Crawling up the E. Florida coast

Riggs and I are headed back to Maine, and have a long way to go. But that's OK as we'd like to arrive in Maine with spring weather like we've been having here, and a late May arrival should do the trick, I hope.

It was great to have B.I.L. Dennis aboard, but in Stuart his visit started to suffer. If you check the previous blog entry you'll see that we planned last Sunday's supper as take-home (take-boat?) pizza, which we did. I knew something was up when, after eating 2 slices, Dennis says "that's enough for me, you have the rest". Sure enough, some sort of gastric invader was attacking Dennis, and it was a battle of epic proportions over the next couple of days. I'll hand it to Dennis. He waged a fierce battle yet always maintained a clean and professional appearance.

Anyhow, over Sunday night a front came through, with lightning storms and torrential rains. This kept up through Monday morning, so we hung on our mooring ball in Stuart and stayed dry during the deluge. By noon it had stopped so we unclipped from the mooring, got a pumpout at the marina, and made a very short (7 miles) run to Manatee Pocket, a nice harbor near where the St. Lucie River joins the ICW (at OCW mile 0 and ICW mile 988), where Spray had visited back in January.

I made pasta-with-gorgonzola for Monday dinner, and Dennis had a small bowl, but it was not to be. He had a rough night and on Tuesday, as we cruised up the ICW to Vero Beach (mile 952), Dennis got some rack time. It was a smooth cruise, and we pulled in and clipped onto mooring no. 10 at ~3 pm. We took Riggs to the dog park (he loved it, see below) and then Dennis (ever the trooper) suggested we dighny over to the nearby Riverside Cafe for supper. He was hoping for a light soup such as chicken noodle but the soup that night was cream of broccoli, which Dennis rented a cup of for 1/2 hour or so. Lets just say that during our dinghy ride back to Spray, the people aboard nearby boats got a sunset show they won't soon forget.

On Wednesday, the 3 of us we picked up a rental car and headed to Orlando Intl. Airport, and left Dennis for his flight back to CT. He was a little green around the edges but reportedly handled his flights in good form. I should also point out that, after 2 days giving Spray's head a good workout, Dennis gave the head a thorough cleaning. What a class act!

Riggs and I drove back to Vero, bought some groceries, turned in the car, and were back in time for the dog park then supper aboard Spray. On Thursday we hit the dog park 3 separate times, plus I had Castine/Vero friends Gene and Kathy Spinazola aboard for supper. We had great fun swapping cruising stories. Earlier in the day I had seen new Vero friends the Thomas's move their trawler into a slip at the marina. It turns out they just sold their waterfront home and are now free for some long-term cruising.

I had originally planned to head north on Friday but instead stayed another day in Vero, for an oil-change for Spray's diesel, for more dog park action, and to welcome the Siegels as they sailed into the mooring field. We had supper together at the Lobster Shanty across the river, and we saw them at the dog park this morning, but might not see them again until Castine.

Today we left Vero at 9 am, traveled north some 33 miles, and dropped anchor on the NE lee side of the causeway here in Melbourne (ICW mile 918). Tomorrow we head for as close as we can get to Cape Canaveral. At 6:21 am Monday the space shuttle Discovery is scheduled to launch, and we don't want to miss that.