AND it remains a good place to meet old friends and make new. The trip on Sunday from Melbourne area- easy and few boats thanks to the crappy forecast that never quite came to fruition. Dolphins enjoying the bow wake of a trawler (ours is too puny) and a man-made water-spout added interest and helped keep the binoculars in working condition.
The city marina gave us a good laugh and unbeknownst to them, a tip-off on who we’d find on mooring. I’ll give you a clue; she’s a boat near and dear to us.

Recognize this cat?

The marina’s confusion (we tried hard to straighten them out) over which boat goes with which owner lasted even after we departed. 🙂 Respecting their request to be kept out of the lime-light (not even candle-light!) this will be the only mention. Due to his extensive experience with vinyl lettering, Russ applied Ms Ortolan’s new name. Feeling a bit sad that her name is now retired but we still have boat bags bearing her name. And no one was yet looking for us and finding new owners; who, happily are not only still talking to us but invited us out for pizza and catching up.

The week prior we placed orders with seven companies for things we needed for Twins. Tuesday was the mother load; all kinds of goodies from Defender, Quill (K-cups) and Amazon.

Our happy holiday loot from Defender

We met David and Barbara on PDQ34 Miss My Money, also heading to Stuart for the rendezvous and Jack and Diane on PDQ34 Airlia who live in the apartments overlooking the mooring field. Interesting to see that even PDQs built the same year have noticeable differences; so far we are very happy with ours. Barbara gave me a wonderful tour (owned the boat about 2 years) while David gave the “guy tour”. Love their shades; and because they are sleek and not puffy like the curtains we have, the interior appears larger. 🙂

A November stop at Vero Beach (aka Velcro Beach, Zero Beach (so mean)) means sharing Thanksgiving with 200 other cruisers, some you may even know. Ann and Mike of m/v Traveling Soul were forced to spend their few days in a slip because the city decreed that boats over 50 ft could no longer attach to a mooring, but three boats could still raft up! Lucky us, we remained alone on our ball way up in the north section.

Traveling Soul (the other TS) fed our donut desires with treats from a Cocoa Beach stop the prior day. You guys are THE best!

Some cats are cute all the time. Ann treats Spot to time on deck (you can’t see her harness )

We get legal with the dinghy – boatnumberplate.com makes this easy

Goes without saying that we made several trips on the bus to Publix, did laundry, hit the VB Farmers Market on Saturday. This time we needed to visit the dentist; same one as two years ago. One block from a bus stop (free bus you may recall), less expensive than our CT dentist and Russ is happier with their methods. A win-win.

I love pleasant surprises, don’t you? We get to the bus stop after Publix with plenty of time to spare. The woman waiting (another cruiser) said she was watching the bags of groceries sitting in the corner for another couple who left them to pop into another store. Turns out we knew them- Deja Vu!! and guess who they’d just rafted to? She who shall not be named, that’s who.  I was so tickled when Helen & Joe told us that they recognized the boat but not the people.. where are Lori and Russ and what did you do with them? 🙂  We left the next day, but we know exactly where we will meet up with them ….. when we get there.