Stuart, Florida

Our goal for today is to reach Stuart, the last stop on our trek south and only a short cab ride from home -- the plan is to leave the boat on a mooring for a few days while we unload and clean her up and then put her "on the hard" until next spring. Originally I was hoping to put the boat in a slip in a marina that is a 5 minute walk from our home but we were unable to contact it -- it appears that it was a victim of the economic downturn and is strictly "private" at this point.

Our route would take us south on the Indian river, turn west at the St. Lucie inlet and then north up the St. Lucie river for a few miles to Stuart. We would be leaving on a rising tide: the current would be with us until about halfway down to the inlet; against us to the inlet, then with us again until we arrived in Stuart.

The condo building we lived in before we moved into the house; Nettles Island is in the left foreground

The area where the Intercoastal meets the St. Lucie river is called the crossroads  -- it is an area of shifting shoals and temporary markers -- there are many sand bars that can trap the unwary. The channels are well marked but can be confusing because it is a 5 way intersection (Intercoastal in/out, St. Lucie river in/out and an offshoot that goes to the Manatee pocket) and there is always a lot of traffic. Fortunately, we had been through the crossroads a few previous times on other people's boats, so we had no real trouble navigating through.

The weather was threatening all morning, but it never rained. We arrived in Stuart about lunchtime and put My Weigh on the courtesy dock offered by the marina -- it would make unloading the boat much easier. We emptied the refrigerator and packed and unloaded all of our bags, piling them up at the marina office -- it was pretty impressive pile by the time we were done. We then dropped off the courtesy dock and motored out to our mooring.

The mooring loop was overgrown with barnacles, so overgrown I was concerned that they would 'saw' through our mooring line if we were to tie up. We called the marina and they sent someone out to clean it off -- we motored around the anchorage while we waited.  A half hour later, My Weigh was safely riding on her mooring and we were waving goodbye to her as we made our way to the dock on the launch.

We called a cab and shortly thereafter were home -- of course, nothing is that simple  -- when we got to our house, we discovered that we had no Air Conditioning or Internet -- but that is another story ......

Fort Pierce, Florida

We awoke to the chattering of the birds as they were leaving the islet in small groups -- pretty much the reverse of what we had watched the previous dusk.

.Our goal for today is Fort Pierce, our last stop before home. This would be a long day, 35 or so miles -- we would pass through Sebastian and Vero Beach along the way. There is one "on demand" bridge at Fort Pierce, our anchorage is just south of it. The sun was out, there was a nice SE breeze and the current would be mostly with us -- all in all a long, but relatively straightforward day.

Arriving in St. Lucie county, which allows High Rises on the beach

This odd looking building is part of Florida Atlantic university, right on the Intercoastal

We arrived at our anchorage in mid-afternoon -- there were a few other boats in it, including one that was a floating advertisement. We dropped our hook between the channel and some other boats, there was plenty of room for everyone -- life was good -- we went for a swim.

The Fort Pierce Marina floating ad

There was some current, but not too bad

And that's when the trouble started ..... Sue and I were both in the water, which was a bright green and just wonderful, when the cruiser on the boat off our port stern, started yelling at us that we were "too close" to her boat. Apparently she was below when we anchored and now, having come on deck and seen where we were, decided that we were encroaching on her space.

Of course, I felt that there was ample room between her boat and mine -- if I hadn't, I wouldn't have dropped the hook there in the first place. I am pretty careful that way -- I tend to anchor as far away as I can from all obstacles, sometimes pulling up and dropping the anchor an extra time or two to get things "just right" -- this hadn't been one of those situations -- we both had plenty of swing room -- I am unsure what her problem is.

This woman stood on her deck watching us, and occasionally yelling, the whole time we were in the water, we took our showers and raised the dinghy (we had dragged it since Cocoa and now wanted it up for tomorrow) -- clearly she was having a problem with our proximity. When I finally was done with the swim, the shower and raising the dinghy, I tried to get her to use the radio to talk about it -- she just kept yelling and wouldn't get on the radio.

Eventually I concluded that there was not going to be any peace in the neighborhood unless I moved -- which is what I did -- perhaps another 2 boat lengths away. As we were moving the boat, another cruiser, from the boat off our starboard stern, dinghyed over -- yelling "Welcome to Fort Pierce ..... you didn't have to move ...  there is plenty of room" -- he apparently either also had a run in with this woman or saw another run in -- I am not sure. In any case, we moved -- you meet all kinds.

We spent the rest of the day in peace, looking forward and excited about finally going home tomorrow.

One postscript -- I was on deck blogging after dusk when I heard fish jumping around the boat. I grabbed a light to investigate. Primarily off the rear quarter and stern, small fish j(perhaps 2-3 inches long) were jumping out of the water to escape bigger fish (say 18-24 inches) that were feeding on them from below. I could see the little guys quite clearly but only occasionally caught a glimpse of the larger fish. This lasted for about 15 minutes -- apparently a school of bait fish chose to hang out  under My Weigh and the big guys heard the dinner bell -- fascinating to watch!

Rocky Point, Indian River

We awoke to a nice sunny (and yes, hot) day and set our sights on getting to an anchorage on the Indian River (Rocky Point). We would stop in Melbourne, the next big town, to refuel, get a pump out and some ice -- our last provisioning stop before getting home. Then we would enter a stretch of the Indian river that is less populated and quite beautiful, consisting of a 20 mile or so line of small islets on one side of the channel and with a barrier island off in the distance on the other side. The islets are mostly man-made -- constructed  from the tailings when the Intercoastal was first dredged -- most have become treed at this point and harbor a lot of bird life. Our anchorage would be behind one of these islets.

Cocoa in our "rear view mirror"

There are no bridges and/or significant currents in this stretch of the Intercoastal, so travel would be uncomplicated. The only notable occurrence was the surly marina attendant at our Melbourne stop -- thus far, every marina we visited has gone out of its way to be helpful and provide whatever service we needed -- this guy barely spoke to us, seemed resentful that we had called him out into the heat and wouldn't take a paper towel with a little diesel on it when I handed him back the pump (he said: "No, there's a garbage can at the end of the dock you can use") -- he was clearly having a bad hair day.

More birds of the Intercoastal:

"Honestly Harriet, George just doesn't know how to listen to me !"

An osprey fledgling

Along the way, I noticed a helicopter landing on a big building -- being near Kennedy Space Center, I figured it was some corporate big wig coming in for an Executive review -- wrong!!! Upon more careful examination with the binoculars, I discovered the building was a hospital -- a Heart Center no less -- made me wonder of they weren't delivering a heart for a transplant (only one person got off).

The helicopter is on the roof, under the red sign.

We arrived at our anchorage around mid-afternoon, dropping the hook behind the northeast corner of the islet. We were nicely placed in a moderate SE breeze and the islet nicely cut any wave action to a minimum -- just delightful. We could see birds lounging and feeding off a sandbar that jutted West from the rear of the islet and there was even a small boat on shore, indicating someone had come out to visit that day.

Behind the islet -- you can see the small boat on the beach

We quickly dropped the swim platform and went in for a swim. While we were swimming, we noticed two or three dolphins lazily feeding along the sand bar about 20 yards away  -- they would come up and go down slowly, presumably just scooping up the fish we could see jumping in the water. We (well I, Sue got out of the water when she saw the dolphins) were hoping that they might come closer, but they kept their distance -- whether it was because they knew we were there or not, we'll never know.

This anchorage had one more special treat for us: we were both sitting on deck reading around dusk -- suddenly we noticed flocks of birds, perhaps 10-20 at a time, heading in toward the island. Terns, gulls, ibis, pelican, storks, ....  we could see them, group after group, flying in towards the islet. They appeared to be coming "home" for evening, presumably needing a place to sleep and recharge their batteries before starting the next day's foraging and feeding activity. Wondering whether this scene was also being played on the other islets, we got out our binoculars looked at the next islets up and down the chain -- it was!! As dusk grew deeper, the chattering from the birds grew louder until it abruptly stopped shortly after dark -- nature is truly amazing.

There's an obvious bird flying in, but if you look carefully, there are many more visible in the trees

Cocoa, Florida

We awoke to a sunnier, less threatening day weather wise -- while Thunderstorms were still a possibility, the sky seemed much more optimistic than the forecast.

Our destination today is Cocoa, Florida -- billed as a slice of old Florida, we were hoping to find some sign of NASA's heyday when many of the astronauts played there -- indeed, supposedly many of them kept a "Cape Cookie" (i.e., a girl-friend) in the town . A short trip, we figured we'd spend the afternoon taking an exercise walk and seeing the town.

We got up, had breakfast, dropped the mooring and took off, our usual morning routine. However, as I accelerated away from the mooring, the engine exhaust sounded funny --  it looked normal with both water and exhaust coming out, but it had a hollow, throaty sound, indicating that perhaps there wasn't enough water flowing through the engine.  Not wanting any problems later that day, I turned the boat around and we put her back on the mooring to investigate. Sure enough, the intake strainer and hose, were clogged with eel grass -- I had noticed some patches on the surface around the boat the last day or so (first time on the trip), but hadn't thought much about them -- obviously I would need to pay more careful attention going forward. After clearing the grass and reassembling the strainer, we started the engine and it sounded fine -- another bullet dodged.

I just liked the curve of this Titusville bridge !

Leaving Titusville, literally in our wake

The trip to Cocoa included a drive by of NASA's Kennedy Space Center on Merritt Island, marked by the prominent Vehicle Assembly Building, one of the largest buildings by volume on the planet -- it didn't look all that impressive as we were a fair distance away.  We also saw lots of dolphins along the way -- some days they are everywhere we look, others nowhere to be found.

NASA's Vehicle Assembly Building

I liked the reflection of the clouds in the calm water

This was a 20 mile or so trip -- we were on the hook before noon, had lunch on board and then dropped the dinghy to go in, take an exercise walk and see what we could see.

The dinghy ride in was a bit of a hassle; the guidebook indicated that the town had a municipal dinghy dock -- usually these are floating docks but this one was only a few small dilapidated finger docks with no cleats and no ladders -- not the easiest to get on and off.  The guidebook had also mentioned that an adjacent marina had a dinghy dock that we might use, so we motored over there, only to find that it too was just finger docks (but with cleats and ladders). We tied up  but then shortly discovered that we couldn't get out of the marina -- it had become a private marina and access to the street was through a key locked door -- oh well! Retracing our steps back to the dinghy. we motored over to the municipal dock once again -- this time tying up and climbing up and out of the dinghy to get up to the finger dock -- well, we did say we wanted some exercise, didn't we?

All the time this was going on, the sky was threatening and we could hear thunder continuously off in the distance -- threatening, but yet the sun was out and blazing hot where we were.

Cocoa is a slice of old Florida -- its main street is a patchwork of shops and restaurants in old buildings on a curving street with head-in parking -- quaint but short. After quickly touring the mainstreet area (and having an ice cream), we took about an hour walk around. Once you get away from the town center, housing is mostly old Florida ranch's intermixed with commercial buildings -- zoning was clearly an afterthought. At one point when we thought a downpour was going to start, we ducked into a furniture consignment shop to avoid the rain and cool off a bit -- that, and a visit to the local Mega Bird Store ("Florida's largest place for birds" -- an unbelievably noisy place with bird squalor everywhere) were the "highlights" of our visit !

Main street looking east

Main Street looking west

Sue with friends

Goofy me

Having tuckered ourselves out, we circled back to the dinghy and headed back to the boat. Despite all the dramatic dark clouds and ominous distant thunder, we never got rained on -- too bad, it might have helped some with the heat :-) We had an almost full moon this evening -- very bright!

We used the sun to dry out laundry which had gotten drenched when I left a window open during an earlier squall !

Moon-rise over Merritt Island

You can see the moon's details ("the man in the moon") in this one !

Titusville, Florida

We awoke to a rainy morning -- while we had gotten no additional thunderstorms overnight, it had rained on and of and that trend was clearly going to continue at least through the morning.

Today we are setting our sights on Titusville, the so-called "Space City" on Florida's east coast -- about 35 miles south and just across from  NASA's launch facility at Cape Kennedy, we thought we'd stop and take a look around.  We thought about visiting Cap Kennedy itself but decided it would be better to wait to bring grandkids there.

Our route would take us down the Mosquito River and through a connecting canal (aptly named the Haulover canal) to the to the Indian River -- this is the first concrete sign that we are in the home stretch of our two month journey -- the Indian  River runs for about 125 miles along Florida's East coast and we live close to its other end -- it is a short walk from our home in Jensen Beach.

The weather was overcast and threatening -- we did catch a couple of short squalls as we motored along -- nothing dramatic, mostly just a dull rain. We saw our first Manatee of the trip in the Haulover canal -- actually I should Sue that Sue saw it, I never did -- she caught its tail as it dove on the side of our boat as we motored through.

Scenes along the way:

A crowded bird breakfast bar

I never get tired of snapping pictures of the elusive dolphins

Cormorants, one drying his/her wings 

Blue Heron

We picked up a mooring at the Titusville Municipal Marina -- they didn't have a launch service so we had to put down the dinghy to get back and forth to the boat. The marina was clean and  convenient to downtown -- Sue wanted to do her hair, so I hung out and worked on the blog for the hour or so it took her to get done. We then took off to explore the town a bit and perhaps grab some dinner.

Downtown Titusville was a disappointment, at least the part we saw was -- a short walk from our manina, there were few stores and most were closed -- even the restaurants were closed (perhaps because it was a Sunday night). In any case, the town definitely looked past its prime and there was no sign of any NASA generated prosperity (or, for that matter, history). This was a bust, time to move on.

With some help from the marina (we called them for suggestions/directions), we stopped at a nice riverside restaurant on the way back and had some appies and a glass of wine. The restaurant was located on an islet on the river -- you had to cross a small wooden bridge to get to it. The bridge  had a few people fishing off of it (a very common sight in Florida) -- as we returned from our dinner, the fishermen were all pointing and chattering about a manatee that was feeding along the waterway that ran under the bridge. We got a great view from him (her?) from above -- it was huge (8' long?), but I missed the photo-op :-(.

On the way back to the boat, we took a short cut through a park and encountered a sign next to a pond that said "Beware of Alligators". Sue and I have been having a ongoing debate about whether Alligators are a danger when we swim in the Intercoastal -- in sections where the water is mildly brackish (i.e., almost fresh), that is a possibility -- alligators don't like and can't survive in salt water. While we were in some mildly brackish water in North Carolina (near the Dismal Swamp), alligators don't range that far north. In Georgia and Florida, where alligators are very common, fresh water bodies are always a danger and if you are brackish water like the Intercoastal, well, look before you leap :-)

See, I told you there were alligators here.

It was almost dark by the time we got back to the boat -- there was a cool breeze and no current; we both sat on the deck for a while to enjoy it -- sleeping tonight would be no problem. at all.

New Smyrna, Florida

Our plan for today is to get to New Smyrna, a place whose founding history we had learned about in St. Augustine.

New Smyrna was founded by about 1300 Minorcans (an island off of Spain), Greeks and a few Italians who were recruited by a British doctor in the mid-1700's  to create an "instant" colony -- no one had attempted to settle so many people in one place before. The vision was that these predominantly fisher/farmer people would grow hemp, indigo and sugar cane and produce rum as indentured servants. The colony collapsed because of insect-born diseases, Indian attacks and poor pay and mistreatment by the British owners and overseers. After 10 years of hardship, the surviving 600 settlers marched to St. Augustine and became members of that community -- many of their descendants still live there today. The St. Photios National Shrine which we had visited in St. Augustine told us this story and was created to commemorate the New Smyrna Colony Greeks,  the first Greek Orthodox in the New World.

Our route would take us by Flagler and Daytona Florida, the former named after a man intimately tied to Florida's history and what it has become today, the latter home to the famous car race and equally infamous "Spring Break" shenanigans.

Henry Flagler was a turn of the century tycoon, one of the founder's of Standard Oil. His interest in Florida started when he and his first wife spent time in Jacksonville on the advice of her doctor to help with her consumption. Over time, he became enamored with the idea of Florida becoming an "American Riviera", retired from the Oil industry and focused his energy and talents building many resorts and hotels down its East Coast -- he also built the Florida East Coast railway to connect it all -- initially intending to have the terminus at West Palm, he eventually extended the railway to Miami and ultimately, Key West. He is considered the "Father of Miami" and his name appears on statues, buildings and institutions all over the state.

Our trip was long but fortunately, we had the current with us all the way and we didn't have to wait on any of the 3 bascule bridges we traversed (all "open on request"). The only notable difficulty was carefully picking or way through shallow shoals near the Ponce De Leon inlet, and even that only cost us a few minutes -- in all we covered over 45 miles or so, one of our longer days.

Scenes along the way:

Piling forest in the morning light

No shortage of lovely homes along the Intercoastal

An all too familiar scene in Florida, this was the fist mobile home community we saw on the Intercoastal

No, I am not a wind-vane !

Storks we startled off a tree

Crabbing along the Intercoastal

Passing by Flagler Beach

Storm clouds over Daytona -- we were gone before it broke

We arrived at our anchorage in New Smyrna by mid-afternoon -- the clouds were gathering and it appeared like a thunderstorm might be brewing. The anchorage was large, but there were some permanently moored boats in it, leaving us little room outside of the Intercoastal to fit our boat.  There was an empty mooring, which I thought about picking up, but decided that having to move during a storm was not worth the chance. We dropped our hook a good distance away from this mooring,but ended up a couple of boat lengths away from it because we dragged a good distance before the anchor bit -- no worry, I figured, even in the very unlikely scenario where we dragged into the mooring during a storm, an empty mooring couldn't do much harm.

Of course, things are never that simple. Shortly after we settled into our quiet time on deck, a boat showed up and picked up the mooring, cutting the effective distance between us to perhaps 1-2 boat lengths -- still reasonable but upping the stakes if we were to drag into it during the storm.

About an hour later the anticipated storm happened -- it was a big one, strong wind gusts pushed the boat around, thunder and lightning surrounded us and multiple "can't see your hand in front of your face" downpours. Given the close proximity of the other boat, I opted to turn on the engine and stay at the helm just in case we did end up dragging during the storm -- we didn't -- our anchor never budged.

Thoroughly soaked, happy nothing amiss had happened and still smarting a bit from the reminder how strong storms can get, we quietly pulled up our anchor and moved a few more boat lengths away just in case we got another storm overnight.

Palm Coast, Florida

Today's objective was to go 25 or so miles down the Matanzas river -- unfortunately, we would be fighting the ebb current we had ridden into St. Augustine, so 25 miles would be about all we could reasonably do . There aren't a lot of anchorages in this part of the Intercoastal, so we picked a marina that sounded nice as our destination (the Hammock Beach Resort Marina).

In Spanish, Matanzas means "slaughter"-- the  river's name commemorates the massacre of a few hundred shipwrecked French Huguenots by the founder of St. Augustine, Pedro Menendez de Aviles. Being protestant, and unwilling to convert to Catholicism, they were put to the sword by Aviles when their ship grounded during a storm just south of the city -- medieval mindset, much like ISIS is today.

The trip was frustratingly slow because of the bucking current and we had to pick our way through some very thin water at the Matanzas inlet.

Scenes along the way:

Reflections, just can't resist snapping them

The fish on the roof just screams "Bed and Breakfast", doesn't it :-)

The architect clearly had issues with right  angles !

The frustrations of the trip were quickly forgotten once we arrived at the marina in early afternoon -- as it turned out, it was part of a huge resort complex two miles away and our slip fees, which were very reasonable, included full access to the resorts facilities, including 7 pools, (a beach pool, a lazy river pool and a water-slide pool among them), two miles of ocean beaches, golf courses (not that we were interested in them), multiple bars and restaurants and a free shuttle service at our beck and call to get around -- we had stumbled into marina paradise :-)

Our chosen marina was nice enough, but ......

..... the resort that came with it was unbelievable !! (Picture filched from resort's website)

It was overdue, so we spent a little while cleaning up the boat (a clean ship is a happy ship), then put on our bathing suits, called the shuttle and went off to play at the main resort. Soon thereafter, we were lazily lying in inner tubes, winding our way around the lazy river -- this was the life! Sadly, we had no sooner settled into some beach chairs to order a sundowner, when our outdoor activities were abruptly terminated by a stealth Florida Thunderstorm -- a huge black cloud crept over the property and abruptly thunder, lightening and inches of rain were upon us. Not to be outwitted by the weather, we had brought shower gear and clothing changes with us -- we simply shifted our play strategy to a nice dinner at one of the resorts nicer restaurants.

Poolside just before the Thunderstorm broke

The dark cloud gathers over the resort -- torrential rain started moments later

A shower and short shuttle ride later (to avoid getting drenched), we were sitting at a table overlooking the Atlantic Ocean (low building to the left in the resort picture above), enjoying the fireworks outside as well as the cuisine inside -- all in all, a very nice day.

St, Augustine, Florida

Today we are heading for St. Augustine -- our plan is to get there early, take a mooring at the municipal marina and tour the town.

St Augustine bills itself a the oldest "continuously occupied European settlement" in America -- a mouthful. Settled in 1565, it will be 450 years old next year -- that's very old for anything American. It should have called itself the "hottest bargaining chit in the New World". Originally settled by the Spanish, the city (and by extension, Florida itself), was never actually taken by force during the struggles to colonize the New World even though it was attacked many times. Rather, it was traded by Spain to England (for Havana), then ceded back to Spain by England at the end of the Revolutionary War and perhapos a decade later traded by Spain back to the U.S. in return for a defined border in the west between the two countries.

The city has gone to great lengths to preserve its history and tell its story -- there are many historical attractions in town: the Spanish fort, a colonial history quarter, many preserved buildings and street from the Spanish and colonial eras, a schoolhouse that dates from the early 1700's, the cleverly named Ponce De Leon Fountain of Youth Archaeological Park (which is supposedly built on the spot that he first landed in Florida and, among many other things, will sell you some water from a local spring).

The trip was pretty routine -- we have become used to seeing dolphins continuously along the Intercoastal and were not disappointed.  The only other notable event was navigating across the St. Augustine inlet to get to the city, which is situated behind an island just south of the inlet entrance. Like many inlets, this one is small and has a bad shoaling problem -- so bad that the charts don't show a path for the Intercoastal because the buoys move so frequently -- the guidebook made it sound very difficult to navigate, but it was well-marked and straightforward (a good thing!).

Scene along the way:  was this boat abandoned or anchored in a creek we couldn't see -- we'll never know !!

What was notable was that we had to make  "right turn" in the mouth of the inlet to go up and around the island -- coming into the turn we were doing over 7 knots; after the turn we could barely do 3.5 -- the inlet was on full ebb. Once around the turn, we were in a race with time to get through the next bascule bridge -- if we didn't get within 8 minutes, the tender told us we would half to wait the half hour for the next opening. It was an agonizingly slow race but we made it (with the tender's help, he graciously delayed his opening by a couple of minutes) -- shortly after we exited the bridge we were on a mooring at our marina home for the visit.

Just before the bridge, this 200' high cross supposedly marks the spot where the city's founder, Pedro Aviles, first set foot on land

The St. Augustine bascule bridge, the most attractive of all we've seen on the Intercoastal

 We caught a launch shuttle in (the marina's launch service only runs every other hour) and toured the town. We started by taking the "red train", a 45 minute open jitney ride round the town that points out all of the major attractions -- a bit hokey but it did give us a good feeling for the town's layout and helped us pick what we really wanted to see.

We then spent the rest of the day walking around to visit what interested us, namely: George Street (the Main Street of the city's colonial period), an 18th century one room schoolhouse, the St. Photios National Shrine of the Greek Orthodox Church (commemorates the first Greek Orthodox settlers in the New World -- see the Blog entry for New Smyrna for the full story), the fort that defended the city during the colonial period and always managed to repel any invaders (Castillo de San Marcos) and a reproduction of the colonial village.

George Street, in the colonial section of town

The  Greek Orthodox shrine -- small but beautiful !

The one room schoolhouse

Schoolhouse Interior (with animatronics teacher & students)

The fort was made from a rare form of limestone,, Coquina, which hardens when exposed to air

Built on a hill, surrounded by a moat and with walls that would simply "absorb" cannon balls, it was highly defensible!

One of the Fort's Battery's overlooking the Matanzas river which bounds the east  side of the city.