5/2/15
Cocoa FL, ICW
Position: 28 20.957N, 080 43.161W
Posted by Bill

Yesterday we took the bus and got groceries and liquor, and as usual, it took most of the day. Then we jumped in the dinghy and hit happy hours at Mr Manatees and Riverview Cafe. It is good to get fresh shrimp again. We were surprised that they didn’t have that in the Bahamas. Here we all are rafted in Vero (photo courtesy of Sofia Jeanne):

We left at 7:15 this morning and stopped at Cocoa…long day! We traversed the Indian River and this part of it is wide, leaving us exposed to the NE winds that were not forecasted to be this strong…go figure! It was also a weekend on the Florida ICW, which you all know is a lovely experience…not! it wasn’t as bad as south Florida, but there were several Ass Captain awards being handed out as large power boats came by us at full speed. Everyone was tired and we have all been here before, so we didn’t even go to shore. Tomorrow we head up to Ponce Inlet and will make our way to Saint Augustine from there. Most of the next couple of weeks will be long day trips to re-trace our steps back north. If we experience something new I will elaborate and post more pictures, otherwise you can check out the blog entries from last year as we made our way south.

Here is the anchorage at Cocoa:

4/30/15
Vero Beach FL
Position: 27 39.554N, 080 22.278W
Posted by Bill

We waited out another day of weather at Fort Pierce City Marina as the weather the last 4 days has been very unsettled. Good thing we left Lake Worth because we heard that there were 60-70 MPH winds in the storms that went through a couple of days ago. We were 50 some miles north and had a decent amount of rain and some thunder and lightning, but nothing even close to that. The next week is looking really nice weather wise.

Today we pushed off the dock in Fort Pierce and motored up to Vero Beach. We stayed here for several days and spent Christmas here on the way down last year, and were looking forward to coming back. It was a short 10 mile hop up the ICW and the boat traffic was very light, thank goodness. We took a mooring ball, and Byrd Ketcher and Sofia Jeanne rafted off on either side of us. We dinghied over to Riverview Cafe and took advantage of their excellent happy hour, the best value we have seen in 5 months. There is a free bus that will take you to a shopping area with Fresh Market, Publix, TJ Max, West Marine, liquor store and a great dive shop. Tomorrow we will go get some groceries and liquor and maybe hit the beach. It is really chilly here and I actually wore a sweatshirt and long pants! The lows at night are getting down in to the 60s…amazing how my blood has thinned.

4/29/15
Fort Pierce, FL
Posted by Bill

It rained and stormed all day yesterday. I am glad we decided to stay in the marina here until the weather improves. I got the blog caught up in the morning and we were looking to go out for lunch somewhere. The friends we are traveling with texted us and we headed out in the rain.

So what do you do when it rains all day…a pub crawl, of course! There are 2 tiki bars at the marina, and several other bars/restaurants within a few blocks, so we hit all of the ones that were open. We finished up at 2nd Street Bistro for Taco Tuesday and headed back to the boat. A good time was had by all!

4/27/15
Fort Pierce FL, ICW
Position: 27 27.087N, 080 19.249W
Posted by Bill

Today we got the anchor up without incident (and received applause from our friends) and motored to Fort Pierce City Marina.

Our friends have been here but we have not, so we wanted to check it out. It has been recently renovated with floating docks (a real treat), solid shore power, and great WIFI (also a real treat). It is supposed to rain all day tomorrow so we wanted to have the ability to get off the boat without having to use the dinghy. I think we will stay another day! We walked into town and had all you can eat fish and chips at 2nd Street Bistro, and received the best service we have had in a long, long, time. Food was good too, and so was the price…another contrast from the Bahamas (expensive)!

It was hot and humid so I turned on the air conditioners…we have 2 on the boat…only one worked. Bummer. After working on it for some time, I came to the end of my ability to trouble shoot it, so rigged some fans to try to use just the smaller working one. After a few hours, it finally cooled off in the boat. I’ll have to get some help when we get to Southport.

Island Bound resting at the dock:

4/26/15
Hobe Sound, Jupiter FL
Position: 27 00.312N, 080 05.741W
Posted by Bill

Our plan is to work our way north, arriving at Southport, NC the 3rd week in May. We are renting a house with the kids and grandkids at Kure Beach, NC, the first week in June so we need to be there with a week to spare. Other than that, we don’t have an agenda. As always, our life is determined by the weather, and we are expecting storms the next several days and big winds (over 30 knots) Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. We want to stop at Fort Pierce and Vero Beach on the way up, but that is over 50 miles, and we are too worn out to do that in one day at this point. We decided to move about 15 miles up to the Sand Bar Anchorage in Hobe Sound at Jupiter Florida. It is a cool anchorage and very crowded today, but most of the people went home as the weekend wound down.

First things first…we started to pull the anchor up this morning and had some issues. We have an anchor windlass – an electric winch that deploys or retrieves anchor chain or rope. It makes anchoring much easier! I start bringing in the chain and hosing it down with the wash down pump (which pumps sea water through a hose to clean the chain and anchor). In some anchorages, mud and crud sticks to the chain and anchor, and you have to clean it off so that it doesn’t get into the anchor locker. I get the to point where the anchor should be coming off of the sea bed and it won’t budge. It was really windy, so I figured we had a deeply buried anchor, so we go to plan B. Plan B is cleating the chain off with a chain hook and snubber, and using the boats engine to pull the anchor out. We go all the way to half throttle and no budging! I was almost ready to dive into the murky water, but keep trying with both windlass and engine, and after about an hour we can see the anchor just below the water. We had hooked some sort of antenna that was attached to a cable and rope, that was attached to something under water.

I raised and lowered the anchor while Tricia used the boat hook to free the damned thing, and after an hour we finally were free!

Along the way we saw the floating version of the “taco stand”:

Love that!

Then we passed Tiger Wood’s’ house, which you couldn’t really see, but one of his other boats was there:

We anchored, made some drinks and swam off the boat…it was hot again today!

Then we had fresh Mahi Mahi tacos, and feasted like kings!! We drank a lot too…lol!

3/10/15
Marathon FL
Posted by Bill

We have been here around 7 weeks and we have gotten very comfortable. The Keys are very laid back and we can ride our bikes or walk to anything we really need, avoiding any interaction with “the Real World”. Let me tell you…it is very hard to motivate ourselves to get moving. We have tried several times to leave to get to the Bahamas, but the weather has closed the window to make the move each time. The latest weather forecast shows this up coming weekend as a possible weather window to move back up to Miami, and several days later a window is open to cross to the Bahamas. We have figured that as long as we can make the Bahamas by the first of April, it is worth the effort to cross over. The plan includes a jump from just south of Miami (Biscayne Bay) to Bimini in the Bahamas, a little over 40 nautical miles, and easily doable in daylight. We need to get to landfall in Bimini by afternoon to navigate the reefs and channel entrance. We need a 2 day window to get to Key Biscayne, so we will jump there at first opportunity and wait for a window to cross to Bimini. The later in the season, the better the weather for making passage. This year has been a strange year by all accounts, with high winds and north winds for extended periods of time. To cross to Bimini we want winds under 15 knots, and no northern component of wind direction. Winds with any northern component will oppose the Gulf Stream and the 2-3 knot current that moves north, and will create a very nasty sea state that we don’t want to deal with. So we wait…..

In the mean time we work on the boat, and enjoy the paradise that Marathon and the Keys have to offer. After provisioning (buying everything we need to sustain life aboard for several months in the Bahamas), the boat was loaded with all kinds of crap and very disorganized. Thanks to Tricia, she figured out where to put everything in an organized fashion, and the boat is looking like a home again.

We also had another manatee visit today. This one was a small one and had a large chunk of its tail missing. It is so sad to see these animals damaged. They are very tame and love to come and get a drink of fresh water (even though it is illegal to give it to them. This one was pretty persistent about getting a drink and hung around for around 20 minutes. This is the 2nd visit in a week from a manatee.

While waiting, we have been working on stowing all provisions, getting the teak ready to paint, putting in the solar system (part of which we paid for and part of which we did ourselves), and generally getting ready to make passage again. This afternoon, we took a little break and went to The Sunset Grill for some happy hour food and rum. It was a great break and a beautiful view as always….

I have also been spending a few hours each morning to work on our taxes…not a fun task at all, however, I have never had this view as I have done the taxes, so I won’t complain!

3/5/15
Marathon FL
Posted by Bill

Happy birthday to our eldest grandson, Bradley! We wish we could be there to celebrate with you. Glad we got to FaceTime at least. We can’t wait to see you all in May.

The solar installation guy, Dave, came today and we got the system wired up. We got the first of 3 panels delivered and hooked it up late in the day, and viola…turned dwindling sunlight into electricity. When we aimed the panel at the sun directly, we were getting 7 to 8 amps, and 1 to 2 amps when it was laying flat…and this was at 5:45 PM…very impressive. I’ll dedicate a post to the installation with pics so other boaters can see in more detail. The other 2 panels are on back order so it will be a few weeks before they arrive. Tricia is going to sew the bimini with velcro flaps to hold the panels down.

Once again, the window we had to make the trip to Key Biscayne and then cross to the Bahamas has been slammed shut. If we had been ready to go, we might have been able to get to Key Biscayne, but the winds pick up to 20 to 30 knots early next week, and why would we subject ourselves to that ass kicking when we can stay here in Marathon! Not to piss anyone off up north, but the weather here has been incredible the last week and a half. Wind out of the east, highs in the low 80s, lows in the mid 70s, and clear skies. The last couple of days have been really hot, and I have been getting into the water to clean the underside of the boat to cool off. It is really hard to motivate ourselves to leave. We have a couple of trips to the grocery and Home Depot to finish provisioning and we give the car back to Shelly tomorrow, so we will get ready to go and leave when the weather allows a safe and comfortable passage.

Here is a sunset pic. We haven’t posted many since we got to Marathon because our at our marina, the sun sets behind land and the pictures have not been as good as we are used to. In a week, the sun will begin setting over the water again and we can step up the pictures (if we are still here).

3/3/15 Marathon FL Posted by Bill On Sunday, our friend Shelley that lives in Key West came and picked us up, drove us back to Key West, and we spent an afternoon at the beach at Fort Zachary Taylor. It was a really nice beach and a wonderful day to chill out there. Then Shelley gave us her car for the week…wow, an amazing act of kindness! On Monday we were supposed to have a solar powered system installed to keep our batteries charged and to reduce battery consumption during the day. As it turned out, the installer had a different sense of reality than the person who put the quote together, and we had to regroup. We went with a different type of panel (more to come later on that) and agreed to try again on Wednesday. We also noticed that a weather window was opening to make the crossing to the Bahamas over the coming weekend, so we started to get our act together and see if we could make the window. To make the window we needed to get the solar installed, put some diesel fuel in the big boat, buy some gas for the dinghy and generator, buy (provision) enough food and liquor to sustain us for 2-3 months, fill the water tanks, clean the bottom of the boat, return the car to Shelly, and get everything ready for passage. When you have sat in one place for 6 weeks like we have, it is hard to get momentum to achieve such a goal, but we had the car and it provided us a perfect opportunity. Today, we set out early in the morning for Miami, venturing into what we call the “Real World”. This is only the second time since we started cruising that we went into the “Real World”, and the first time was a shocker. The second time was even worse…. We started by taking the batteries back to Walmart. If you recall from previous posts, our new batteries died in 4 months, and I have spent far too many hours trying to get our money back, setting the stage for the actual visit to a Walmart store. I was fully expecting to choke the life out of some poor innocent clerk when they told me that the batteries were fine. I also expected the charging and testing of said batteries to take 4-6 hours of my day. We walked in, took the batteries to the automotive section, told the clerk we wanted our money back and that we had talked to the store manager. She promptly hailed an assistant manager to approve the transaction, and we got a full refund…in less than 30 minutes…no testing, no charging, no choking. Awesome!!!! We then loaded up the cart with crap we needed to provision the boat, went to lunch, went to Costco, went to a liquor store, went to a dive shop, and then drove home. The “Real World” was full of traffic, crazy drivers, crazy people…most speaking no english, packed stores, and total stress. I was so glad to get back to the Keys and park the car…double martini pronto. We decided (for the second time) that we don’t like the “Real World” and don’t want to go back there. However, we did get most of our supplies and provisions, and at a better price than we can in the Keys. Thanks again Shelley…you really helped us out. On Monday, I got into the water and used a hookah rig that we borrowed from our friends Matt and Shirley on Sofia Jeanne. The hookah is a 50 foot long tube attached at one end to a scuba regulator (that you breathe with) and the other end attached to a compressor or scuba tank. It works just like scuba diving but you leave the air source on shore. It allowed me to stay under and clean the bottom of the boat. Now the rush is on to get all of the other work done so we can leave.

2/28/15
Marathon FL
Posted by Bill

Today was a big day. First, it was day 2 of the national pig day celebration…something Tricia was really excited about, given her love for pigs. It included pig races which we bet on. She picked the names for the 3 races we bet on, picking Shakin’ Bacon, Katie Piggy Perry and Lindsay Lowham. We won 2 out of three and it was a hoot.

Before we left for the pig races we saw a manatee swimming next to some of the boats in the marina, and when we got back it was swimming by our boat…

…and by our neighboring boat of friends Bob and Cat. It hung around for close to an hour and was very tame. It loved having it’s belly rubbed:

It was very cool to interact with this manatee. Cat got into the water and the manatee was pretty spooked and swam away. We noticed scars on it’s back and chunks out of the tail, indications that it had some run-ins with boats…a real bummer to see:

A really cool day!