On a Ball in Vero Beach

We broke out of Cape Canaveral early this morning to head south. It was quite cold- 40 degrees. Burrrrrr.

Despite the auspicious look of the docks, we found the marina to be just right for a short stay. We met a couple of great folks. Chuck on an Endeavour 38 and Joe on a great Morgan 46. Joe invited us over for sundowners and showed us around his boat. It was amazingly spacious and he had done some great work in it. He was most proud of the new 110hp Yanmar that he put in last year. Joe will be breaking away from the dock next year, he says. Chuck promised to kick him off the dock if he doesn't go voluntarily. We had a great time last night and hope to run into them again.

So we got up early and made it out of the slip and around to the fuel dock without issue. 38 gallons of diesel and we were underway to get through the bascule bridge at 9am. We put the throttle down and ran around 7 knots the all day. I felt like I was being too hard on the iron gennie, but she again performed well. We didn't expect to make it to Vero Beach and were having difficulties coming up with a good plan on where to park it for the night if we weren't going to make it. The stretch from about 10 miles S of Melbourne to Vero doesn't offer much in the way of anchorages- the ICW is narrow and requires constant attention. There is little or no deep water off the dredged channel. But with about 15 knots of North wind and some southbound current(pushed by the wind), we made good distance and pulled into Vero Beach Municipal Marina and morring field.

We rounded the corner into the mooring field, and the first boat we saw was our friends from Sail Harbor in Savannah, Bob and Magan on Destination which was a nice surprise. We had lost contact with them when they took off the week before we did.

So we found our mooring ball and I nosed the boat up to it. Carryn reached down with the boat hood and snagged the painter(a floating line about 15' that is attached to the ball). She pulled it up and cleated it off at the bow. She looked like an old pro. And this was our first time to take up a mooring. We were high fiving each other for the job well done.

While we still had daylight, we got the motor on the dingy and jumped in to take a spin around and get bella to shore to get some grass under her feet. As we motored through the mooring field, we ran across our friends we met in St Augustine, Paul and Ela, on Southern Bella. We stopped and chatted, and

found out they just arrived today as well. Paul was in deep s#!t, having a problem with their head. Not fun. Been there, done that, and now follow some very strict rules as it relates to the head. If it didn't g in your mouth, through your stomach and exit below the waist(front or back)- thenit doesn't go in the head. No toilet paper and especially no baby wipes(the culprit last time I had to disassemble the head and all the hoses. We have a small trash can for tp. Don't be intimidated, it works fine. The mexicans have been doing it that way forever. Just go in any public restroom in a deeply hispanic area, and you will see the trashcans in the stalls. They don't flush tp, and neither do we on SolMate. Well, I've digressed.

So we finished making the rounds through the anchorage, chatting up our buddy boats, and went to the marina office to check in. $14 a day and you get full marina privelages- dingy dock, showers, laundry, etc. A decent deal.

We got back to the boat, starving. So tonight was Stir Fry. And it was awesome.

Hope you had as good of a day. We'd love to hear from you. Just post us a comment or give us a call.