St Augustine through Vero

11-1611 thru 11-21-11

We left St. Augustine in the fog.

 Bob called us on his radio as we were passing by and we thanked them again for their hospitality. It’s nice to have friends to stop in and see while traveling. St. Augustine is a beautiful place and

we plan to stop by again. The fog lifted and we had a good day. It was a windy day, partly sunny, but the water was pretty calm. 

Crabber

Fort Matanzas

We got to Rockhouse Creek, which is a lovely place and everyone must know about it. When we pulled into the anchorage, Rocking B was right behind us. We decided where we wanted to be and Rocking B decided to go behind us. Before we could even get our anchor ready to deploy, another boat came in and started to drop its anchor. As I have said many times before, we are new at this and still learning so it took us a few minutes to get in position. Before we could get our anchor down, the other boat started trying to anchor! We were moving up into our chosen position and they were asking Shay where he was going and was he going to anchor there. He told them yes and they started going behind us to go to the other side. We were still fine tuning our position and had to wait for them to pass to our stern. We had communicated with the boat already in the anchorage as we pulled in and found out how much scope he had out, so we would know how far away we needed to be. We tried to talk to the other boat, but they would not answer our call. We wanted to tell him that we sometimes didn’t swing like other boats and they might want to keep that in mind when they anchored so close to us.

We and Rocking B got anchored and before we could dinghy to the beautiful beach another boat came in. He decided to anchor right in front of us. We were able to tell him how much line we had out but he was still close. Another boat came in close to Rocking B but finally moved a little. Another trawler came in and settled in a “skinny” area away from us.

None of us could believe how some other boaters act. The other boat should have waited until the two boats in front of him were anchored, found out how much anchor we had out, and then decided if and where he could anchor. It’s like trying to steal someone’s parking spot while they are trying to get into it. Just not right. And then when they got anchored, they stood on the back of their boat looking at us like we shouldn’t be there. I hope we don’t meet them anywhere else. I don’t think I could be nice too them. Shay and Ken said we’d probably see lots more stuff like that on our trips.

We knew we would have another night of up and down checking to see that things were ok during the night. Shay said at least the other boats would have a restless night too. During the night, he heard a small fishing boat go by and got up to check things. He said he could see people on the boat in front of us on their boat taking in anchor line so they wouldn’t get so close to us. When he looked at the other boat, they had on lights too. Another sleepless night on the water.

We got up early the next morning 11-17-11 and started getting ready to leave. We could see lightning north of us and were glad we were moving further south. The clouds behind us were dark all day long. We headed to Cocoa. We had partly cloudy skies but we were lucky, the bad weather stayed north of us. We noticed the large boat that was grounded when we came north was gone. Wonder how they moved it?

We anchored in a nice anchorage and took a dinghy ride to shore. We finally got to see “the east coast largest hardware store”. We had read about it in Skipper Bob’s books and were anxious to see it. Unfortunately, we got there just before closing so we could only spend a few minutes there. I told Margaret that Ken and Shay could probably spend the rest of their lives looking around that place. It was so big that it was in several buildings.

11-18-11 we left for Vero Beach. We heard on the weather station that a front was moving thru, with winds 20-25 with gusts >30 miles and hour. The wind made the water a little choppy, but not too bad.

Rocking B was very excited about the wind. They could put out their sails and really move on. I think they were going >9 MPH just on wind alone.

We had called Vero Beach mooring field about a mooring ball and been told that we would have to double up on a mooring ball. We had seen other boats doing that this spring and were not too crazy about that idea. We asked the marina if we could moor with Rocking B, but he said we’d have to be with a trawler so we would “swing” the same. We had discussed the fact that we weren’t crazy about trying to moor with the winds we were having especially if we had to double up. We decided we’d take a look and if we didn’t like what we saw, we’d anchor nearby. Rocking B went in first and when they got to their mooring, it was empty. They called us and told us ours was too. Great, we can get settled in without having another boat to deal with. I didn’t have any problem getting the mooring line but when I was tying it around I slung dirty pond scum water everywhere. Even in my mouth, I think. But hey, a dirty mouth is a small price to pay if we got moored up with no problems.

I had been cooking a crockpot of chilie beans all day and they smelled great, so we stayed on the boat for dinner. After walking the “girls” Ken and Margaret took a dinghy ride to a restaurant. I offered them beans and Margaret said she wanted to get off the boat for a few hours. I understood. We made plans for a provisioning excursion on Saturday.

We took the bus to Walmart and stocked up on a few supplies. We are not sure where we will be for Thanksgiving, so we got stuff for turkey-day, too. Shay and I had been talking about getting an electric frying pan to use while traveling. I can put sauce and noodles in it and have pasta ready when we stop. So we stocked up and hauled our stuff back to the bus and then back to the boat.

Shay and Ken have been working on Rocking B problems so I came back and worked on the blog. We got some good anchorage info for places south of Stuart from Tom and Ollie from Our Freedom.

Several other boaters came to our boat, on Sunday for snackies, drinks, and boat tales. We all had a great time. Ted and Sally came from Ameci, John and Connie from Riverdance, and of course Ken and Margaret from Rocking B. We had talked to Riverdance on the VHF and even anchored near them during our trip up last spring and during the trip down, but never met them until Vero. It was nice to be able to put a face to a name and voice.

We and Rocking B decided to leave in the morning. We are going to Peck Lake and they are going to pick-up a part at Fort Pierce. We are not sure if they will come on down and spend the night with us or if we will meet up the next day. They could go out at Fort Pierce and catch up with us pretty easy.