January 2-5 Vero Beach to Lake Worth

Wednesday, January 2nd

Good morning Vero Beach! This was our sunrise today

Also this morning, we said goodbye to Gary and Sue and their little dog, Max. They are on Cardea and are from Halifax. This is their first trip down and they arrived in Vero Beach a couple of days before we did. They left this morning for the Bahamas and we hope to meet up with them over there somewhere. (We are thankful to Gary for keeping an eye on Persuasion while we were home for Christmas).

Safe travels guys!

We probably would have crossed with them but had a couple more things to do before heading out. We took our last bus trip and went to the bank, West Marine, Dollar Tree and to Publix for a few things we couldn’t get at Walmart.

So by the afternoon, we had everything finished. Laundry was done and the
boat provisioned. And man was it hot. The noseeums are terrible, especially when there is no breeze. Mike is particularly bothered by them and has so many bites!

Thursday, January 3rd

This morning at 07:30, we untied from our mooring ball and Blossom and headed away.

We thought we might see Jim from Blossom but found out that he is not returning until January 16th. Maybe we will see him in the Bahamas too.

Bye for now Vero Beach

So we headed under the bridge and back out onto the ICW. The marking on the bridge says we are at Mile 951.8 of the ICW. We started at Mile 0 in Portsmouth, Virginia. That is a lot of water and miles under Persuasion’s keel.

Other interesting things we see on the ICW today are:

Riverside marina where Amazing Grace is stored. We called them as we were
motoring by

Our first lift bridge of the day

A derelict boat being used for an advertisement sign

Tugboats

Power plant

An overcast day with lots of cloud and wind but very warm

Lots of fishermen under a bridge

Wind surfers

The sun trying to come out

Fort Pierce Inlet; where a lot of boaters head out to the ocean for the Bahamas

Huge homes

Tow Boat US pulling a boat off the bottom that ran aground

Island Princess tour boat out of Stuart, FL

Our wind generator whirring away and still very quiet; thanks Ron and Gwen

We got to our anchorage in Peck Lake at 15:00. The wind died down after supper and the noseeums were relentless. Even I was bothered by them.

Today we travelled 35.86 nm.

Friday, January 4th

Well it was not a restful night with all the noseeum bites and the heat. Finally got to sleep around 02:00 but we did wake up to a glorious sunrise. It was actually changing by the minute so I want to add a few. So beautiful!

We weighed anchor and headed out of the anchorage at 07:30.

It was another hot day in Florida. Temps going up as high as 83F for our American followers or almost 30C for Canadians. So a hot day motoring but it is better than the cold we had a few weeks ago in the Carolina’s. Here are some snaps of our day on the ICW:

Massive homes and canals where it seemed each home had a boat tied up

Just look at the size of these. We wondered what they do for a living. Some are screened in to keep those pesky noseeums out

On the other side of the ICW there were more large homes with big properties and mega yachts

And right at this point, although the sign is gone, is Mile 1000 on the ICW

We were dreaming going through here! Unbelievable; so gorgeous

A palm tree that grew rather funny

Derelict boats; one with the mast hanging off it

Jupiter Inlet light house

We went through this lift bridge and shortly after we saw these derelict boats; one on the bottom with just it’s mast showing

And more gorgeous homes

A neat looking waterway Cafe

The famous PGA Golf Course in Palm Beach

We stopped here for fuel and to fill up our water tanks; the young man on duty was very pleasant and helpful. So nice when people like their jobs

Tranquility is quite the yacht

Neat beach in Lake Worth. People and dogs sitting and playing on the sandbar at low tide

Some weird little houses on the water

And a huge house on the shore

Cruise ship Celebration from Nassau at the dock

This was a brand new 68 ft Nordhavn

Some more boats in the anchorage here

We set the anchor at 13:30 close to the inlet. We went through 7 lift bridges today, 4 in Jupiter alone. (I didn’t want to bore you with photos of each one) At least we only had to wait for 1 on it’s scheduled opening. The dinghy was on the dinghy tow from Vero Beach to here and tonight we hoisted it up on Persuasion’s bow for the ocean crossing. We will listen to Chris Parker on the SSB radio in the morning to decide if we will do our crossing to the Bahamas tomorrow or Sunday.

Today we travelled 25.7 nm.

Saturday, January 5th

Last night we had a better sleep. But the alarm woke us at 06:00. We wanted to listen to Chris Parker and get his weather report for crossing the Gulf Stream. He said today or tomorrow looked good but today could be a little lumpy at first. Mike wanted to go but I said we should wait. There was a cold front going through so it was much cooler than yesterday and very windy. We heard on the radio that 4 boats were crossing and the west wind was good for them. We spent the day blogging and Mike worked on his SSB radio to get it to come in clearer.

Since it was chilly today, and we were busy, we didn’t notice a lot going on in the anchorage. But here are a few things we did see:

A brand new yacht being towed in

And a large yacht going by

A cruise ship leaving to go on the ocean after dinner

Sunset on Lake Worth

So tomorrow is the day we will be Bahamas bound!

We would like to note that the last blog we posted Home for Christmas and back to Vero Beach, we used a couple of photos twice. One that was supposed to be Margie at the airport with her Santa toy was a photo of our airport the day we left for home and the one of Amber’s dog Charlie, was of groceries in our cockpit. Lol. Guess we should have looked at the blog more carefully before publishing. Amber let us know the next morning but if you had already read it, just wanted to let you know that we corrected it.