Velcro Beach

 Many cruisers call Vero Beach, "Velcro Beach", because cruisers like it there so much they tend to get stuck and don't leave. It is a great place for us in this lifestyle mainly because of the easy access to on-shore facilities and a great cruiser community. The management of the marina is also very cruiser friendly and easy to work with, unlike the very antagonistic management in Marathon. Probably the best thing at Vero is the bus system. The city bus system stops right at the marina and provides transportation all over town. And did I mention it is totally free? The bus drivers are very helpful. I have gotten to know a couple of them by name, but the star of the show is a driver named Ian. He is an awesome guy that is from England and used to drive a school bus in Forsyth, Missouri for a few years. 

After our first night of great sleep, we went out to dinner with Bob and Sheila and a bunch of other cruisers celebrating one of their birthdays. On New Years eve, we went over to Bob and Sheila's boat to watch the National Championship Semi-final Football games. They are from Georgia and were hoping to see University of Georgia go for their second National Championship in a row. We had an awesome time watching the two unbelievable games. We stayed up until after midnight as the decisive play in the Georgia win was right at Midnight. We haven't done that in many years. Thanks Bob and Sheila for the awesome time!

We then got some news that could have possibly changed our plans. We are in the process of selling our ranch in Missouri. We are part owners in this ranch. We use it for storage, so if it sells we need to go back and get organized and then move our stuff. Our stuff includes our 39 foot 5th wheel, F-350 truck and Kim's Mustang as well as my motorcycles and tools. Before we could even list the property we had a potential buyer. That drama went on for about 2 weeks, before it turned out to be a false alarm. 

While that was all going on, we kept busy by playing Pickelball and hanging out with new friends. We met another couple on a Island Packet from Wisconsin named Jon and Sue. We went to the beach and rode the bus all over town finding the things we needed to get the boat ready to go. I did oil changes and other needed maintenance on the engine. I was able to finally order some parts and have them delivered to the marina. I also shipped my bad alternator (that failed up in North Carolina) to a place in Ft. Lauderdale to have it repaired. 

We have to have a Kim on a beach picture.

Vero has a nice beach, but much of it was washed away in the recent hurricanes. They are doing restoration by trucking in sand and they have to fix the stairs from the boardwalk down to the beach. 

It is easy to change oil on my engine with the built in extraction pump.

A shot of the beach from the boardwalk.

We had some nice days while we were in Vero.

 Once the issue with the ranch sale was mostly resolved, we got serious about provisioning for our trip to the Bahamas. We knew we needed a lot of food. We were guessing well over $1000 at Walmart Prices. And yes, our boat will store all of that food with Kim's excellent organization skills. 

Our plan was to make multiple trips on the bus. We had done two trips of as much as we could carry, when our boat neighbor offered us his car. Thank You Stuart! We gladly accepted. We loaded his minivan down and then brought all of that back to the boat in the dinghy. With all of that food, we exceeded the $1000 mark, but knew we would save a lot of money by not buying food, other than fresh while we were in the Bahamas. 

I had made a list of all that needed to be done. That list was now complete, except the alternator was not ready. No big deal, ours has been working fine, so we decided to just ship it to my son Mark's house in Missouri and we would get it later. It was now January 14th. We were excited, nervous and a million other things. 

The only thing left to do was to say good bye and start the trip that we had been dreaming of for more than 3 years. We will start that adventure in my next entry.