12/28/14
Lake Worth FL, ICW
Position: 26 44.878N, 080 02.643W
Posted by Bill

For our old neighbors…here is an interesting story that I forgot to write about yesterday. When we anchored in Peck Lake, we were next to a smaller McGregor sailboat that had a local guy who was staying there for the weekend. He saw the hailing port on the stern of Island Bound (which reads Columbus, Ohio), and he yells over “What part of Columbus are you from?”. After we replied that it was Powell, he says “My brother lives in Powell…do you know Michael Marchiondo (sp)?” We are like “OMG yes…he lived in our neighborhood!” Blew me away!

After the ICW boat traffic died last night, Peck Lake was delightful. It was peaceful and all you could hear was the sound of the ocean. We almost opted to stay another day and enjoy the beach, but we wanted to keep getting south while we had good weather. After we got past the Lake Peck area, the ICW started to change to row after row of mega homes and larger boats.






These were just a sampling. We continue to be amazed at how many people have that much money.

We also started to see more places that you could tie up to and eat and drink. If we weren’t in such a hurry….

Then there was this cool lighthouse, but I can’t remember where it was exactly. Check out the Christmas decorations on it.

Once again, the boat traffic was horrific, and it got even worse when we got in to Lake Worth. More boats, and more boats going fast and throwing a large wake. It was making me crazy. Lake Erie is bad like that on the weekends, but never as bad as the last couple days on the ICW. Today we had to deal with 7 lift bridges. We timed them pretty well except for one, but it is not fun dealing with trying to control your boat in wind and tide while waiting for the openings…especially with all of the other boats.

As we got close to the ocean inlet we rounded an island called Peanut Island. There were dozens of boats anchored around it and lots of people in the water drinking and having a good time. Lots of kayaks and paddle boards too, many of them in the middle of the channel. So picture dozens of drunk obstacles and dozens of boats zooming around with no regard for anyone else on the water, and throw in the fact that if you go outside of the narrow channel you will run aground. Not at fun day of passage.

We anchored south of the ocean inlet in Lake Worth, with Palm Beach east of us and West Palm Beach west of us. Here is what it looks like:

We will hang out here until the weather allows us to go “outside” to Fort Lauderdale, which is probably Tuesday based on the current forecast. Going “outside” means transiting via the ocean versus the ICW. From Lake Worth to Fort Lauderdale, there are 21 bridges that require us to wait for their lift schedule, and there is a section called the Canyon that is concrete on both sides of the ICW. Apparently, the boat wakes from the power boats just bounce from side to side, creating a nasty condition for us slow boats. No thank you!!

12/29/14
Lake Worth FL, ICW
Posted by Bill

The wind picked up today from out of the south, and it created a nasty chop on Lake Worth. It wasn’t enough that it bothered us on Island Bound, but when the tide opposed the wind, it was pretty rough for the dinghy. We weren’t deterred, and jumped in and motored directly into the chop and weather for about 2 miles to West Palm Beach. It was a slow, wet ride, but we made it. West Palm has some nice floating docks that are owned by the city and they are free. You just can’t dock later than midnight…no problem for us. We went ashore and walked around.

Here is our first view of West Palm Beach:

They had cool Christmas sand sculptures instead of the traditional decorations…very cool!


Right next to where we landed the dinghy is the Palm Cove Marina which easily had over 50 very large yachts. It was an impressive marina and the boats there were even more so. It made our 42 foot sailboat look like a dinghy!


Again…where does all the money come from? We saw many large yachts with Cayman Island flags and figured that documenting the vessel as a Cayman Islands home port was a way to shelter assets.

We walked around downtown, had a slice of pizza and then walked across the bridge to Palm Beach. This is the road coming in to Palm Beach:

We walked down to the beach and around town a bit. Palm Beach is very nice. It was amazing to see that almost every building on the main road onto the island was a bank or financial management firm.

Back in West Palm, we hit happy hour and then had dinner. When we started back to the boat we had the tide and wind in the same direction so it was a lot calmer and we got the dinghy up on plane, making a smoother and faster ride home.

The forecast looks great for an ocean passage to Ft Lauderdale tomorrow, so that is the plan. We will try to find a slip somewhere so I can troubleshoot the latest issue related to boat systems. We have 3 batteries that compose a “house” bank that supplies power to everything except starting the engine. Then we have 1 battery that is the starting battery. The 2 banks are isolated so you don’t deplete the starting battery, and then our charging system will charge both banks as it sees the necessity. Each battery has a rated capacity of 105 amp hours, so the house bank is 315 amp hours. We use around 80 amp hours between dusk and dawn and then run the engine for an hour in the morning and the generator to top everything off in the afternoon. I try not to deplete the house bank below 75% to maintain the best battery life…50% is the absolute max that you should deplete. When I got up and made coffee this morning, the refrigerator was surging on for a few seconds and then dropping for a few seconds, and just kept repeating the cycle…not good! After reading up on it, it does that when the battery voltage is too low to run the refrigerator. We had only used about 70 amp hours so I am not sure what caused the voltage to drop in the house bank. I’ll need shore power to figure that one out.

12/26/14
Vero Beach FL, ICW
Posted by Bill

I forgot to mention in my last post that we saw a Manatee for the first time.

We were at the dinghy dock getting ready to go back to the boat and we saw this thing floating by that looked like a radio beacon or something.

At first I thought it was a lost EPIRB (read an earlier post if you don’t know what that is…search people). Strange, but it was moving against the wind and current, so we got in the dinghy and tried to get closer. It was then that we could see that it was a Manatee with a radio beacon tag. It swam around the lagoon by the dinghy dock all day and then finally we saw it moving back toward the ICW in a later trip ashore. Pretty cool.

12/24/14
Vero Beach FL
Posted by Bill and Tricia

This has been a very strange Christmas for us as we broke all of our traditions of so many years. It is also a time that always involved family, and the fact that we are missing that makes us sad. On the positive side, it was 87 degrees and mostly sunny here today. We took a walk on the beach and went to a local seafood market and bought fresh shrimp and hogfish (man, do I love fresh hogfish) for dinner tonight. It is green and bright. We are expecting a cold day tomorrow as a front in moving in tonight…the high tomorrow will get all the way down into the 70s. Tomorrow is a pot luck that most of the cruisers are attending, so we will go to that and then have a nice Christmas dinner on the boat.

So to all of our friends, family and blog followers…have a Merry Christmas!!!

12/23/14
Vero Beach FL, ICW
Posted by Bill

Yesterday we met a young lady on the bus that is on an Island Packet sailboat like ours, named Simple Life. Different model, but for the most part the same. Being an Island Packet owner helps make a connection right away with other owners. Some say it is a cult, but it is just a common bond that sparks new relationships. After exchanging contact information, Joe and Michele invited us over for “sundowners” on their boat. This is the first invitation we have received since we left our old home port on Lake Erie. For those who don’t know, “sundowners” is a common term to enjoy the sunset while enjoying cocktails and Hors d’Oeuvres, whether by yourself or with others. It is a common cruiser practice, but we haven’t met anyone yet who invited us and we were not sure of the correct protocol for initiating it.

Proper protocol also suggests that you bring your own cocktails and an appetizer or Hors d’Oeuvre, with your own glasses and ice. We get that, because it is so much more difficult to prepare food, wash dishes and make ice on a boat, that you don’t want to add a burden to your gracious host. We went prepared and spent a few hours getting to know them. We REALLY enjoyed it. They have been cruising for several years and we learned a lot from our conversations, as well as laughing about the challenges we all face in this this lifestyle. We hope to have many more sundowners with Joe and Michele.

This morning we got on shore early to catch the bus to the grocery and liquor store. Yesterday’s experience in the grocery store was crazy…Christmas rush and all, and we cut it short to spare our sanity. Today we kicked ass by getting up early and finishing our shopping. Then we came back to the boat and waited for the pump out boat.

The pump out boat comes to your boat and pumps out your holding tank. Normally you have to do this at the fuel dock. We signed up as the boat only comes on Tuesday and Thursday, and Thursday being Christmas Day, they are not operating. The pump out boat starts at 1:00 PM in the south mooring field and works it’s way north. They don’t specify a time and if you are not at your boat, you get skipped. We needed a pump out so we were at the boat all afternoon. It came at the last minute before leaving for our get together with Joe and Michele, but we are waste free.

This year we are planning to attend the Christmas cruisers potluck here at the marina, which will be fun, but we are missing the normal get togethers that we traditionally had each year with friends and family. It is very different.

12/20/14
Vero Beach FL, Vero Beach Municipal Marina, ICW
Position: 27 39.686N, 80 22.319W
Posted by Bill

The weather forecast showed rain and storms in northern Florida this weekend, but further south was going to be ok until Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, so we have been driving hard to get south of the weather trough. We made it. Yesterday was in the 70s with lows in the low 60s and it was sunny. Today was in the 80s and sunny. We were actually hot for the first time in awhile, definitely shorts and T-shirts. To us, this is the holy grail. When people we met along the way asked us where we were headed we told them, somewhere warm.

We made to Vero Beach. They have a great mooring field in an area that caters to cruisers. The cruising community calls it “Velcro Beach” because it is so convenient to the beach, marine stores, grocery stores, etc… The weather is supposed to be the same from here to Miami through Christmas so we figured this was a good place to spend the holidays.

We got up at sunrise today to get an early start.

The first 3/4s of the 52 mile trip was pretty boring again, except that it was the weekend. The weekend on the ICW brings out the power boaters and lots of wake and boat traffic. One stretch of the ICW was almost as bad as Lake Erie on a weekend! Then we started seeing more and more really nice houses:


And more derelict boats:

And then this chick on … I don’t know what to call this. Some kind of water jet shoes. She was doing flips and everything. Pretty amazing.

We arrived at the mooring field and I was exhausted from the last 10 days of passage. Here is our view from the mooring.

We also caught up to our old/new friends from Paperbird. It was good to see them again. They are also spending Christmas here. Tomorrow we will check out the area and maybe spend some time at the beach. It is only a 20 minute walk.

12/19/14
Cocoa Beach FL – ICW
Position: 28 20.925N, 80 43.152W
Posted by Bill

Well, yesterday I neglected to post a few pictures that I took with my phone, so here is an update:

In Daytona, we took a walk to the beach. This was on the south side of Daytona, much prettier than I remember the main drag being. You can’t drive on this part of the beach either.

Along the way we saw Frosty the Snowman-a-tee…lol

I love it when people have a warped sense of humor!

Today we departed our marina around 7:20 and followed a route through the Ponce de Leon inlet that the marina guys instructed me on. Based on the experience we had coming in to the marina the day before, I should have known that they aren’t the best at giving instructions, but I guess I am a slow learner. First, this inlet is known as a major shoal area and the published nautical charts are nowhere near accurate. The depths change daily and everything you read says to get “local knowledge”. Typically you get this from the marine towing companies or local marinas, so I trusted our guy. We set out as he instructed and within 20 minutes we ran hard aground, lurching to a halt. Fortunately it is all sand and all I needed to do was put it in reverse and move further away from the area they told me to avoid. They said “stay 150 feet off of the area that is marked by shoal buoys”, when in fact you needed to be more like 200 to 300 feet. Bad start to the day, but no one got hurt, so cool.

We had a long day, doing 51 nautical miles, one of our longest days without an overnight passage. This passage was pretty boring, with the most exciting stuff looking like this:

But we did have this lighthouse at the southern tip of Daytona:

And we saw the Cape Canaveral NASA launch site in the distance:

We saw lots of dolphins and I got a video on my phone of them by the boat, which I will post as soon as I can get it off of my phone. Plus, look at all of the birds….lots of poop….lots of poop.
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We are also seeing more and more derelict boats that have been abandoned or that are wrecked, and no one seems to try to clean them up.

Here is where we anchored in Cocoa Beach.

We took the dinghy ashore and checked out the town and the Cocoa Village area, which was pretty cool if you want to buy a bunch of stuff. They had an old hardware store that had everything you could imagine in it. I told the workers that I was glad I didn’t have to inventory this place…OMG!

Then we took the dinghy across the river to a place called Ms. Apples Crab Shack. You pick out what you want from a varied selection of fresh seafood and shellfish, and they will cook it for you, and you can eat it outside on the picnic tables. We chose lobsters…they were good!

Now we are planning where to hang for Christmas. It is looking like it might be Vero Beach. We should arrive tomorrow and will check it out before we commit. There is a weather front coming the day before Christmas Eve and running through Christmas Day, so we will want to be in a marina for that. Good news is…we are far enough south that the highs are consistently in the 70s and the lows are in the 60s. I ain’t gonna bitch about that! Vero is supposed to be a great place to hold up for a few days and we are weary from the long days we have had since we left Beaufort SC. We have been pushing hard, so we will enjoy a few days in one place.

By the way…alternator update…performing flawlessly for weeks. I don’t get it.

In closing…heard a good saying the other day in St Augustine. “5 knots is slow for a boat, but it is pretty fast for a house”. We loved it!