Vero Beach/Fort Pierce

Well our time in Vero Beach was very busy, hence no blog for the past week and a half! We rented a car for the week and headed to St Petersburg to visit my (Heather) mother Marg and Jack on Tuesday. We had a great time seeing their place for the first time. On Wednesday they took us to Johns Pass for the day, we had a fun time being tourists visiting all the shops! They also took us to the Crab Shack which when you see the outside you would never venture inside but the tell tale sign is a full parking lot! It was very “rustic” ie indoor picnic tables but the food was great, Snow Crab is the main feature so we did try that and it was very good. Richard ordered the Gator nuggets and they were really good, no distinctive flavour, sort of tasted like chicken.. Unfortunatetly we had to leave on Thurseday as we had a part arriving in Vero to fix our leaking injector line and Richard needed to go to Orlando to pick up an antenna for our SSB radio. Our visit was much too short but it was so nice to see family!

Back in Vero Richard was able to get the part working, not without a lot of frustration! We spent the next couple of days provisioning and packing and repacking the boat and Richard picked up more spare parts to add to the already 5 spare parts for every system on the boat…!

On Saturday we spent a fun day with Steve from Slow Flight and Mark and Margie from Tattoo Two (Canning NS) touring around West Marine and the big Marine Surplus store… I cant believe that I now actually enjoy snooping around “those” stores! Richard was happy to find a spare windlass remote control in case the one he fixed in Elizabeth City broke. We ended the day with a great meal and fellowship at Outback Steakhouse before heading back to our boats. Sunday was a very busy day as we picked up our last minute provisions and repacked our already overstuffed boat, in the evening we were invited to a potluck on Tattoo Two and had a fun evening with good food and singing with them and Paul and Phylis who were rafted up to them.

Monday we returned the car, took on water and diesel and were once again on our way headed for Fort Pierce. We pulled in shortly after lunch and anchored close to Steve on Slow Flight who had left earlier that morning. It was great to see Ken and Merydie and Laurie and Francis again. We had happy hour on Steves boat with two other couples in the anchorage and then Ken and Merydie came out to our boat and we had a great time catching up on each others news.

Tuesday morning Ken took Richard and Steve to West Marine and a fishing store where Richard somehow found even more stuff he needed, this time for “catching the big one” later in the day Merydie and I made a trip to Walmart where I purchased a bit more meat for the freezer… not that I don’t have faith in Richards fishing capabilities but…. Richard and John helped Steve take his boat out in Harbourside where he will work on the bottom over the next couple days. Richard ran into Warren and Diane while he was over there. We enjoyed happy hour at the marina with Ken, Merydie, Laurie, Francis, Steve and John and his wife.

We had planned on staying for another day or so but after breakfast we noticed the boat beside us was dragging and when we tried to tighten up our lines the current was against us, we tried reversing but the engine seemed to be smoking our thought was that the lines were wrapped around the shaft so Richard dove on it but it was clear. (24 degrees) We were dragging at this point and heading towards a shoal and the bridge so Richard put out our stern anchor. We managed to get the snubber lines on to the boat and Richard took the dinghy out to retrieve our stern anchor. Once up and safely away from the shallows we decided to leave this anchorage and head for Manatee Pocket about 20 miles down as the current here was strong, more high winds were in the forecast and there were already a lot of boats in this area.

We arrived in Manatee Pocket at around 2 PM and found a snug spot for the night. Manatee Pocket is near Stuart where we originally bought the boat 9 years ago. Just like a horse going back to it’s barn after a ride I think the boat knew where we were going to, we got up to 8.50 knots with the motor on and a strong wind behind us! Richard got a lift into town to pick up some prefilters for the water maker, so hopefully when we soon get to better waters we can try it out.