On to Vero Beach - Not Without Problems

 In my last entry, I wrote about our trip from St. Mary's, Georgia to St. Augustine, Florida. We left St. Augustine the morning after we arrived. We had good weather and we wanted to take advantage of it. We left at first light and headed south. The first part was very calm and we cruised along at about 5 knots up against a bit of current. We had to open one bridge, but that went very smoothly. 

We had been hearing for most of the day about a dredge that was working at Matansas River Inlet. He was sitting right in the middle of the channel and he was talking to each boat on the radio giving instructions. When we arrived at about 10:00 am, I tried to call him on the radio. He did not reply. I decided to follow the instructions that he had given to some boats in front of us. There was a green can buoy on the far right side of the channel that you had to go beyond and then turn 90 degrees to port and pass right in front of the dredge and then continue on from there. I made the turn after the green, but as it turned out...too soon. Before I knew it we hit a shoal. The boat lurched to a stop. I tried to move forward, but I was hard aground. We sat there for a bit and checked the tide tables. It looked like we were right at low tide. We decided to wait a bit to see if we could get more water under us. A couple of other boats came by and made it through. A motor vessel came through and when his wakes hit us we moved a bit. I decided to try to back out with the next wakes. I did not have to wait long. When the wakes hit us, I had the boat in reverse and hit the throttle hard. The boat slowly started to move. We got into deeper water and moved south of the shoal and right up against the dredge. We made it around and were a bit shaken, but on our way.

That little incident made a long day even longer. The rest of the trip was long, but uneventful. We arrived in Daytona Beach at about 4:30 pm after making 47.6 nm, our longest day of the trip so far. We had a nice sunset, then rested up for the next day.

Sundown in Dayton Beach

I took a picture of this boat because we just keep seeing them. This is Bright Ayes. She is a beautiful Caliber. This boat was anchored right next to us in St. Mary's. We saw them in St. Augustine, they passed us while we were aground. And now they are in the mooring field in Vero beach. We have still not met the couple on the boat. That is just the way it goes some times. 

We were up early the next day and were greeted by this amazing sunrise. 

The next day was November 7th. That is Kim's Birthday. I promised to take her out to dinner when we got off the boat in Titusville. We had a 40 mile day planned and it all went well. We pulled into The Titusville mooring field at about 3:00pm. Kim had been on the phone with both her children and siblings much of the day, but I knew the long call was yet to come. Just as we got ashore, her phone rang and it was her sister. They don't talk often, but when they do, it can last hours. I took care of our mooring fees and then took a shower. She was still on the phone. I waited patiently. When the call ended it was closing in on dark. We did not have our lights on the dinghy. We decided to go get a pizza and take it to the park next to the marina and celebrate her birthday. I also promised we would go out when we got to Vero Beach. The good news is that she was happy with that.

Her birthday did not end there. There was a SpaceX launch about 15 miles from our mooring field. It was scheduled for just after midnight, but we made it part of the day. 

That is not the sun, that is a Falcon 9 taking to the sky.

It was a clear, windless night. Kim and I love to see these launches.

One last shot as the booster separates from the rest of the rocket. 

We did not get up early the next morning. We went to shore and then got the dinghy ready to travel. We only went 30 miles on November 8th and stopped in Melbourne. The weather was great for now, but we only had one more good day before the weather got bad. 

On the 10th we made the final 36nm to Vero Beach. We had traveled 6 straight days and I was really looking forward to sitting still for a few days. We love Vero Beach City Marina. We had lots to do here and the weather was looking bad. We were also thinking of a really crazy plan. That plan didn't happen, but an even crazier plan did happen. I will tell you all about it in my next entry.