12/27/14
Peck Lake FL, ICW
Position: 27 39.459N, 80 22.216W
Posted by Bill

We got up fairly early today and filled our water tanks and fuel tanks, and pumped out the holding tank again…once again waste free! Then we motored down the ICW towards Stuart FL. Our original destination was a place called Manatee Pocket, near Port Salerno FL. We liked that destination because it had some really good restaurant reviews, and lots of places you could dinghy to with Tiki Bars. As we got close, the boat traffic on the ICW really picked up. There were dozens and dozens of power boats zooming at top speed all over the channel (which isn’t that wide) and it made for a hectic day with many bumps and rolls from the boat wakes. As we got into Manatee Pocket, the boat traffic increased and the water depths decreased. We got to the anchorage we targeted and it was crowded with too many boats, and the water depth was making us nervous. I have read that many cruisers don’t travel on the ICW in Florida on the weekends because the boat traffic is just too insane, and now I get it! We may opt for that as well in the future.

Here is what the ICW looked like most of the way:

And then there was this billboard…hope for Island Bound if we ever run out of money…lol!

Then we caught up to our new friends that we met in Vero Beach on Simple Life:


And of course, we saw lots of dolphins again:

We conjured up Simple Life on the marine radio to get their recommendation on an alternative anchorage since Manatee Pocket didn’t work out. They were going to a place south of there called Peck Lake. There is a thin strip of land between the anchorage and a beautiful beach on the Atlantic Ocean. We stopped in and dropped the hook. We didn’t launch the dinghy to go to the beach, but we can hear the waves crashing on the shore from our boat. It ended up that our friends on Paperbird were here. They left yesterday and we caught up to them yet again. Honestly…we are not stalking them.

I put our outdoor grill together. We bought it before we left but have never used it thus far. We didn’t use it today either but at least it is ready to go!

Tomorrow we will head to Lake Worth/West Palm Beach.