to allow us to get to Fort Pierce the day after and the day goes smoothly and it’s not as stressful because there’s generally relatively deep water even outside of the ICW channel.
We wind up at out intended anchorage on the Indian River with lots of daylight and relax a bit. It’s an exposed anchorage but the wind predictions are very consistent and expected to be light. We also have a relatively short fetch from shore if the winds will be from the direction predicted.
Dec. 8 - Wind stays down at night but we wake up to squalls with wind and rain and delay our departure a little to try to let them pass. It’s gusting to 20 knots during the morning and I make a silly mistake when we’re re-entering the ICW from our anchorage. There’s a sailboat traveling South that is seeming to be making good headway, so I idle in behind him rather than cutting in front of him. Once I get behind him I see it’s a boat we’ve been behind before named El Lobo. It’s a smaller boat which doesn’t make good headway, particularly against head seas and wind and we have to dawdle behind it for many miles because I don’t trust that there’s adequate room in the channel to pass him safely. Not long after we start to follow El Lobo another boat named Acquila comes up on our stern and follow us for quite some distance at close range. I can’t speed up because of El Lobo so we just hold our ground and poke along. Finally this boat behind us indicates it wants to pass us, which doesn’t make much sense unless it’s going to pass El Lobo too, and it takes forever to overtake us, then promptly slows down in front of us. Acquila is not a large boat and doesn’t seem to have much more power than El Lobo. We have to follow behind, often at less than 5 knots while I fume at letting El Lobo go out in front and the foolishness and inconsiderateness of Acquila. This really goes on for far too long but the channel is narrow and there’s no water on either side if you go out of it. It’s really blustery, and even though it’s no problem for us, particularly in the ICW, it makes you pay even more attention than usual. Finally El Lobo turns off and shortly afterwards I find adequate room to pass Acquila and we’re back on our way at a decent clip. My planned anchorage in Fort Pierce is exposed to the South and the wind is whipping out of the Southeast and much more than predicted. Since I don’t really know how much protection we would have (we’d be safe but it would be rocking and no fun) we decide to pick up a mooring instead at Vero Beach. There would have been marina space in Fort Pierce but with the wind conditions and my bad experience at Brunswick Landing, I really don’t like that option.
Anyway, the mooring field in Vero beach is in a pretty location and totally protected, so it’s a good choice although if you’ve never done it before the entrance is intimidating. Access to the entrance channel doesn’t show on the plotter because it’s right along side the bridge and it’s covered by the bridge image on the plotter. Then, once we get in we can’t raise the marina on channel 16, although that’s the channel we were told earlier to contact them on. Another vessel finally tells us to try their working channel which is 66A and we get them and get our mooring assigned. Another intimidating operation. The channel into the mooring field is one boat wide and abuts the land so, so closely. Anyway, it’s got lots of water and we get to and pick our mooring with no problems. Mooring field is almost full and many vessels are rafted together. Cruising Guide says this is common here, but no raft for us. At least not today. We decide to stay two nights, launch the dinghy for the first time since the Chesapeake and walk to the ocean from the dinghy dock, which is a healthy walk. We meet a fellow who’s a part time delivery captain as we’re walking and he’s coming back to his house and we talk for a long time about the politics of Vero Beach and politics in general. He’s a liberal Democrat stuck amongst a lot of very conservative Republicans and he gives us an earful. When we get to the ocean there’s lots of wind but the seas are surprisingly mild, and coming from the East although the wind direction is decidedly Southeast. We get back to the boat at dusk and have a nice dinner as the wind has calmed down and the air is South Florida warm.
Dec. 9 - We get up leisurely for one of the few times and do some chores before we get into the dinghy for shore. We take the free
bus service into "historic Vero Beach", which is underwhelming at best. Anyway, now we know what it and the surrounding environs look like since the bus trip each way takes almost 45 minutes. They have an interesting system where all of these smaller buses from different routes all meet in a central location at the airport where passengers who may have been picked up on a bus running one route can catch one of the other buses going to where they really want to go. Anyway, the Vero Beach Museum of Art is within walking distance of the marina and we spend the afternoon there. There is a temporary exhibit of Cuban art, most of it borrowed from Cubans living in and around Miami and it’s very well done and very interesting as is a temporary photographic exhibit displayed in association with National Geographic Magazine. At one point there is an exceedingly lifelike stature of a seated Museum guard. I direct Kryss to the corner where he’s "sitting" but don’t tell her what she should be looking at and she walk right by him twice looking at art on the walls around him until she realizes he’s not a live person. Really well done. Weather is warm and sunny, just like it’s supposed to be in Florida. On the way back to the boat we see a large bird standing by a stream alongside a playing field which I think is a stork. It’s certainly not an egret or an ibis or heron or a flamingo. We only have our cell phones and we’re afraid it will take off if we get too close although it doesn’t seem to be fazed by our presence. Picture is attached, albeit, not a particularly good one.
Dec. 10 - get up extra early and leave our mooring by 7:00 to make the 60 miles to North Palm Beach. ICW is hair raising in spots as it has been all along and timing the trip to get to the 6 bridges that open on schedule is not easy, but we manage and we anchor in North Palm Beach, coincidentally right in front of Queequeg, the boat owned by Mike and Bev who we became friendly with in Brunswick Georgia and who took us to the supermarket, etc. Actually we keep meeting up with many boats that we pass along the way and who then pass us as the southward migration continues.
Dec. 11 - Well, today is D-Day. We have to negotiate 11 opening bridges, get to Boca near high tide, coordinate with my buddies who will help us at the dock with the lines, and most daunting of all, I have to back the boat into a slip for the first time. We have picked the perfect day for it. It’s sunny and the wind is light and I run the engine at substantially more rpm than I have been used to to get to the bridges on schedule for their openings and then miss two and have to wait forever with a following current-meaning it’s pushing me toward the bridge when all I want to do is stay in place and I’m afraid to maneouver too much because it will take me out of the channel. Picture of me is one of the few times this whole trip I’ve been at the helm in shirtsleeves and picture of decrepit house on barge is in Palm Beach channel. Anyway after much anxiety and not a little muttering, we get to Boca right on schedule, slow and easy does the trick when there’s no current and little wind, and we ease into the slip as though I’d been doing it all my life. My three helpers are great with the lines, and everyone who comes by ooooh’s and aaaaah’s about the boat. We’re home, after 1945 nautical miles, with us and the boat in one piece and to most everyone’s amazement, still talking to each other. Pix are of the boat in our slip in Boca. Most people seems surprised (maybe they really do know us) that we weren’t at each other’s throats by now, but the truth is that we actually got closer and more understanding of one another with the experience rather than the contrary, notwithstanding a few knock down drag out’s along the way. We eat and drink a late dinner at the Chickee Bar and fall into bed exhausted. First time sleeping on land in four and one half months.
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