Tonight we are anchored in Manatee Pocket, a busy harbor near Stuart FLA and also near the St. Lucie Inlet. Because of the inlet, this is sportfishing boat country, where they chase sailfish and other gamefish.
When we leave here tomorrow we have the option of turning left and heading west and across Lake Okeechobee to Florida's west coast, or turning right and continuing on the ICW southwards towards Miami and the Keys. When Riggs and I did this trip 4 years ago it was very cold, with nighttime lows in the 30's and daytime highs in the 50's, so the decision was easy : Go South!
This year it's different. Temperatures in Florida have been cycling up and down, with occasional cool days interspersed with plenty of warm days (today was 80 and humid). So there is no big drive to push farther south for warmer weather (I may feel different in a couple of days).
It's a little odd having no fixed schedule or pressing appointments. Our main goal is to get back to Maine sometime in May. Other than that we have had only two loose goals : to spend some time (probably a month) in Marathon (in the Keys) and to visit Sarasota (west coast) to touch base with some Castine friends who winter over there. Until now we weren't positive as to which we would do first, and by tomorrow morning, we must decide.
We're going to stick with Plan A, which is to head south to the Keys first. While we hang out there we can do some scraping and painting on Spray, and we'll keep the bikes on shore so we can use them easily. January is the coldest month in Florida so well spend later January and early February in the warmest part of the state. Then, in mid February we'll head up the west coast of FLA to Sarasota, visit there until we are thrown out, and eventually cross Okeechobee west to east and then turn northwards towards Maine.
So that's the future, what about the recent past? We have moved from Florida's Space Coast to its Treasure Coast. This past Tuesday we cruised from Cocoa to Melbourne, with a following N wind. At first we anchored south of the Eau Gallie bridge near Melbourne, but the bridge causeway didn't block the waves as we had hoped, so we moved Spray into a small anchorage up the Eau Gallie River a bit. That was very well protected and surrounded by many splendid homes, 2 small marinas, and a county park for the dogs (and for storks as you can see above). It was here that we spent New Years Eve, and some of the neighboring homeowners provided some fireworks off their docks (or so I was told by Sheila - I was asleep).
On New Years Day we cruised down to Vero Beach and by mid afternoon we grabbed an open mooring in their mooring field, which is run by Vero Beach Municipal Marina. Cruisers know Vero Beach as 'Velcro Beach', because staying there is addictive and it becomes hard to leave. They have a large dinghy dock, a nice shoreside facility with showers, a lounge, and laundry, and adjacent dog park (yay!), and free town busses to take you shopping or to the beach. Also, to stay on one of their moorings in a protected lagoon costs less than $15/day. So we did much dog play at the park, took many showers, did laundry, joined other cruisers for the Thursday pot-luck happy hour, and took the bus to grocery shopping. As a special treat, our Castine friends Gene and Kathy Spinazola, who winter here, came for lunch at nearby Riverside Cafe and we swapped cruising stories.
We stayed at Vero Beach for 4 nights, and it really was tough to decide to press on. It was the gnats that clinched it. The well protected mooring field there is surrounded by mangroves, and when it its warm and winds are light, the 'noseeums' come out at night, and are nasty. We made some new screens for Spray to try to keep them out, but it was only partly effective. Since today was going to be warm with light winds, we decided to get the holding tank emptied, water tank filled, and to cruise on.
33 miles later and here we are in Manatee Pocket. Today was flying bridge weather, hot and humid, and my sunburn is refreshed. We did see a line of storm clouds ahead and just before we arrived we transferred downstairs and arrived to on-and-off rain, and its still hot here, and yes, there are a few gnats. From what I see on the weather report, its going to turn quite cold later tomorrow and through Tuesday. That should knock the gnats back. We will be somewhere south of here by then.
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