Working – working hard – at getting back to Little River, SC!!

Again, I apologize for the long pause in posting! This time it is actually because we have been busier working on our trip back than anything else. The weather has again been playing a major part in the trip planning and execution and because of the weather we have had extra route planning. I trust this will become clear as I update our travels – following.

We left Titusville after spending an extra day there because of a band of thunderstorms that was passing through northern Florida. Our next stop (Saturday 3/26) was Daytona, FL and this time, rather than anchor under the bridge (which was kind of a lousy place) we found that we could get into the Halifax River Yacht Club because of our membership in our home yacht club – Shennecossett – in Groton, CT. The Halifax River Yacht Club was founded in 1896 and say of themselves: “Our present clubhouse and docks still remain on their original site where they were first built over 100 years ago. We are the only yacht club on the eastern seacoast to have this distinction. Our club and organization is one of the few, if not the only, to be in continuous operation in the Halifax area since its inception." You can check out their web page which is pretty cool at http://www.hryc.com/. Everyone at this club was so friendly and they treated us as if we were royalty!

Next stop was Saint Augustine. We arrived and planned to stay there and extra day, in part, to hold for high winds as well as because the city is so cool! However, different from our trip down it we toured the city walking in shorts and t-shirts rather than pants and sweatshirts like on our way down about two months earlier.

We left Saint Augustine making our way to just beyond the St Johns river in Jacksonville to our little free dock on Sisters Creek on Wednesday 3/30 and then on to Fernandina Beach the next day hoping to stage another overnight out on the Atlantic up to Charleston, NC. However, due to weather (between dodging major thunderstorms coming east over the nothern part of Florida and Georgia and high winds of course) it looked like we would not get a weather window to do that crossing for at least a week and a half. So we decided to continue up the ICW through Georgia and southern South Carolina, a part of the ICW we had not seen yet. And so we have been crawling along!

First stop in Georgia was Brunswick, then the Duplin River (at Sapelo Island), then Savannah where we played tourists for two days. Leaving Georgia we then stopped in Beaufort, and to where we are now – the middle of nowhere anchored in Steamboat Creek on our way to Charleston, SC today.

I will be back with more on all this as well as pictures later. It is 7am and we need to get off and running – 15-20 knot winds today to battle with!!

Here are the pics!!
                       The Halifax River Yacht Club - Daytona, FL
                                      Coming in

        See us on the dock! - hint - look for the wind generator!

         Upstairs in the HRYC building -the interior

  

 Downstairs they have a Tiki Bar - where we ordered burgers and sat outside with Gracie.

    

Somewhere along the way to St Augustine - thought about stopping to get some fish!

    Evening view from our boat in St. Augustine, FL

    Bridge of Lions in St Augustine - opening for our trip north Wed. 3/30

   Stopping again at Sisters Creek.  Free dock just north of Jacksonville, FL

Evening falls with clouds on the horizon in Fernandina Beach, FL  - our last day in Florida

We have left Florida and have now entered Georgia (below) - Friday April fools!

 Arriving in Brusnwick, GA.  Our marina is just up past this bridge.

 We were on dock 1 right in front of the marina office (blue roof).  Thunder storms predicted.

 After Brunswick we anchored off Sapelo Island in the Duplin River.  All by ourselves!  A look at the ferry dock
   from our anchorage.  We dingy in to shore for Gracie at the ferry dock.

    What we looked like from the ferry dock.

 On the ICW as we approach Savannah, GA - we knew we were not in Kansas any more.

 We went dockside again so we could spend an extra day being tourists in Savannah.

 Gracie is keeping quiet about the tourist thing!

 In Savannah we took an open air trolley that allowed us on and off all day as well as describing all the sights.

    Savannah is just beautiful!

   And has lots of history!

 Gracie loved it too!!

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 After Savannah we went to Beaufort, SC (pronounced "Byoo fert" as in beautiful).  We took a mooring here
   and spent two days due to high winds.

 On the way now to Charleston, SC - we stopped at Steamboat River and anchored off the fishing/boat launch. (Gracie helps us find all these cool places!)  It has calmed down from the 20 kt winds of the day.

On the road again – heading north! (And yes, we really are still alive!)

We did, in fact, decide to stay put in Vero Beach. It was just too nice and we really had accomplished the best plan, for us, for this winter's journey. We found sunny and warm (and sometimes – hot) weather to be in for the winter. Of course going to the Bahamas was supposed to be the goal but actually the two main maxims of our trip guided our decision. Safety and having fun. Vero Beach was a very safe place to be from a storm perspective with access to anything we might need for repairs, provisions and medical. Fun – we were having fun not having to worry about many factors involved with this year's Bahamas crossing factors. El Nino has provided some really nasty, strange, cold and windy weather this year. The Botulas caught perhaps the only good crossing since December! But we were concerned also about getting back. So we just stayed put! We were able to turn our weeks worth of payment into a monthly rate so our price per night on the mooring went from $15 to $12. We moved from being far away from the marina at the very north end of the mooring field (mooring #52) up much closer to the marina and dinghy dock. It was about half he dinghy ride which saved us a lot of gas seeing as we went to and from the land about four or more (as many as eight!) times a day.

We made a lot of new friends at Vero Beach Marina – including the marina staff. Gracie became somewhat infamous at the office, where we usually went each day. She knew exactly where they kept the doggie treats!!! We became good friends with a couple from Chesterfield, NH (Richard and Jeanny Aldrich) who owned a farm and have rented it out to have a sailboat and an adventure! Their boat had been called “8 is Enough” because between the two of them then had eight kids but they decided to change the name to “Imagine”. Rich is a professional carpenter – quite handy about the boat and Jeanny is a professional chef and nutritionist. She started the Wednesday night pot luck dinners which we participated in before our departure. (Note: they were also avid Survivor enthusiasts like ourselves so after dinner we hit the boaters lounge for our weekly dose of Survivior!)

By our third week at Vero we were also joined by Alan and Michelle Watson as well as Dan and Marcia Crouch, both having returned from the Bahamas and both from our yacht club in Groton, CT – Shennecossett! There were also no less than four other boats from Vermont in the anchorage! Small world eh?!

We had lot so fun in and around Vero Beach, which we came to find out the Vero Beacher's call Zero beach – land of the newly weds and nearly deads! Since we were not going any further south, we decided to rent a car for two days and spend a bit of time seeing the sights to the south. (Another of our reasons for staying in Vero is that we had come to find out that both Fort Lauderdale and Miami had become very boater unfriendly. The more south you went from Vero, the more difficult the cities were making it to anchor and get ashore, and with Gracie that was a necessity!) So we went to Fort Lauderdale for a day to join the spring breakers and made a planned stop in Forth Worth along the way where Luitgard and Wolfgang (our German friends on the Nordhavn 50) were still waiting for a window to cross to the Bahamas. We met them again and went out to lunch at a wonderful pizza place in South Palm Beach. We then continued down to Fort Lauderdale to accomplish three things: See Sailorman (a used marine warehouse), West Marine (which is their flagship store), and see the town and beach with all the crazy spring breakers! Mission accomplished! Vero to Fort Lauderdale is about a two hour drive. Day two of the car was for seeing all of Vero Beach and provisioning the heavy stuff like seltzer, water, beer, etc!

So after a month in Vero, we headed north again on Wednesday March 23^rd. We traveled all the way to Merritt Island, FL to met up again with Phil and Nancy Stewart and a repeat dinner at Alfredo's Paradiso for another outrageous Italian dinner! And then Thursday we went to Titusville and met up with Myles and Merja Cahoon who are our friends from Vermont who have a winter home in Leesburg, FL. Lots of theater discussions in the two days!! We wanted to get in to Titusville early because of the thunderstorms that were predicted to come through in the evening. And come through they did!! We had high winds and rain, lightening and thunder for several hours. This morning the weather indicated that we had had 4.5 inches of rain last night!! I have never seen it rain so hard ever before!

We decided to stay the day here in Titusville today because of thunderstorms this afternoon, which we had and plan to leave tomorrow for Daytona Beach.

I know that some of you thought we might have dropped off the edge of the earth – we haven't posted for so long. Time just got away from us and we were actually quite busy these last few weeks. A tour boat came through the harbor at Vero Beach and I heard the tour director say on the loudspeaker something to the effect of: “It is not a vacation, it is a lifestyle!” Cruising like this really is a lifestyle!

    We took some harbor tours in Vero Beach - Gracie is always on the bow of the dinghy!

 Some of the cool roads in the town of Vero Beach.

  Wednesday night pot luck!

 Jeanny's pies!

 

Some of our new friends:  The Jones Family (Anita, Maria, Lala, and Reese)

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 Our old friend from Worton Creek, MD, and again in Wrightsville Beach and now in Vero - Ray from Compass Rose.  And dog Nautica

 Other characters from the marina: Chris - who always had treats for the dogs and Pete (red shirt) - Scrubbing Bubbles diver.

 Our raft mates: Marcia and Geoffrey

 Rafted up with us for our last two days in Vero.

 Lo and behold - we also connected with our SYC friends: Alan and Michelle Watson (Kindred Spirit) and Dan and Marsha Crouh (Cutting Class).

 Our trip south to Fort Lauderdale:  Sailorman is world renowned!

 And right across the street is the flagship store for West Marine

 It was downright hot our last week and a half in Vero.

 And so, now we head north.

 In Titusville we meet up with Merja and Myles Cahoon - our friends from Vermont wintering (for a few weeks) in FL too!

More to come!!

We're still here (Vero Beach) and probably going to stay a while!

Tomorrow we will have been here at Vero Beach for two weeks and we are loving it! We have decided that unless there is a big change in the weather in favor of a crossing to the Bahamas (and for expected good weather there too!) that we are most likely going to make this our final destination south. Janet and Alan Botula made it to Alice Town, Bimini in the Bahamas last Friday morning after a nice overnight crossing from the Keys. It was one of the few weather windows that there was and they took it!! Congrats!! They plan to do some “south-easting” heading to the Exumas if weather permits. However, the wind there is planned to be strong south easterly winds that will make that challenging at best!! As for us, we are staying here!

We decided to stay for many reasons – mostly because we have found the warm weather we were after for the winter, we are in a very safe anchorage here, and we have great accommodations. We were also concerned that we might have difficulties getting back to the US with all the crazy weather that we have been having this year. We can't begin to tell you how many people we have met that have decided the same thing – to stay and not go this year, or who have already returned and are starting the trek north again. We plan to stay until the end of March and then begin moving north as the warm weather proceeds us!

We are also a bit concerned about our engine (which we think is actually OK – at least it seems to be) but we have not done a lot of moving and we will need to monitor it carefully. When we start north again, we plan to get back to Little River perhaps in about two weeks and will again spend time there until the end of April or so. We will then begin the long trip back up to Groton, CT which took us 42 days to come down.
We have met quite a few people from Vermont and NH here some of whom are also Downton Abbey and Survivor fans. We are having a big Downton Abbey finale viewing / party in the boaters lounge this evening! We also became very good friends with a couple on a large trawler (Nordhavn 50) called Grey Goose (yes just like the Vodka) who are originally from Germany.

Vero Beach is a really wonderful town. Yesterday we went to the Farmers Market they have each Saturday and enjoyed our walk through the beach town area and back to the marina. Gracie is getting a lot of exercise (not to mention us!).



Joan is going to post her perspective tomorrow!



More Pictures of Vero Beach City Marina

               Our mooring field to the south - We are in the very north end.

    Just north of us.  Note Grey Goose is almost the last mooring ball.  Boats at anchor further north.

     Wolfgang and Luitgard Dietrich, Joan and Gracie enjoying happy hour on "Grey Goose"!

     Gracie loves to ride on the bow of our dinghy!

     The south end of the mooring field at Vero Beach.  Note the bridge that goes from downtown to the beach (left)

     The marina building

   Coming in to the dinghy dock

   The marina from the land side

    This is the building where they have the boaters lounge, laundry and showers!

     The marina again.

 What the winds are doing right now between Florida and the Bahamas!  North winds against the Gulf Stream is a
recipe for disaster!  

  At least we had a little Taste of the Bahams at the Vero Beach Farmers Market!

   One of our walking street scenes.

 At the park at Vero

Whit finds Wilson!!!

Vero Beach (aka Velcro Beach), FL – we're stuck!!

We have been here at Vero Beach since last Monday (Feb. 22^nd) and it is like a vacation!!! This is one of the more popular cruising locations on the ICW in Florida – it is usually on everybody's list as a place to stay, relax, re-provision and enjoy- not to mention that it is also a super protected anchorage. There are about 55 moorings in here and during really crowded times they raft up 2-3 boats on each. We, fortunately, are on our own mooring up in the north end of the mooring field-  about a 4 minute dingy ride to the dinghy dock. Amenities here include nice showers, laundry, boaters lounge, free pump-outs (Tuesdays and Thursdays) and a wonderful transport system – free shuttle buses that go to the beach and to town where you can get anything you need. We wanted to get in here before the big storms that were predicted to blow across Florida (a major cold front) on Wednesday - and blew through they did! Wednesday saw two major rounds of thunderstorms. The first, at about 1pm, lasted about 30 minutes and was pretty intense with winds up to about 40 mph and it included a tornado that passed by just to the north of us by about 5 miles! We had a brief lull and then round two of thunderstorms rolled through with wind and intense rain that lasted from about 3pm to 6pm with a significant temperature drop with this passing front.

Along with all this fun, was the often seen during storms such as these – the “dragging boat follies”. One of the boats at anchor started dragging into the mooring field. To make matters worse – the dragging boat did not have anyone on board! All of a sudden dinghys were launched from the boats about to be hit and we were off to the games!! I radioed in to the marina to send their launch out to assist in the rescue. In the end, all was well – owner returned to assist in the re-anchor, lots of very wet dingy captains returned to their now safe vessels. All was well. The rain and wind continued not withstanding!

So the fair warm winds of the south have been replaced by breezy cold north winds with daytime temps now in the 60's and night temps down to the upper 40's but the sunny skies are wonderful. Temperatures will be returning to the upper 70's and low 80's in the next next few days and we are loving it! So we are relaxing here doing some boat projects and planning out what our next move might be. We are not sure – sort of depends on the weather and winds most importantly which are still not very conducive for a crossing to the Bahamas. We are thinking that if we do go, the crossing will be from Lake Worth, FL directly east to West End. Given the weird and wild weather this current El Nino year has produced, we may not go. We will see. But for now we are just enjoying no longer working on a “boat delivery” cruise!

What is really interesting about being here is that we have finally “caught up” with all the other cruisers doing the same trip as we have been doing. Believe it or not, a few of them are actually headed back north! And it has been interesting comparing notes with all the other cruisers. We have all been to almost all of the exact same places and we have all experienced the same problems with the crazy weather. Lots of people are not sure about going to the Bahamas – in fact, the weather there is not a big drawing card either! We have time to wait and see what develops.

How we got here:
When we were in Titusville, FL we met a wonderful couple from Ducksbury, VT – their boat aptly named - “Evergreen”. They were spending the winter there in their first ever live-aboard experience. We plan to see them on our return. We left from Titusville, FL and made it very easily (and early in the day) to Merritt Island. We had planned to go in to Harbor Square Marina, where we had been told we could get it to (it is a very, very small marina) but had to use a shoe horn to extricate ourselves when it became all to clear that we were not going to be able to get into the dock. So we called quickly to the next marina – Harbortown Marina – just about 1 mile further along – and they were able to accommodate us. This marina was great!! They had a great dog park and restaurant on site and were extremely friendly and helpful (not to mention the price was really very reasonable!) We wanted to get to a marina so that we could host Phil and Nancy Stewart – my high school drama teacher – easily.

Phil and Nancy were just so wonderful. We gave them a tour of Sweet Liberty and then headed off to see their house on Merritt Island where they have lived for the last 25+ years. In all of the years since I graduated from high school – Horace Greeley High School in Chappaqua, NY – I have spoken to Phil at least once a year. He is one of those “once in a lifetime people” you are blessed to know and so I have remained in contact with him all these years. He has been a mentor and friend for the last 46 years since I graduated!! After hosting us at their house, they graciously took us to dinner at their favorite Italian restaurant, Alfredo's Paradiso. Not only do Phil and Nancy know the owner extremely well, Nancy is taking cooking lessons from him! The Italian food was absolutely outrageous! Thank you Phil and Nancy – so much!! I can't believe, however, that we forgot to take a picture of them so I stole a great picture of the two of them from Phil's facebook page!!! And while I was at it I grabbed a picture of myself he posted when I was in Phil's first play at Horace Greeley H.S. - A Midsummer Night's Dream playing Duke Theseus. Phil told Joan all about my high school “creativity”!

We left Harbortown Marina and stayed the next night at anchor off the town pier in Melbourne Beach, FL. Thankfully it was an very calm afternoon and night because it is really a wide open area to anchor. We dinghied ashore and walked to town as well as to see the Atlantic ocean – about 4 blocks away- and did a little shopping. Early the next morning, after taking Gracie ashore for her morning constitutional we were off for Vero Beach, FL. And here we are!!

           Heading in to Harbor Square Marina - which is where you see the masts just before this bascule bridge - you have to go down a canal that joins the ICW to Port Canaveral.  We had to come back out, wait for the bridge, and then continue to the next marina...

       ... here - at Harbortown Marina!  You can see the canal out to the back of our boat.

     At Harbortown Marina - off in the back pond - we saw our first gator!

     Harbortown Marina - we were at the T-end of A dock

Phil and Nancy Stewart (I think this might have been  taken outside of their favorite restaurant - Alfredo's.)

 Guess who!?  Duke Theseus woos Hippolyta

 Only in Florida - outside a market which sold a lot of beer!

      At anchor off  Melbourne Beach pier.

           At our mooring in Vero Beach, FL

    Joan hit the farmers market for a few items at Vero.