Not much to say about Sunday. It was a sunny day and we made really good time to the anchorage due east of Sebastian, got there around 1:30. The Atlantic was just on the other side of a narrow causeway and I’m pretty sure I could hear the waves breaking on shore later at night when there was little road traffic on the A1A. One other sailboat anchored in the bay.
We left early on Monday morning, before 7am, the sun wasn’t over the horizon yet but there was lots of light to see and avoid the crab pots. We wanted to time arriving at Fort Pierce at what we thought would be slack tide. Bob had read warnings about tricky currents entering the marina.
Monday had more interesting sights and variety on the ICW than the last couple of days. There were lots of little islands with sandy beaches and many had small boats pulled ashore with families fishing from shore. We also went through a couple of areas with huge mansions on manicured properties. Since arriving in Florida we’ve continued to see a lot of storm damaged boats, either beached on shore or in some cases sunk off channel with just masts sticking out of the water – could be Matthew or Irma.
We arrived at the channel to the marina a little after 11 and despite our calculations there was quite a bit of current. However, other than dealing with a large trawler coming out of the channel who didn’t seem to want to move out of the middle of the channel – we ended up passing starboard to starboard instead of the usual port to port, Bob did just fine.
Our slip is in the live aboards area, not on floating docks, but the tide is only about 1.5 feet so it’s not an issue. We are stern in and with a bit of current/wind had a moderately interesting time getting into the slip. Randy the dock hand was waiting for us and passing him an extended boat hook to start with did the trick. It’s a half finger dock so Bob got to practice lassoing to attach lines to pylons at the front of the boat. The rub rails have come in handy in Florida, especially at fuel docks lined with wooden pylons but also docking at our slip today.
This is probably the last post until we’re back here in late December. We’ll be doing boat clean up and maintenance for the next few days. Jim and Terri our friends (and business partners) who live near Atlanta are coming here on Saturday for few days and we’ll be going back to their place for Bob & Jim to do a bit of business stuff. We’re flying home from Atlanta on December 9.
Aloha, well done. Enjoy your remaining warm weather. Mot really too bad westherwise up here, but It’s December after all.
Terry – can you see this comment?