We made it to Florida on speaking terms and without sinking!

Busy, busy, busy!

I dropped Cynthia off at the Melbourne airport this morning and miss her terribly. Our shakedown cruise was quite successful on just about all counts:

Getting dinghy? Check.

Getting good advice and tools from friends? Check! (Thanks, Nate! WaterwayGuide.com is GREAT!)

Getting out of marina? Check! (Although we had to wait nearly a week to be ready and to have the right conditions.... and had to pull out in rain and wind and cold. We were SO grateful to have an enclosed cockpit!)

Sailing to ICW (Intracoastal Waterway... some say Intercoastal) and anchoring for the night? Check. (We had some nasty weather when sailing out and really harsh winds during the night, but the anchor held and, even with the wind removing 2' of water in the night, still has a few inches of water under our keel in the morning)

Sailing and motoring down the ICW? Check.

Stop in at an unfamiliar marina and get advice, fuel, and a replacement inverter? Check.

Continue south and into the open ocean before sunset? YES!

Sail and motor south in the open ocean, 30 to 50 miles from shore for five days? Yep... and saw wonderful porpoises, phosphorescence, shooting stars, sunrises, and sunsets. 

Handle minor and major issues well? Yes, we did. The rather major rivulets of salt water running into the bilges were tracked down and handled pro tem, with further repairs to be done in the next week. The inverter I turned into a smoking piece of garbage was replaced. Before departing on our voyage, Cynthia talked me into pulling the handrails from the top of the cabin, stripping and refinishing them, and bolting them down in a really nice bed of good caulking that should stop those leaks for a decade....I hope.

Dawdle offshore in FL overnight while waiting for morning light to make harbor entry safe? Yes, although listening to the coast guard warnings about small craft warnings and notices about an overturned catamaran made it a long night. 

Enter the ICW at Fort Pierce and ride the current up the ICW to Vero Beach? Call the bridge operator to raise a drawbridge for us? Did that! Even ate tasty omelette Cynthia cooked as we motored along.

Note: there are two entrances we can use to get to Vero Beach and next time we will use the one that allows us to SAIL most of the way on the ICW: so much nicer than motoring!

We did NOT catch any fish on hook and line. Our only catch was accidental: we found this stiff flying fish on deck one morning.

And we have already made new friends in the marina (Vero Beach City Marina) and seen my friends Georgia and David from St John (the reason we came here) and met lots of their delightful friends who live around here. Great folks!

Current plan is to keep the boat here, rafted up with Bob and Robin's boat (the marina tells you you WILL raft up if they have limited space), until January. 

I'll stay aboard for a few weeks and make repairs and do some sailing, then visit Cynthia in MI, then take the boat south-east to the Virgin Islands, meeting Cynthia there about January 22. (Yes, I could use company sailing the boat down, but CAN do it alone.). My mom will probably visit for a week and go watch the Geminid meteor shower on a night sail.... and be the second family member to see this boat.

And last night a crane landed on our mooring buoy...