11 April 2026
Depart: Private Dock Vero Beach, FL 8:00
Arrive: NASA Causeway Bridge anchorage 4:00
Distance: 58 nm
Travel Time: ~ 8 hours
Conditions: Still a bit windy; cool enough to want a jacket when out of the sun
After several days of torrential rain and electrical work on Don's new-to-him Hinkley, it was time to once again start heading north. Knowing Clark wanted to get going early this morning, I was up and preparing to leave before the sun made its appearance. Sunrise today occurred at 7:03 at our location.
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| View of sunrise on Bethel Creek |
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| View to the west on Bethel Creek |
Clark was a little slower to start moving this morning. I left him to sleep as I got things going. He said he heard me opening the hatch to the upper helm to prep for leaving and knew he needed to get moving as well.
Yesterday, we made sure the water tank was full and the garbage cans empty. With provisioning and laundry done on Wednesday and Thursday, respectively, we were ready to go! As we prepared to drop the lines connecting us to the dock, Anna and Don came out to wish us a Bon Voyage!
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| Au Revoir to friends! |
Since we needed a pump-out to start our travels, we headed to the Vero Beach City Marina as our first stop of the day.
Fortunately, no one was taking up space on the fuel dock, so we could pull right up. Unfortunately, the pump-out was exceedingly slow going, and we were there longer than we wanted to be. I commented to Clark that it was "like watching paint dry" as I monitored the percent full on the tank as the numbers slowly decreased. The process took a full 20 minutes to complete, and then finally we were on our way!
As we made our way along the Indian River, we saw many familiar sights. Since today was a Saturday and the weather was cooperative, we saw some folks enjoying the waterway islands.
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| Beached boat |
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| Small boat by exposed sandy area |
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| Another small boat near another island |
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| Enjoying privacy on this island |
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| Colorful letters next to this pontoon boat spell "FLORIDA" |
Our travels took us past what looked like a floating cabin on the river. We could see the "building" had windows and a sliding glass door with two chairs on either side. As we got close enough, Clark said it was a "cabin" on a barge. It appeared to be quite a nice place to hang out on the river.
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| Front view of "cabin on a barge" |
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| Looking back after passing the "cabin" |
One thing we do not see on the water when we head south in the autumn are the nesting osprey that we see when heading north in the spring. I wondered how the recent weather impacted their nesting as I noticed one bird returning to the nest with nesting materials in her beak. The ICW markers make exceptionally good nesting areas!
Somewhat surprising, we saw only a moderate amount of boat traffic on the Indian River today. I might have expected more, given folks had been hunkering down out of weather for the past several days. Perhaps, given improved conditions, the majority started moving yesterday where we stayed put for that one extra day in Vero Beach. We passed a few slower boats and some passed us but nothing out of the ordinary.
Over the radio, where we could hear only one side of a "conversation", an irate boater was berating a fellow boater as having no boating knowledge given his recent unknown-to-us action. He said he had taken the boater's boat name and would be contacting the US Coast Guard with a report of the boater's bad boating. When the other boater said something back to him, he said, "Tell it to the Coast Guard when they contact you!" It would be interesting to know what offended the guy so much.
Given that nesting birds and one irate boater were the main events of the day, I would say it was pretty uneventful. We passed under the Eau Gallie Causeway bridge where Clark pointed out that the Merit Island Dragon used to be located here. A while back I did an acrylic painting of the dragon and gave it to my friends Sandy and Bill.
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| Merit Island Dragon (Acrylic Painting by Ev Woodworth) |
The majority of the time on the water today, Clark navigated and I had my head down working on word puzzles. I bought a Dell Puzzle magazine to be sure I have something to do along the way besides watching the water flow by.
Just before 4:00, we turned out of the ICW channel and dropped anchor within sight of NASA by the NASA Causeway bridge now called the Sally Ride Memorial Bridge.
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| Anchored near the NASA Causeway bridge |
Earlier in the day, as we motored towards this area, we heard on the radio that an air show was happening today.
Unfortunately, we were never in a position to get even a glimpse of the action. Sigh!
After securing the boat, I took several pictures of the area where we dropped anchor. With mostly clear skies, we had a good view of the NASA buildings off to the east of us.
If only that launch that was scheduled for, and successfully launched, at 7:41 this morning would have been later in the day or tomorrow morning ... oh well!
From here, our travel plan targets for anchoring are 1) Daytona Beach, 2) north of St. Augustine, and 3) Cumberland Island, Georgia. A common saying among boaters is the following: "Plans are written in the sand at low tide." meaning plans can easily be washed away and need to be rewritten.
As the evening wore on, we got a neighbor in the anchorage
When the sun reached the horizon, our neighbor blew the conch to note sunset. Hearing the conch made me think of Roger on Moonglade who blew the conch shell every night at Marlin Bay!
I hoped to get good sunset pictures, and I was not disappointed. I thought the first one was good, until
Sunset tonight occurred at 7:46 in our location.
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