30 March 2023
no boat travel
On this, our final day in Vero Beach, our friends Cathy and Franklin offered to give us the driving tour of Vero Beach to see the parts of the city that we never see by boat. They picked us up after lunch, and our adventure began.
Vero Beach extends much further than I ever imagined having only seen a microscopic portion of the area. We saw lots of luxurious homes and many gated communities on our tour. Plus, we got to visit the Disney Vero Beach Resort. We had no idea that Disney had a resort here!
Harbour Side Yacht Club pictures ...
Disney Vero Beach pictures ...
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| Look out! He's hungry! |
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| Not sure who's more surprised! |
We walked through the hotel and saw some pieces of art ...
and evidence of the past use of this site.
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| Clark and Franklin |
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| Expensive day rates to rent a cabana |
and great views of the ocean.
We found the entrance to the pedestrian / golf cart tunnel back to the hotel.
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| Golf cart coming out of tunnel |
Besides seeing the various residential areas and Disney resort property, we also got to see the local Walmart, Home Depot, and many varieties of Publix but I felt no need to include photos of those places in the Blog!
After a full afternoon of touring, we came back to the boat to hang out and chat until dinner time when Clark and Franklin took off to bring home pizza from Vincent's Pizzeria. It was a full and fun day with great friends.
Since I have been remiss in including sunset pictures in the blog, I made a point to go out with my camera at sunset to make up for my lack of diligence!
Looking east ...
31 March 2023 (can't believe it's April tomorrow)
Depart: Vero Beach Private Dock 9:15
Depart: Vero Beach Public Marina pump out station 10:00
Arrive: Cocoa, Florida anchorage 3:45
Conditions: Sunny, Breezy with 20+ knot winds (what wind!?)
After hanging out for several days in Vero Beach, Clark decided it was time to move on. He had been waiting here to hopefully connect with a tech from the Hull Shield company but that fell through. He did manage to get some of the repairs he wanted to address taken care of. We had special time spent with friends. I got to do food provisioning and found a new food store I love (Fresh Market). I discovered that garden centers can be a thing of beauty, and we both got to enjoy the narrated driving tour of Vero Beach and Sebastian, Florida.
One service not available at the private dock where we stayed while in Vero Beach is a pump out station. We plan to do a lot of anchoring out, and the tank was over 50% full as we pulled away from the dock. Clark called the municipal marina to check on coming in for service. They told him to come ahead as the dock was empty.
Our boat neighbors were there to see us off and wish us safe travels. Greg and Lara on "Karuna" will be leaving here soon to head to the Bahamas.
Lara does yoga and added her influence to the dock.
She has a vegetable garden on her upper deck and as we prepared to leave, she handed me the first tomato from her harvest.
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| A perfect, home (boat) -grown red tomato. |
We waved goodbye. No more than ten minutes later we arrived at the municipal dock to find it taken up by two boats that were adding fuel to their tanks. Clark speculated that they heard his call on the VHF radio and rushed to get there before we arrived. We hung out in the water off the dock until it was clear. That took about 30 minutes of our time. We were told by our boat neighbors at the private dock that the pump out equipment worked extremely slowly, but with our tank so full, we had no choice but to wait.
As we waited for our turn, we got to watch the other boaters. Suddenly, the man on one boat grabbed the nozzle and diesel fuel spouted up into the air like a fountain. It covered his boat and, I expect, a lot of him. Apparently, he saw it was full to the top (probably running down the side of the boat), and he yanked it out of the fill without unlocking the nozzle from the on position.
Since we were downwind, it was not long before all I could smell was diesel fumes! His wife brought out multiple towels for him to use to wipe down the boat and his legs. I hope they threw the towels away and don't light any matches in the near future. He might watch the fill a little more closely next time.
When we finally got to tie to the dock, the pump out took no more than 10 minutes and that included the tie up and throwing off of lines. I am glad that our boat neighbor's experience did not repeat itself on us.
Finally underway, I got text instructions from Cathy to look for nesting birds along the way. I found a few osprey parents at work.
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| Mom osprey |
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| Mom and Dad |
We saw a few views of the Indian River as we traveled northward.
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| Sea Gull Island |
After that Clark focused on driving and I laid down on the bench while we both listened to stories on NPR Science Friday.
Clark had planned to go as far as Titusville tonight, but he saw something in his email that changed his mind to stop at Cocoa. Had there been room at the town dock, we would have tied up, but the dock was already full. After we docked, he took care of paperwork related to his email message. Tomorrow, if he can find space to dock, he may go into town to hit the post office before we continue on.
Pictures of the Cocoa anchorage ...
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| Cocoa Bridge |
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| Boats in the anchorage as the sun goes down |
Sunset at Cocoa, Florida
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