Almost There!!!

Almost There!!!

We finally pulled ourselves away from the dolphin show in Eau Gallie, and made our way to Vero Beach – a pretty straightforward and uneventful trip. Didn’t even have any low bridges to deal with! Then, as we were pulling into the mooring field, I glanced behind us and saw something long and very dark swimming in the water…snake I was pretty sure. After a bit of Googling (is that a real word now?), I’m pretty confident it was an adult water moccasin. Yikes! I like my wildlife spottings, but snakes, not so much.

Vero was different, but I can’t quite put my finger on what exactly makes me say that. Maybe it was the free buses that ran every hour, maybe it was the fact that we looked like teenagers compared to the majority of the folks we saw, maybe it was the mall where half the stores were vacant and several were closed simply because it was Monday…I just don’t know. (For the record…I can’t remember the last time I was in an indoor mall, so maybe they are a dying breed?) Apparently, however, Vero Beach is also affectionately known as Velcro Beach since so many people who stop there on their boats never seem to leave, but fortunately, we were able to pull ourselves away after only two nights.

The very crowded mooring field at Vero Beach
The very crowded mooring field at Vero Beach

We were still trying to make our way to Lake Worth where we would be staging to cross over to the Bahamas, but it was too far to make in one day so we stopped for the night in Peck Lake. We got there early enough in the day that we were able to dinghy to Hobe Sound National Wildlife Refuge on Jupiter Island and do some beach combing. We had the beach entirely to ourselves. Bliss! There weren’t a whole lot of shells to be found, but we had our first sea bean finds here. These things are sooo cool! I’d heard of them, but we’d never found any, and now we found seven! I don’t know a whole lot about these things, but I’m certainly on the lookout for more now!

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Peck Lake
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View of Radio Waves (we’re the boat in the middle with the dingy behind it in the water) captured off the Hobe Sound National Wildlife Refuge webcam
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Another image captured from the webcam, this one looking out over the ocean. See those two little people towards the right side of the picture? That’s us!
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Sea beans! Aren’t they cool? The two in front are known as hamburger beans, and sometimes called true sea beans. Apparently these are seeds and fruits that are carried out to sea and drift with the ocean currents and wash ashore elsewhere. It’s possible they’ve come from thousands of miles away!

The next day we were finally going to make it to North Palm Beach on Lake Worth, which is where we would sit and wait for the right weather for crossing the Gulf Stream! This was another frustrating bridge kinda day with three bridges that only opened at certain times, so even though we were so eager to reach Lake Worth, we had to travel slower than usual in order to time our arrival at each bridge to coincide with their openings. Ugh. In other news…we crossed mile marker 1000 (and eventually mile marker 1010 as well) on the ICW today! And, we anchored in Lake Worth….next stop the Bahamas!!!!

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Yay!!! 1000 miles on the ICW successfully completed! This is our computer running our chart software and showing our position after we had just passed the 1000 mile mark (our boat’s location is shown as a red boat just below the 1000 mile line). That skinny little dotted path is the ICW channel, and up in the left hand corner it shows that we were traveling at a speed of 5.34 kts at the time.

8 Comments

  • Chris

    February 9, 2016 at 11:45 am Reply

    Good luck on the crossing! Pick your day well and be patient!

    Beer is pricey over there. Rum is reasonable. Meat is outrageous $$$ except for what you catch yourselves.

    If you want to get to an out of the way spot – try Mangrove Cay on Andros. Buffet goes every spring to fish and hang out on his sailing yacht. The cool Buffet (not Warren!)

    • Chris

      February 9, 2016 at 12:08 pm Reply

      The cool Buffett, huh? LOL! So if everyone knows he hangs out there, is it still an out of the way spot?

  • Ardys Richards

    February 9, 2016 at 8:06 pm Reply

    We’ll be behind you soon!

    • Chris

      February 9, 2016 at 8:28 pm Reply

      Hope the upcoming predicted weather window holds up!

  • Evan Davila

    February 9, 2016 at 9:30 pm Reply

    Your pics are awesome, I couldn’t help but notice you wearing a coat, is certainly looks warm…and definitely warmer than here.

    • Chris

      February 9, 2016 at 9:37 pm Reply

      Looks can be deceiving! We haven’t really had any truly warm weather since December!

  • Beatriz Ayala Hill

    February 15, 2016 at 8:17 am Reply

    Beautiful pictures Chris! I’m enjoying your travels through this page. Keep the posts coming!

    • Chris

      February 15, 2016 at 8:50 am Reply

      Thanks!

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