WEEK #27, 29JAN to 3FEB017, TRAVELING AGAIN

      We get up on Saturday morning and start prepping to leave. We are in no hurry as we are waiting for the dockmaster to arrive so we can get a credit for the night we are not going to be staying. I am on the flybridge programming the GPS to our destination when another Looper shows up. We help him tie up and dock, and exchange notes. "Galene" is coming south and we are about to head north. We get a good suggestion for an anchorage north of Jupiter from the newly arrived skipper. We leave about 11 and wish our new friends well. Going out the New River on a Saturday morning there is much less traffic than coming in at rush hour on a weekday.
       We do not have a long run today. We are headed to DelRay Beach-Boynton Beach area for a marina. I have relatives in DelRay Beach, and we are going to stop where we can visit them. There are more big houses along the waterway on this route. And lots more "SLOW, MINIMUM WAKE" zones. Sometimes we are at speed, sometimes we are at slow, fast idle speeds. And we go through more low bridges.

ONE OF THE LOWER BRIDGES ON THE AICWW - MOST HAVE TO WAIT FOR OPENING

We get to Palm Beach Yacht Center a little before 5. My relatives arrive as we are fueling SummerTime. It is the first fuel stop since the tank truck at Marathon. It does not take that many gallons, 83 which includes some generator time. We go to dinner in Boynton, to a Korean BarBQ house. It is my first time to eat advertised Korean food, and my BBQ pork dish is very good. And we go for ice cream at an ice cream parlor farther south on the beach. My relatives loan us their truck, so we do not get back to SummerTime until about 10:30           
       We wake up to rain on Sunday morning. Sometimes it is hard. The heat comes on in the boat, and feels good. The fact that Barbara has used the oven to bake the normal Sunday morning biscuits helps to dry the boat also. We go to Grace Presbyterian Church. They were not the closest church, but they did have their service times posted. It was good we had Tom's truck, as Grace was a ways (over a mile) to walk in the rain. After church we use the truck to go shopping. I pick up  some needed filters and other parts at a NAPA. They did not have the replacement alternator/water pump  belt needed for a spare. And we get groceries at a Winn Dixie. Florida seems to offer two major chains, Publix and Winn Dixie for groceries just about everywhere. It is nice to have a choice. It is still raining when we get back to the boat. But the heat is on and it feels so nice compared to the 55F and humidity outside. We go back to my relatives in the evening to return the truck and for dinner. They bring us back to SummerTime after a wonderful evening of socializing.
       On Monday morning, we dally on getting ready to leave. We are in no hurry as we are headed to New Smyrna Beach, and do not have to be there until Saturday. We only need to average 31 miles per day to get there, or about half a normal days run. We have lots more fast zones today. We are able to make better time. There are still some slow zones. We pass Jupiter Inlet after about 4 hours of running time.

JUPITER INLET LIGHTHOUSE

And we find the anchorage thAT Captain Gene from "GALENE" told us about. We are near the 1000mi mark on the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway. A sailing catamaran is anchored in the best spot for north wind protection, so we anchor a little south of them. We are in the midst of crab pots, but not close enough to any one to hinder the fisherman when he comes to tend them. It is a little windy, but there is a sandy point which shields us from the bigger white caps. We run the generator in the evening to cook, and retire for the night.
       Tuesday we wake up and the boat is right where we anchored it. Always a good thing when you are anchoring where you are exposed to wind and currents. But we were inside the "no-wake" zone, and we were not rocked during the night thanks to the anchorage recommendation. I start the generator for heat and coffee. It is 55F in the boat, and NOAA is reporting 46F at Jupiter Inlet about 3 miles south of us. We have to be at mile 845 by Saturday, so need to rush to get going in the cold. We weigh anchor about 10:15, and are at the channel to Ft Pierce Beach about 2:30. We choose an anchorage near the beginning of a "no-wake zone", and near some shallow water. We are only rocked by some fisherman heading into the mangroves to fish. We see a lot of turtles around us sticking their heads above water to get a breath of air. We can not get a picture of one, no matter how patient we are. They are as camera shy as Monarch butterflies. We could never get a photo of one of them flitting across our deck either. We run the generator to cook and make sure the batteries have a good charge. And we get showers on board while there is heat available. We turn in for a quiet night on anchor.
      Wednesday morning it is 61F in the boat when we wake. We run the generator for heat, cooking coffee, and warming up pop tarts. We only run the genset about an hour. When we go to weigh anchor, we find the chain covered in mud. It is soft mud, and washes off easily. It just takes a lot of buckets of water. The bottom is apparently very soft where we chose to anchor. Good thing the wind did not blow here like it did on Monday night. We might have drifted in the soft mud bottom. We have determined we only need to make 32 miles a day to get to NSB. We are headed to Melbourne, or more specifically "Eau Galle" up the waterway about 32mi. One marina at Eau Galle has no space, and the other never returns our calls. We make contact with Telemar Bay Marina, and they have space for us across the way from Eau Galle. We arrive at Telemar Bay on the Banana River about 4:30 pm. amid afternoon sailing practice for the local club.

SAILING SCHOOL, 2ND CLASS WE MEET

MARINA OFFICE

  The staff at Telemar Bay is most helpful in getting us docked, and the dock boy even stays a few minutes to find us an adaptor so we can plug our 30A cord into their 50A receptacle. They tell us where to go to eat and for groceries if we need them. While we are getting situated, the sculls from the oar and paddle club pass by.

WOMEN'S SCULL

MEN'S SCULL

 We go up the street about a quarter mile and eat at "Doubles Beachside", a very nice sports bar with good burgers, reasonably priced. The locals seem to come in here which may be why the price is good. We walk back to SummerTime after dark and retire for the night.
       I get up on Thursday and walk up to the 7-11 for milk. We have managed to run out of milk and can not have a normal breakfast of cereal. After breakfast, we put the dinghy in the water and go over to Eau Galle for lunch and history touring. We eat at "Squid Lips", a recommendation from one of the guide books.

SQUID LIPS APPROCHED FROM THE WATER

I have shrimp with grits, and the grits are made with pepper jack cheese. They are very good. Barbara will not try the "Grouper Reuben", though she likes fish and a Reuben is her go to sandwich. She gets a chicken wrap though she ordered a fish wrap. After lunch we go up the hill into town. We tour the two old homes open to the public. The one, Rossetter, is interesting as it is two houses joined by breezeways and has no heat source.

BREEZEWAY CONNECTION

ROSSETTER HOUSE FRONT

PERIOD ROOM

Pretty amazing as two nights ago we were running heat on the boat at a slightly more southern latitude. And we amble into a couple of antique stores. Our trip back across the waterway in the dinghy is a little wetter as the wind has got up from when we came across. In the evening we are entertained by the dolphins that feed along the seawall. The swells from their aggressive swimming actually rocks the boat.
       We get up Friday morning to get moving again, but not quickly. In the morning Barbara goes to the marina's laundromat to do our clothes.  I decide I need to get back into an exercise routine, and walk and jog on the street. There are good walkways here, and exercise is easy, being not right on the road itself. We are in no hurry as we only intend to get in about 20 miles today to get to Cocoa. We leave Telemar a little after 1 and are anchored in Cocoa harbor by 4:30.

QUIET NEIGHBORS

COCOA WATERFRONT

There are sunken boats in the harbor, I am assuming from when Matthew went up the coast last fall. It is a quiet evening. While there are a number of boats anchored around us, only one appears to be occupied. The wind shifts direction during the night, but the anchor only drags a little until it resets. The alarm did not go off, but the path of the boat is traced on the GPS that is the anchor alarm when we get up on Saturday morning. A new week has started.
   

MANATEES (4) IN THE WATERWAY - THE REASON FOR ALL THE SLOW ZONES