Updated on May 22, 2017
Our Crossing to Florida and Return to Vero Beach
We waited for a few days in West End for a good weather window. During our wait, we finally spotted the mysterious and rare manatee. All through Florida on the way down, we searched the shoreline for one of these great and gentle creatures. There were rumors of their existence in the Bahamas but we never saw any. Evidently there is one hanging around the Old Bahama Bay Marina.
Download and view movie of the manatee getting a shower
Elena had some downtime and spent some of it on the beach, finding this hug-g-g-e starfish.
On April 26th, we got underway at 11am. We experienced light winds and motor-sailed for about 4 hours averaging 4.6 knots. At 5pm, winds picked up and we went on sails alone, making 4.6 knots average.
The winds continued to increase, we got into the Gulf Stream and before long we were making over 7 knots with an estimated arrival time of 4am, too early for a daylight entry. At about 11pm we took down the mainsail and about the same time had to turn to avoid a tanker. Before we knew it the Gulf Stream has taken us 6 miles north of our track and our single sail could not hold course. About 1am we started the engine and motored in to Fort Pierce inlet, arriving at about 6:30am.
We motored another 3 hours to Vero Beach where we found a mooring buoy and checked into Customs by telephone.
We stayed at Vero Beach for four days to rest and replenish. After 3 months away, I am not sure if America is great again, but I do know this is the land of the plenty. The local Publix, with all our favorites, was a pleasant shopping experience after the mom-and-pop stores of the Bahamas out islands.
We met up with John from “Spirit” and his two cats, Max and Athena. We had met John first in St. Augustine and then again in Vero Beach on our way south. John, a solo sailor, has been replacing his engine over the last three months and is on the last phase having received his new engine and having torn out his old one,. We had him over for three dinners to give him a little relief from “soloing”. We look forward to seeing John getting underway and getting a little blue water under his keel.
We have been watching the weather carefully, hoping for a good weather window for a run to St Augustine, 150 nautical miles north of us. Unfortunately, we could not get three days of good winds and relatively mild seas. We shifted to Plan B (despite my protestations), a run up the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW) at least to New Smyrna Beach (near Daytona Beach). At 8am on May 2nd, we cast off the lines from the mooring and turned north up the ICW for our next stop at Cocoa.
This was old territory for us, as this is how we came south. We reversed the saved track from December on the chartplotter, told the autopilot to follow it, and let the boat sail itself (almost). We anchored after a hard day’s motoring at 7pm.
The next morning, we slept in and got a late start for a short leg of 20 miles to Titusville Florida, across from Cape Canaveral and the giant launch pad, anchoring at 4pm.
The leg from Titusville to New Smyrna Beach was one of the most pleasant stretches of the ICW we have experienced. Most of it is part of Cape Canaveral or part of a national seashore. It was untouched by development, except for the ICW itself, with miles and miles of mangrove swamps and small islets. We pulled into New Smyrna Beach City Marina about 3pm, with Elena looking forward to serious boutique shopping for a couple of days, until we found out that we only had a reservation for one day and “the inn was full” for the weekend.
Elena worked all through the evening to figure out our next move. She has really become a good planner and navigator– carefully researching the charts, reviewing the reports of problems from the “Active Captain” database, and understanding the weather and tide predictions to come up with a set of options. She got us a slip for the next day at the next marina northbound. Then she discovered a “bump” in the ICW, that has grounded many boats and we can’t get over during low tide. That discovery screwed up all our plans since high tide is either early morning before we are prepared to leave or late in the afternoon leaving us arriving at the next marina after closing hours. Or we could go offshore in a brief weather window Sunday, anchoring out until then. We decided that we would sleep on it and decide in the morning.
Morning came and we got a reprieve. By moving to another slip the marina let us stay an extra night, making us leave on Saturday morning. Saturday morning came and they got another cancellation and we got to stay another night while we waited for the weather to cooperate. We took advantage of the time to do a bit of shopping and laundry.
Elena has decided that we will continue on the ICW to St. Augustine. The winds will be changing a lot on Sunday and then be out of the north on Monday. But next week looks like a good set of day for a run north, and I hope to convince her that we should take advantage of it as long as we can and make a non-stop run to Beaufort, SC.