Sunday, January 23.
Beauuuutiful homes along the waterway.
(next picture shows close-up of the statue in the lower right)
Recognize this? Colleagues in the Plummer Building?. The Boy and Dolphin ...
We arrived at the mooring field in Vero Beach at around 2 pm. What a treat! I just love these places. We can stay here for a week for less than what it would cost to stay 2 nights in a full-service marina.
How a mooring ball works: The ball is anchored to the bottom and floats on the surface with a 8 foot line. I drive up to the mooring ball and then float down on the mooring line, which Dan catches with the boat hook and secures to a cleat on our bow.
Boats are moored all around us ... this place gets so crowded that they frequently tie up 3 boats on one mooring ball! Not that busy now ...
Nice boaters lounge, laundry and showers.
In this area, everyone is getting ready to travel to the Bahamas so it's very easy to get stories and recommendations from people who have done this trip 6-8 times. We are back to carrying a small notebook and pen whenever we go into shore, just like last winter in Brunswick. Newbies again!
And the weather has been fabulous! It's hard to believe it's January. The temps run 68-75 deg during the day, and with the sun and blue sky, we don't complain that it's still getting into the 40s at night.
Highlight of Vero Beach: Free bus service all over town!
One of the things we really noticed on our trip north on the ICW last summer was the glaring lack of public transportation at the main ports and anchorages along the way (except Wash DC!). No buses and taxis that require 24-hr notice. We were convinced that we had to have folding bikes on the boat b/c unless we were in a marina with a courtsey car, we had no choice but to walk.
But you gotta love a town that offers free bus service, M-F, all over town, with stops at the most frequent places -- the beach, Publix, West Marine, WalMart, banks. The West Marine and Publix were the 2nd stop from the marina, so we could run a quick errand and catch the return bus 20 minutes later!
On bus, on bridge, looking north to the ICW
On bus, on bridge, looking south into the Vero Beach basin.
When we arrived on Sunday, we told the dockmaster we'd be leaving on Tuesday afternoon. Well, that just wasn't long enough to enjoy this stopover! And we can now attest to the common rumor that Vero Beach is actually named "Velcro Beach". It's indeed so easy to stick once you settle in!
Our routine revolved around the bus. Every day we went into town in the morning, armed with all our shopping bags, as we started provisioning in earnest for the Bahamas trip. With so many stores so conveniently located, this seemed like the time to get serious. In fact, we made so many trips and large purchases at Publix, WalMart, West Marine and ABC Liquor that our bank called to check on our use!
It would take all afternoon to inventory, repack and store all the goods we purchased in the morning! It really does save space to get rid of the cardboard packing and repack dry good into baggies ... something I don't ordinarily do since a grocery store is always near by. Now, we are stocking up on coffee, toilet paper, green beans, spagetti sauce, rice, etc to last us 5 months! Just how much coffee will we need??? And since coffee is high on the list of thing I want to have a surplus of, I pick up more each time I'm in a grocery store.
Yes, we are still using our shower as a pantry.
And how much beer do we bring?
Beer is a serious issue b/c it runs $45/case in the Bahamas. So you gotta bring it to drink it. Dan was told to bring 300 cans of beer ... which is one thing to purchase and haul back to your boat via a dinghy ... and it's quite another to find a place to store it on the boat! Dan lined the hull in the extra berth with 12-packs of beer, and he figures he can 10 12-packs back there. Of course, Mikel Wheeler will be sleeping with this beer when he comes to visit 2/23-3/8 ... and we are still 150 cans short... Such dilimnas!
And if not beer, then what? Why, rum of course. How many Pina Coladas and Rum Punches will we want to drink at sunset in the Bahamas?? And wine with dinner (20 weeks x 7dinnners/wk = 140 bottles of wine). Oh my! Such dilemnas! Since we cannot possibly take enough, the best we can do is fill every open spot we can find. Right now, my hanging clothes locker is full of run and wine, to the point where my clothes don't "hang" anymore .. they lay on top of the bottles!
We also met another Bayfield 40 owner here, Ken and Donna Erb s/v Second Wind, and we just couldn't get enough of his expertise! They've lived on their boat for 17 years and has over 17,000 hours on his engine (it's amazing to see an engine with more than 10,000 miles). So Dan checked over his boat, and Ken came over to Maja to answer a ton of Dan's questions and show him how to gauge the engine valves. Plus he checked over our engine and came up with 3 other tasks that Dan needed to take care of ... later which, he drove us to the store to get the tools we needed, plus he brought over his own tools for Dan to use when we couldn't get everything we needed. Ah, boaters. Such good people.
So, we hung out, went to town, walked in the warm 75deg sun, talked to other boaters, shopped and shopped and shopped, worked on our taxes, did laundry .... and all of the sudden, 6 days have past!
Yikes! Time to break away from the velcro! We still need to replace the water tank in Lake Worth, and we meet Deb and Dan s/v About Time on the 12th to prepare to cross.
Leaving Vero Beach
Anchored in Ft. Pierce.
70deg ... calm wind.... ahhh! January ....
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