April 23, Sunday, Day 13, ICW MM 883; Cape Canaveral FL

We are anchored out fairly near the NASA rocket booster assembly building at Cape Canaveral. It’s been a lovely day.

Last night’s anchorage turned out to be perfect with very little wind. We slept well. Nevertheless I woke up with a case of vertigo, then grabbed the iPhone, went to WebMD and tried a suggested exercise. It might have worked; I felt much better but took ginger pills and a half Bonine just in case.

There was an unusual boat on the beach near us during the night and I was able to get some pictures as we passed them. Interesting homemade solution for both weather and sleeping I think. (Photo seems to be missing…) Note also photo of first mate readying to help with anchor recovery.

As we moved north we saw dolphins off our bow now and then and continued to see all sorts of bird nests on top of the channel markers, some with parents feeding their young. I was also doing a little sewing since this channel was so wide we could only see the shoreline with binoculars.

For the first time on our journey we stopped at mid-day at the village of Cocoa. Famous Cocoa Beech is about 1/2 hour away on the ocean. And how did we manage to get off the boat without dock hands you may wonder? We planned ahead and Dirk brought us near the dock and the wind pushed us in beautifully. And I tied us up – well, got out and tied us initially and then we fussed with ropes and fenders until the tie up looked safe.

Cocoa is a cute and artsy town with a lot of local pubs and restaurants and interesting shops that we didn’t go into. We had lunch at Pub Americana and I had a vegan portabella mushroom burger with carmelized onions- yum!

We needed more Prestone for the generator and a few other items and the local hardware store is closed on Sunday, so Uber to the rescue again. We got what we needed at the super Walmart on Merritt Island, got everything loaded on the boat and then planned again on how the heck we were going to leave without damaging the wooden dock or hitting the nearby cement wall. We managed quite well and cruised up to tonight’s anchorage within view of the NASA edifice and a red rocket on a pad in the distance.

April 22, Saturday, Day 12, ICW MM 925; Palm Bay FL

Today we just kept going and going…  It was a great day and we started early. We haven’t gotten up the courage to stop during the day yet so I make lunch on the go and we eat it on the flybridge while traveling. It’s Saturday so there were a lot of boats going by quite fast, their wake rocking us as we grabbed items. I lost my iPhone for a while and found in in a lower shelf of the flybridge after searching everywhere. (Dirk had to call me).

When we started I thought St. Lucie River was somewhat wide, but after going through the St Lucie inlet area we entered Indian River, a really wide body of water; at least a mile across. It is relatively shallow so we need to stay in the channel marked for the intracostal except when another shore channel is marked.

Looking for an anchorage we followed one of the shore channels in and even that was too shallow – we were stirring up mud on the bottom. Dirk turned us around we and nervously exited, tried another area that was also getting too shallow and finally found an anchorage with other sailboats behind a small island. Very nice.  Someday soon we’ll actually use the dingy to visit ashore but haven’t wanted to tackle that quite yet.  We are concerned about the effort of reloading but I’m sure we’ll figure it out.

 

April 21, Friday Day 10; Riviera Beach to Port St. Lucie

Sunset, Sunrise …

To prepare to leave this morning  I returned the car rental and Dirk bought more engine room supplies up the street at Boat Owners Warehouse (BOW). We are buying things at BOW- who would have thought?

Then off we go with a little help from the friendly people at New Port Cove Marina.  But, about a half mile out, the other engine (starboard) stopped working. Just won’t start and stay on. We were already heading for North Palm Beach Marina for a pump-out so we called ahead to let them know we were coming and would need help. Then we called Gregg Burkey (Diesel mechanic)  who just fixed our other engine. He called us back, met us up north at the new marina, and fixed the issue in 10 minutes. How nice was that! North Palm pumped us out and helped us navigate in and out and then we were really on our way again.

It was wonderful to relax and see the sites and just be on the water today.

We are now anchored in a bay named Pikes Lake south of Port St. Lucie and hoping the fast boats quit soon so the boat stops rocking and rolling. Oh well, at least we won’t be knocking against a dock. Nice sunset, right?

We are using map of all sorts, mostly very detailed maps of the waterways both in a boat guide book and on our GPS marine chart plotter. The big picture of the east coast ICW is also handy to check out some of the major destinations.

 

 

April 16, Day 6; Hypoluxo marina to Rivera Beach marina

Instead of going to the Boca Raton UU church with everyone, we decided to move north to the first marina that had room and would be kind to new boaters. We called the current  marina – no one answered for a number of hours, so we figured we’d pay up by phone later and left.

We enjoyed the trip north to Rivera Beach passing under bridges where we met up with the coast guard (Trump was in the area), through the city of West Palm Beach, seeing the hospital where Arden was born from the ICW view, and looking at the Easter fun around Peanut island.

The New Port Cove Marina in Rivera Beach charges more, but what a difference. Of course, we were older and wiser too and asked for help when we called and confessed we were new at this and would like a slip that isn’t very near any expensive yachts! Everything worked out fine, and when we had some problems with the electrical set up later they sent some excellent people out to help us again.

We had a wonderful Easter dinner with Sarah, Chris, and Arden and Chris’ parents, Janet and Masood Aziz.

Janet and Masood rented a great AirBnB house near Sarah and Chris with a pool and cooked a delicious dinner. My husband and daughter both mentioned the number of years since they’d had home cooked ham (never for Sarah :)). Arden loved the pool, and bubbles and ball, and the Easter egg hunt.

We are back on the boat now. Enjoying the calm, slow rocking and sound of small waves. Very nice. This is what marinas should be like.

Thursday April 20, Day 20 – Riveria Beach FL (still)

Well, the bad news is that we have continued to have issues, now fully focused on the port diesel engine. The good news that it was here in Riviera Beach, close to our daughter and grandson, so we’ve had a lot more time with them than we had planned. I also had more time to look for things like guest chairs for the sundeck and consider buying a ramp to go between the boat and dock when the gap is too big (but not easy to find an affordable solution).

Later today: Good news! The engine is repaired and working and we leave tomorrow am. I had a great day with Arden and even went to the Lake Worth theater tonight with Janet. That was a treat. So off we go tomorrow!

Saturday April 15, Day 5

Arden returned with his other grandparents today.  We spent much of the day at Sarah’s. I was finishing some boat curtains and doing lots of laundry and Dirk was a sweaty sweety and mowed their lawn. He also went back and forth to the boat a few times with parts to fix the engine. Arden arrived was a charming and funny as ever. Dirk and I took care of him later while Sarah went out.  I was impressed with his new concentration and determination to figure things out. 

Back at the boat… A pretty bad night. You know your dockage is more than uncomfortable when you start thinking at 2am about what to grab if the boat is really sinking. A large boat went by at about 12:30 am and the wake was so bad that we were almost tossed out of bed and we heard a crack sound on the side of the boat. I was mad at the boat and disturbed that the marina was so hands off about our difficulties.

I don’t want to stay another night, but we want to be in the area to celebrate Easter with my daughter’s family and her in-laws. 

 

April 14, Day 4 – Friday; Hypoluxo, FL

Unfortunately, the T-dock (the end of a dock) provided to us at the marina means that we are at the mercy of waves of large boats going by. It didn’t seem to bad at first, but in the later evening and night were rocked enough to throw items off shelves. Dirk was unhappy to discover his toothbrush in the toilet in the morning! (Another lesson, close the lid). He added all our fenders to the dock side to protect the hull but there wasn’t much that could be done about the rocking.

The day started well with service people from the marina solving the water pump and generator problems both of which required minor adjustments. Whew! (Should I also say that the problem with the water pump was that we ran out of water? The former owner may us so nervous about overfilling the water tanks that we never got them even close to a quarter full. :)) The marina couldn’t help with the diesel engine issue (the engine failure on the port engine from the day before). We also saw some interesting bird poses.

Sarah came by and we did errands most of the day, and Dirk and I picked up or ordered items needed for the boat. I gave in and we went to everyone’s favorite restaurant for RIBS (!) in the West Palm Outlet area. I found a pretty good quinoa dish, and all was fine except that it was my turn to pay! Later… more trouble sleeping due to rocking.

April 13, Day 3 – Thursday; Ft. Lauderdale to Hypoluxo, FL

We started the day with a few challenges – the generator wouldn’t stay on and we had no water and suspected a problem with the water pump. But since we were going to stop and see our daughter Sarah Hart/Aziz for a few days in Lantana, we called ahead to find a marina where we could stay and get repairs.

This was a day of traveling past Ft Lauderdale views, amazing homes in a narrower part of the ICW and calmly waiting for many low bridges to open for us on their schedule – but we aren’t in a hurry so no problem. Note – the lowest bridge happened to be named George Bush. Dirk figured out why we couldn’t communicate very well with the bridge tenders (the VHF wires weren’t connected!).

 

When we arrived at the Palm Beach Yacht Center in Hypoluxo the wind was blowing and no one was outside to guide us in – we didn’t think to call ahead for help even though this was our very first time docking anywhere but in our enclosed marina in Islamorada. I ran around like crazy getting ropes ready for docking – could have done that a lot earlier too! In the midst of docking one of our engines quit and made it really hard for Dirk to parallel park, but he did it and we got tied up with help from someone from the marina who had noticed we had some difficulties. Whew! But then… We were asked to move to a small slip. Both engines worked for a bit and then the one quit at the worst time. I won’t go into the details, but we missed hitting some expensive boats by millimeters I think. We gave up on that slip and the dock manager gave us one at the end of the dock, not near anything else and we got in and tied up. Done with one day’s major learning experience! We’ll look into help with the boat issues in the morning.

Sarah came over after work and was finally able to see the actual boat after so many photos. She enjoyed it until the boat starting rocking from the fast boats going by – guess she inherited my seasick tummy.  Our grandson Arden is visiting his other grandparents and family in New Jersey so we won’t see him until Saturday.

April 12, Day 2: Wednesday; Miama to Ft. Lauderdale

We cruised north up the bay after breakfast (oatmeal). The day started somewhat grey and we could see dark clouds approaching as we saw the skyline of Miami in the distance. As we cruised up to the Intracostal (ICW) in Miami we saw business district right on the harbor – huge buildings one after another. We were practically alone in the ICW and couldn’t see activity of any sort until we saw a small park on the left. Came to our first of many bascule bridges which was already open fortunately. We know we’ll be waiting around for many bridges to open as we head up the ICW.

As we approached lower Ft. Lauderdale Dirk noticed a familiar building – the restaurant where we took his mother, Judy Hart, to lunch a few years ago after picking her up from her cruise ship.

Around 3:30 we started looking for a place to anchor out. Our first choice, Lake Sophia was too crowded but as we searched for our second choice we came upon municipal moorings we could use near a bridge. As we gave it a try we learned how to attach to a mooring; the wrong way  – which was to make a big loop and throw it over the ball,  and the right way – pick up a loop attached to the mooring with a boat hook and put your rope through it.  Now I know…

Had a nice night in the midst of a bridge, houses and boats, and saw a neighbor fishing for breakfast in the morning.

 

 

April 11, Day 1 Islamorada to Sands Island anchorage

We finally are on our way after saying good-bye to the wonderful marina Pam and our right (and left) hand man, captain and friend, Russ Stockton.

We left the harbor around 9:45 and swung around a little too close to the marina and knocked against a small boat. We went back to the dock to see if there was any damage to the small boat (there wasn’t) and then were really on our way.

We needed to get off of the ocean side of Islamorada, so went south a bit to go through Snake Creek and headed north in the bays along Islamorada, Tavenier and Key Largo, following the ICW line in the GPS (intracostal waterway). Although it was windy and rained a little, it was really beautiful and felt great just being on the water. Since I knew it was going to be windy I took ½ of a Bromine and it worked perfectly. I didn’t get queezy and I stayed awake – yea!

I made sandwiches on the boat and we kept going north and all of a sudden we could see the Miami skyline in the far distance. We had wanted to dock in a little island named Boca Chita, but couldn’t find a deep enough channel to get into shore, so decided to head south a little and anchored off of Sands Island – an uninhabited mangrove island I believe. The sunset was really stunning!

April 10, 2017  Still in Islamorada, FL

We’re leaving to tomorrow! It’s only a few hours away. (Hum along with tune from Annie.)  Yesterday Captain Russ came over early enough so we could get into the Harbor before high tide and head to Smuggler’s Cove to fill up our tanks with diesel. Two more “firsts”  –  parallel parking the boat and getting gas for our boat. We only needed 90 (!) gallons.

 

Today the engine mechanic installed two new (huge) batteries , fixed a few more items and then declared the engine area ready.  So we are planning to get started with our journey tomorrow morning and are very happy about that.

Later we decided to drive south from our Treasure Harbor marina to check out Marathon. Dirk wanted to see a small airplane museum, but it was closed; darn.  We had heard about feeding tarpon fish at a place called Robbies, so stopped there to check it out. It’s a place for food, music, tourist shopping and feeding both Tarpon and Pelicans! For about $3 we bought about 6 (dead) fish in a pail. Although everyone is warned not to reach down too low in the water because the huge Tarpon mouth may grab your hand with the fish, everyone does it and we jump like crazy as the Tarpon suddenly  leaps at your hand. Fun and funny!

Tonight we did some more organizing and putting away of things to get ready, and there’s more to be done, but we’ll be leaving in any case (hopefully).

Here are some new boat photos now that we’ve made it our own.