Good news for us today. They have started to fix my "little" dent in the keel and we should be back in the water by Friday. Not that we're going anywhere other then on anchor. The winds are really howling and they don't mean to give up until Monday. Wave height off shore is 6-9 feet. If it keeps up too long, we make stay on the ICW for one more stop, but we both would prefer to go off shore.
We walked in to Fort Pierce yesterday and today. It's not much of a city, at least the part we saw. A lot of buildings are closed up and overgrown. The waterfront wasn't too bad, but I think we've been spoiled with Beaufort and St. Augustine.
Greg spent this morning cleaning out bilges and the cockpit lazerette. I started a cleaning of the stainless steel railings and stanchions using Flitz. It works really well with very little effort.
Unlike home, trains here have not gone the way of the dinosaurs. Someone said there are 23 a day and I have no reason to doubt them. Almost every hour, all night long we hear them going by. The boat even shakes when they pass. One of the guys told us only four boats fell off the jack stands during the last hurricane, so I guess we should handle the rattle of the trains okay. I still prefer the boat's cradle over jack stands. I don't think I mentioned it, but this yard allows us to stay on board the boat while we're working on it, which is so convenient.
Day 97 - Nov. 21
The boat was launched this afternoon without incident. The wind was up, so Greg took the boat off the sling. We motored a short distance to the anchorage where we sat out a very windy, wet night. Love the rochna anchor.
Day 98 - Nov. 22
Very high winds today, so no movement on the water. Looks like it might be Monday before we go anywhere.
This was such a grey day...the water, the sky, even my mood were all grey. Spent the entire day doing nothing. I read a bit, worked on my sweater a bit, burnt my banana muffins a bit, and slept...a lot!
Hopefully tomorrow will be more productive.
Day 99 - Nov.23
The sun finally peaked out and it was very warm (80 degrees), but the wind was still at 20-25 kts.
We watched an old, naked guy on the boat beside us for awhile. We were anchored fairly close to him, but he certainly had no inhibitions. Quite a few boats came in to anchor today, so it's pretty crowded. Luckily with the wind dropping off this evening, there shouldn't be too much problem with anyone dragging their anchors.
I'm so glad we had the 12V plug put in for the freezer instead of having it run through the inverter. We haven't had to turn on the engine yet and we've been at anchor for two days. The wind generator has been able to handle both the fridge and freezer, along with all the little stuff like lights and radio, etc. This is good news for me as I hate having to recharge the batteries by running the engine.
We think we saw out first manatee the other day. It was just a large brown smudge in the water, but can't think what else it could have been.
Day 100 - Nov. 24
Hmm...100 days. We probably should have done something special to mark 100 days on the boat, but we didn't.
After more then two weeks in Vero Beach and Ft. Pierce, we took advantage of the nice weather and decided to move on to Stuart. We had been hoping to wait to go offshore, but the winds aren't expected to die down until the end of the week and the waves are still 5-9 feet, so it was back on the ICW and motoring for 25 miles. We couldn't get a mooring in Stuart, so we anchored a few miles before the town on the St. Lucie River. It's not a bad spot, but we'll get up early in the morning and head for Lake Worth where I'm hoping I can do the laundry and get some fresh produce. We'll keep our fingers crossed that after a few days there, we'll be able to go offshore to Miami.
27 Celsius here today :)
Day 101 - Nov. 25
Only one more month to Christmas!! :)
I had considered stopping my numbering of days, but as you can see, I'm sticking with it. I have such a bad memory, I figure having the days numbered will help me keep track of where I was and when. For instance, day 100 is approximately 1/3 of the way through our trip and we are in Florida.
What a day! 7 hours to go 27 nm, and our slow speed had nothing to do with the engine. When we left this morning, we were supposed to have 10-15 kt winds. We saw nothing less then 18 kts, mostly 20-21, on the nose, until just before we dropped anchor. We made just barely 4nm/hr on the ICW. I can't imagine what a boat had to put up with if they went outside, especially since the winds were so much stronger than predicted.
We are done with the ICW, even if it means sitting here at Lake Worth for two weeks waiting for a weather window to go outside. With all the bridges and boat traffic, my head just won't take another day on the ICW. Worse case scenario, if we can't get down to Miami in the next couple of weeks, we'll just cross from here to the Bahamas.
We did pass the 1000 mile marker on the ICW today, so that was a bit of a mile stone. We've come just over 2000 nm since leaving home.
Temperature was 86 degrees yesterday and I presume close to that again today ( it was hard to tell with so much wind, but it certainly wasn't cold). It's very overcast now with rain predicted tonight so that may cool things off. Last night we anchored with no boats around... tonight there are about 30 around us. Guess we found the hotspot.
I've been hearing rumours that people think my little ding on the keel looked pretty bad. Putting it into perspective, the labour to fix it was $100 and $30 for material. Picture how much worked you'd get done on your car for that.
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