Some things are too good to give up and a secure mooring in a protected “harbor” with easy access to free public transportation is frequently high on most cruisers’ want lists. Add in a large floating dinghy dock, lots of washers and dryers, dog park, other parks and a great Saturday Farm Market reachable via bus or walking and is it any wonder Vero has earned the nickname Velcro Beach?

Travel day two after St Augustine would take us through Mosquito Lagoon which, you may recall, is loaded with dolphin and manatees. A few years ago we encountered Vicki and Del in their outrigger canoe- if you missed that post- click here. We’d anchored in Rockhouse Creek Friday night, with an enchanting (can you tell I need new adjectives?) view of the Ponce inlet and lighthouse. S/v Ti Matou arrived and popped over for a boat look-see and I do believe our cleats and chocks were admired for the very first time 🙂   Ok- so Mosquito Lagoon begins about five miles south of Rockhouse Creek and very soon after we upped anchor we see a small-ish center console with what looked to be a- oh wait- it’s an outrigger canoe and it’s Vicki and Del!! Too bad they were headed in the other direction.

The effects of hurricane Matthew appeared everywhere we traveled. Boats washed up on shore, docks destroyed and that’s just what we could see.

We wanted to stop at Melbourne Beach and walk in to our favorite beach market so we braved the windy forecast and formulated a plan to stop and still get to Vero before things got too nasty. The plan was perfect, only when twins approached the pier we could see that there would be no going ashore to the market for this crew.

We landed at VBCM at 12:30 and got the last/only open mooring ball. All balls full and many rafted. Still not as full as you’d find right before and at Thanksgiving.

Note the long, narrow box- what might that hold? Fishing rod???

How many trips to Publix? Let me count. Four? Between that and everything else, our waterline was low, very low.  Friday Dec 2 was the local boat parade, one of at least 32 throughout Florida. The parade in 2010 was twice the number of boats as this year and larger too, but it was fun to see and we had an ideal perch to watch the boats.  And, for the first time since our first rafting in 2010, we had a raft buddy who we didn’t know. Nice folks on Cruisin’Cat– new owners of only two weeks! Boy do they have a lot to do,as we can attest to.

Our friends on Traveling Soul surprised us and came in to another Vero Beach marina, so we made lunch plans and to check out Holiday activities at the nearby Vero Beach Museum of Art.

Many boats took a favorable crossing window on Thursday Dec 1; we hoped for one as good. But first we had Dentist appts on Monday Dec 5 before we could leave. Wed, Dec 7 began to look appealing so we finished up our preparations and devised two plans; one would be an overnight if the weather window shortened on us.