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Vero Beach Gets Sticky

Early cat catches the 'coon

Scanning the water for breakfast

Once again we gently swing on a mooring in the mangrove surrounded mini harbor that is Vel- I mean Vero Beach marina. We’ve been here since Wed. Nov 16, enjoying the beautiful weather and access to a car even more! Thursday brings the annual cruisers’ Thanksgiving potluck dinner beginning at 2pm with music for your listening and dancing pleasure afterward. The morning will be busy: the women will be cooking and baking while the men check out the wares at the boaters’ flea market.

Now for the sticky part.  In St. Augustine we met John on m/v Vulcan, a Mainship, oh about 36-38’. He’s a never-married Brit, flying solo – no accent though –  with interesting stories of all the places he’s been. Retired 11 years, Vulcan is his third? boat, his first a fishing trawler, second a monohull and recently he’s taken a liking to catamarans. That’s where we come in; moored close together in the St. Augustine mooring field John was checking out the nearby cats and stopped to visit us. Gave him the tour and the guys talked boats, cats and Maine cat technical details.  The day after we arrive in Vero, Vulcan comes along. Friendly folk we are, we dinghy by later to say hello and see what’s up. Oh those Mantas, several here and a decent cruising cat. More eye candy. John mentions that he expects to stay two nights. Russ and I look at one another and provide John with all the reasons to stay awhile; Thanksgiving dinner, free local bus to all the shopping you could want, an easy walk to a hardware store, laundry- with more dryers than washers!- not to mention the price is right. Plus a ton of cruisers, most who love to talk boats!

Several days later and guess who’s still here? Hee, hee- told him so.

We have a comfy, although sorta buggy (sand fleas are nasty) spot next to the mangroves. Benefits are the wildlife: raccoons one morning, osprey the next, augmented by the regular appearance of dolphins, egrets, herons and a dead fish.  I am getting over my dinghy driving fear- call it extreme reluctance –  and am building arm muscles trying to pull that darn string on the outboard.  Isn’t this 2011? I mean who still thinks a string on a pulley thingy will effectively start an outboard motor? Yes, I get it- men can do it and women who work out – on their boats?  Anyway, I am having some luck at getting the beast to start; now if I can only remember which way to move the stick thing that makes the outboard move in the opposite direction from the direction I want to go!!!

Wednesday, I rose to the challenge. After a boat visit and tour of Vulcan, someone commented “let’s see if she can start it on the first pull.”  Wouldn’t you know; I did. Have yet to repeat that feat.

Now, on to the getting our mail ritual. A week ago we contacted the UPS Store to send our mail to the marina.  Last year we gnashed our teeth again and again as each mail receiving event turned into an ordeal. Over the summer we confirmed that we could email our request along with the address as that might work better than calling (often bad timing on our part). We email the store and ask if we have any packages or bulky mail; not expecting any, but sure don’t want to pay to have it sent to Florida. Nothing heard. Next day I call; already this isn’t going well. No, no packages. I explain I had emailed; only the owner deals with emails- ok. I email the marina address requesting no catalogs and send everything else via UPS (we’d prefer Priority but decided since this was a UPS store…).  Please confirm. Confirming email arrives; mail going out Tuesday- UPS.

A week later, no mail. We already have a lost package- another sob story- not another one- please. I call the UPS Store. No record of a package to us. Ends up that it was removed from our spot, but never sent. Fortunately they did the right thing; sent all our mail, less the catalogs, UPS next day free of charge. Nice. I was very delighted to get two pieces of mail from Lats & Atts; the Nov/Dec issue and a check for $75 for my Tale of Two Pirates. They also used two photos; one of Fort Matanzas and at the end, one of Russ & I in our pirate outfits.  No doubt the start of a highly lucrative writing career; ahem, right.  I’m OK being published in a magazine with a worldwide readership.

We pose with John of m/y Vulcan on Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving Thursday brought heaps of delicious food, interesting dinner companions, more Bahamas intel gathering and enough breeze to blow away most of the annoying sand fleas. Our ankles and calves are covered with itchy bites. Not as bad as a mosquito bite thank goodness.

Friday, our mooring companion, Polar Pacer broke loose; we’ll be a day behind. Also bid farewell to one of our inflatable kayaks. It was beyond repair and we salvaged a few parts to use on the other.

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Closing in on Vero Beach

I really enjoy St Augustine, especially in calm and sunny weather. Finally got to talk with the Celise/Spirit crew. Soon after we picked up our mooring, they came by after fueling up and stopped to chat for a few minutes before heading out the inlet.
We hope to see them in the Bahamas.
Being a weekend, town was busy but not so packed that you couldn’t eat or shop easily.

Tried to get World Quidditch Cup news; no luck until Benj called with a Green Mtn Welsh Dragon team update on Saturday and a final results call Monday night.  They won 4 of 6 games and their second loss was to the #1 seeded team in Division II. The GMC team has awesome spirit and cohesiveness and did not fly away to lose easily! To think that one month we passed right by the island park where the games were played.  YouTube videos should be out around Wednesday. Can’t wait. 97 teams competed in the World Cup which had opening and closing ceremonies as well as entertainment and an athletes village. Sound like some other well-known event?

The kind of bridge we like

Boat activity - Bridge of Lions

Monday we waved farewell to St Augustine and enjoyed one of those wonderfully near-perfect travel days.  Sunny and warm with light winds expertly designed for ICW travel, by noon temp reached 72, with 76 the day’s high. Vitamin D ripe for the taking, the current our friend over half the day, bridges were extremely well-behaved and ran across only a few other  boats heading south until Daytona Beach area.  Speaking of Daytona Beach, what is it with this area?  Last year we “went aground”
for a few seconds in a “gee that was dumb” move and this year we got boarded by the local Sheriff boat; affectionately known as “potty police.” Hey, I’ll take this over a Coast Guard boarding.

We’re in the process of passing another boat, s/v Ascension, when we see a small power boat zooming our way. Russ comments “oh yeah I thought that might be official” and we wave as usual.  Yikes, we look back as they’ve turned around and next thing we know they’re alongside asking us to slow to idle while two guys come aboard. They were polite, asked permission first and stated their business. We resumed speed; Russ providing a tour of our two sea cocks while I took the helm and chatted with the other guy. A few minutes later off they went; with a two-fer and a look at a nice catamaran. A few minutes later, Ascension does what I would have; he calls us to get the scoop. Russ jokes that “we’re not supposed to pass monohulls” then fills him in.

Our near-perfect day ended by 3pm in a new spot, Rockhouse Creek- not even a creek- that connects the ICW to the Ponce de Leon inlet channel. By sundown  7 of us were neatly packed in; but no wind worries tonight, just the changing tide to turn us around ever so gently. Russ launched Bunting to go exploring while I snapped pictures of egrets, dolphins and osprey enjoying the pleasures of low tide. He met CT-ites Robin and Michael on s/v Sea Biscuit. Headed for… where else? Bahamas. Gosh, we don’t feel so left out this year.

Two cuties at Rockhouse Creek

Tuesday: “bridge to bridge” or “sailboat parade” would describe our day. The first opening bridge of the day was 2 miles from the anchorage; we joined 5 other boats for the 8am opening. One was a small sport fish who left us in his wake after a few miles while the rest of us sailing vessels fell in line for the picturesque trip down the Indian River North and Mosquito Lagoon.  I had my first manatee sighting; no surprise though as much of the 20 mile stretch contains signs warning boats to either maintain a slow speed (yep we can comply) or a speed not to exceed 25mph. Some areas have different speed limits for inside vs outside the ICW channel and day vs night. Manatees prefer shallower water and hopefully avoid the channel.

After something like 15 miles, we came upon s/v Sea Biscuit and s/v Mojowho’d caught the 7:40 bridge opening. Now we had an entourage of 7; no one going fast enough to pull ahead much. Got interesting when a motor yacht came by and passed each of us in turn, slowing down to a m/y crawl in the narrow channel at each pass.

ICW BOAT PARADE TOWARD HAULOVER CANAL BRIDGE

Got a call from our Canadian friends on Polar Pacer, the Prout catamaran we’d met last Nov in Vero Beach. Mooring #16 was ready and waiting (with them on it of course) for a reunion raft-up!

At Titusville, the parade of boats began to dwindle one by one until past Cocoa was just us and s/v Nauti Nauti a Leopard 40 cat. They did a “make your own anchorage” spot off the ICW while we continued on to one of our own just north of a causeway for protection from 10kts of S winds.