First off, appologies for the lateness of the next few posts. Although they're dated according to when we were at those spots, I never got around to writing them before we left for our Christmas interlude back home, so I'm actually writing this after New Years.
Any way, once we left our anchorage behind the spoil island at Malabar, it was a short 22 nm run down to Vero Beach. We planned to stop there for 3 days to visit with our friends Vic and Marilyn of S/V Whisper, who were renting a condo there while their boat was on the hard for bottom work.
Vero's Municipal Marina is known for its extensive and sheltered mooring field, but I' not comfortable with their policy of rafting up to 3 boats on a single mooring, so we took a slip. They put us on a face dock off the end of a T-head, so it was a real simple docking.
The boater's lounge and the bathhouse are clean and well maintained, and there is a bus stop for the extensive network of free bus lines that cover both the beach and mainland portions of the city.
Unfortunately for us (our timing always seems to be bad) the buses stop early on Sat and don't run at all on Sunday, and we were there across a weekend!
Vic and Marilyn have their car here, so they picked us up and Drove us on some errands. This included a stop at Marine Connections, a surplus and salvage liquidator. This place is enormous! Acres of grounds with tons of stainless arches, pulpits, fuel tanks, bins of Starboard pieces, and two large wharehouse-sized indoor spaces. The first one has mostly enormous quantities of small bits from salvages, while the second one appears to be stock and inventory purchased from bankrupt companies and fabricators. You could spend days at this place and not even begin to scratch the surface! To give you an idea of the size, all of Bacon's in Annapolis woud fit in one isle of this place! I only wish we lived within driving distance!
Afterwards, we had lunch out, and did a little grocery shopping and Liquor resupply.
The next day, we kicked back and relaxed, doing a lot of reading. In the evening, we walked over to Riverside Cafe for dinner. We sat on the open deck overlooking the Indian River. The resturant has a dock, and they've arranged a number of green underwater lights right next to the deck. The fish (Snook and Catfish) congregate there, swimming against the current and waiting for handouts. The resturant has even installed a little quarter-operated dispenser for fish food! Crackers and bits of dinner rolls also worked well. The water would literally explode every time a handfull of crumbs was tossed in! Great entertainment.
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| Fish! |
The next day, I got a hold of Harbortown marina in Fort Pierce. Even though we were scheduled to not be there until the first of December, they said they could accomodate us early. So, Monday, we will head out and make the short trip to Ft. Pierce., where we will leave the boat while we fly home for Christmas with family.
Life is good.
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