Vero Beach

Saturday 03/28/20

After deciding to keep the boat here for a month, we began the process of packing, cleaning and preparing the boat for when we leave.  Marcia worked inside cleaning and staging things that need to come home.  I decided to tackle the dinghy mount.  After talking to Washington Marine, Greg said to bring the mount home and he would weld some reinforcements on it so that it will not bend and pull out again.  I began the search for 2x4 or 4x4 that I could use to place the dinghy on, instead of the bracket.  The marina was nice and said they had some old post behind a shed.  They armed me with a battery saw and off I went.  Found a 3x4 post that I cut that should work nicely.  I put the dinghy in the water and removed the old mount bracket.  After I had the bracket off, wanted to use some electrical tape to cover the holes so that water does not get in.  35 holes to be exact.  Naturally I could not find my electrical tape, so I borrowed the bike here to ride to Publix and pick some up.  The bike was old and rusted, and I found out the hard way that it did not have brakes.  This did not prove to be an issue for such an experience rider as myself.  Back at the boat I taped all the holes and put some painters tape on top of that.  It should prevent any water from getting in until I can get back down and repair the holes.  I am hoping that the bracket will fit in the rental car.

Some of you may remember Andrew and Cheri Hyde from Four Seasons.  They are living in St. Augustine now.  Turns out that they were driving back from Ft. Lauderdale after picking up a new dinghy they bought.  They stopped and visited with us for a couple of hours.  It was great catching up with them again.  We will plan to see them again when we make our way up the coast.  I did have to ride the bike again to show them how to get back to the marina.

Andrew and Cheri leaving

After they left, I finished cleaning up and putting everything away from the dinghy project.  We ate on the boat again and then walked the docks here.  There are a couple of other Loopers here, and two of them we had met before on the Tennessee River.  We forced ourselves to watch the end of the Irishmen.  It felt like the movie was 5 hours long instead of 3 1/2.  We think it could have been done in 1 hour.

Sunday 03/29/20

Today was all about the engine room.  I started out by flushing the generator with fresh water.  Then it was onto the air conditioners.  When those were done, I did both engines.  After all the saltwater was flushed, I decided to do some scrubbing in the bilge.  If you remember, I did have that oil leak that kind of made a mess of things.  Water, Dawn and scrub brush made a huge improvement.  After that I decided to check all of the battery water levels.  Two engine batteries, a house battery, generator battery and four thruster batteries.  I used the wet dry vac to get all of the remaining water out of the bilge.  Marcia and I then retied up the boat to be sure it was going to be OK for the time we are going to be gone.  With everything cleaned up it was time to take a shower.  (nobody face-timed me this time) Sarah and Laura :).

I am not sure if this shirt is going to make the trip home.  Might have to retire it.  

With everything closed here, not much to do except project work on the boat.  Marcia has most everything staged for the trip home already.   We found a driver that is going to take us to get the rental car tomorrow.  We are supposed to get our holding tanks pumped out tomorrow morning so things seem to be coming together.

Vero Beach - FL USA

Stats -  Thursday, March 26 - 35 miles to Stuart, Friday 45 miles to Vero Beach.

Going to jump around a little bit on this post.  We are sitting at Loggerhead Marina in Vero Beach.  Nice marina, but yet again, the pool and restaurants are closed.  Shame, because it has a nice pool area.

I had been saving a new bottle of Bourbon, and decided that tonight was a good night to break the seal on it.  So far it is "smooooooth"

 I am also practicing my social distancing and my work from home options.  My work space for this evening, including the MJ12 cigar that I was saving also.

So that is current, but let me go back to Tuesday.  As I said, it was a long trip from Spanish Wells to North Palm Beach.  The marina is very nice here.  I think we are on the low end of the boat spectrum, and that includes the center consoles.  Oh well.  We stopped caring about that a long time ago.

I don't think Lucy liked the long trip much either, but she is getting over it.

 Tiger Wood's boat.  Didn't see him though.

 The marina also dropped off a bottle of wine that we ended up having with our London Broil that we grilled up for dinner.

After traveling with Mark and Debbie for over 6 weeks, they left Wednesday morning heading back home to Punta Gorda.  It will feel a little weird traveling without them now.  We did a lot of cleaning on the boat on Wednesday.  It needed it bad!  It was nice to wash the boat and not get charged by the gallon for water.  Think I used about 900 gallons.

Looking at the charts, we decided to move north to Stuart on Thursday and then to Vero Beach on Friday.  It is getting harder to find marinas that are open, but Marcia is managing to do it nicely.  We stayed at Harborage Yacht Club in Stuart.  It was a nice cruise past some beautiful homes.  Mostly either idle or no wake so it did take us over 4 hours to make the trip.  Good news is that I was able to get under all the bridges.  Some with only inches to spare.

 View from Harborage Marina

 We cast lines around 8:30 on Friday morning.  Today - YES is am finally current with the blog, and headed back down the St. Lucie river and turn North on the ICW.  Not as much to see today, but still a good cruise.

We arrived at Loggerhead Marina and got tied up in our slip.  I did some more cleaning.  Seems never ending with the salt water.  We took a long walk to Publix just to stretch our legs.  We had some crab and spinach dip that we froze from when we were in Marathon.  Don - it was just a good as when you were here.

So we have been trying to figure out what we want to do going forward.  Weather is nice here in Florida, but everything is closed up.  Basically just hanging out on the boat.  We really don't want to continue up the coast as marinas are getting harder to find, and everything is closed which is disappointing that we can't enjoy the amenities, ie the Pools, Bars and Restaurants.  After some discussion, we have decided to rent a car and drive home.  We secured the slip here for 1 month.  We will do some trip planning and "what if" scenarios based on timing of when things will open up again.  I am also going to try and pull off the dinghy mount and bring it home so that I can get it welded and reinforced.  Also we have an air conditioner that is not working properly, so I will try to get a new one when I am home.  Based on those items, we may come back down in few weeks so that I can install the AC and new dinghy bracket.

Not really looking forward to coming home, but we are hoping to see everyone again, from 6 feet away.

Second bourbon is gone and the MJ12 is about out.  Now you know why I decided to splurge tonight.  We still have some stuff to do on the boat, so will not leave until probably Tuesday next week. 

Spanish Wells - Bahamas

Stats on Thursday, March 19- 48 miles total 2985

We decided to move from Governors Harbor up to Spanish Wells on Thursday.  The French Leave Resort was nice, but not a whole lot of other stuff to do.  We also thought that Tony would like to take a cruise on the crystal clear blue water.  It was actually a pretty nice day to cruise.  The waves were still 1 to 3 footers, but for the 1st time it was a following sea, so we were not crashing into them.  We arrived at Spanish Wells Yacht Haven around lunch time and we knew right away that we made a good choice.  Nice marina with a pool, bar and restaurant.  We were all hungry, so we cooked up the left over fish from Wednesday's fish trip and made sandwiches.

After eating lunch, we decided to walk around the Island and check things out.  Found Bubba's restaurant, and a few shops.  We stopped at the south end and had a Kalik Light at the Shipyard bar and restaurant.  We walked back and had a good dinner at Wrecker's - the marina restaurant.

Bus at Bubba's 

 Fun signs at Bubba's

 Point at Shipyard

 I do like the pirates here.

On Thursday night, the Prime Minister shut down almost all businesses here, except for gas, grocery and carryout food.  We should have bought beer on Thursday, as the liquor stores are now closed.  Also all retail shops are closed so no tee shirts either - sorry everyone - Friday was the day I was going to buy for everyone.

On Friday, the marina was still open, so we rented a 6 person golf cart and decided to ride around and check out more of the Island anyway.  We drove over to Russell Island and found where we were going to go to get fuel on Saturday.  Fuel stations were still open.  After driving around both islands completely, we went back to the boat.  We dropped our dinghy in and went for a ride.  We went out to see the pier where we were going to go get fuel.  Choppy ride out with 2 foot waves in the dinghy, but a very rough ride back in against the waves.  Once back in the protected island, we rode down to a beach at the end of the island.  Hung out for a while and then went back to the pool.  Dinner was on the boat as everything was closed except for takeout.  After dinner, Tony and I took the golf cart out to see the sunset.

On Saturday, we got take out breakfast from Wreckers and then went over to get fuel.  It went pretty smooth other than the dock being very high.  It was the 1st time I walked off the fly bridge onto a dock.  It was worth the trip as fuel was $1.00 cheaper a gallon there.  Was still $3.98 a gallon, so not seeing the low fuel prices over here.  After fuel we took the dinghy out again to the beach and then went around the south part of the Island.  Was a great ride with a lot to see.  Shame everything is closed down.

Pictures from the dinghy ride.

After the dinghy ride, we went and hung out at the pool for a while.  On Sunday morning, after breakfast, we took the golf cart and went down to the Government Ferry to get Tony to the main island.  I rode with him to be sure the taxi showed up to take him to the airport.  As you probably already know, he made it out fine and back to Cincinnati.

t

Back at the boat, I did some much needed cleaning, even though the water was not good.  After cleaning, I went down to do my engine room checks.  The port engine was low on oil, and I soon discovered a pool of oil under the engine.  I believe the source was an oil return line that pulled loose from the oil pan.  I pushed it back in and applied some silicone.  Hopefully this will hold.  The next step was to try and clean up 1/2 of gallon of oil that was in the bilge.  Messy job, but think I got most of it.  Off to the showers.

On Monday it was overcast, so we just took a walk to the store and did some chores around the boat.  Our plan was to go to Freeport on Tuesday and then to the West End and then back to Florida.  We found out late on Monday that the Prime Minister had issued a lockdown and that no travel was allowed and no one was permitted to leave their house.  This included boats.  With marinas closed, we decided go all the way from Spanish Wells to Jupiter FL.  Very long day of 233 miles, which would test the range of my boat.

Again, as you probably know, we made it.  We changed course and went to North Palm Beach as no marinas in Jupiter were open.   Very nice marina and we made it in just around 11 hours. Got cleared by customs "roam" app and got burgers from the restaurant carryout.  Back in the states now, and will try to figure out next steps from here.  Will post some pictures from the marina here in the next post.  Just FYI Tiger Woods boat is here just to give you a sense of the yachts here.  We are feeling small again.   Oh, catching up.  We arrived on Tuesday, and Today is Wednesday.

Until next post - still Corona Free 

Governors Harbor - Bahamas

Stats today -  61 miles, total - 2937   Total days - 108, travel days 50

Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday  (03/16/20 - 03/18/20)

Sorry it has been a while since I have blogged.  We have been going non stop since we arrived at French Leave Resort in Governors Harbor.  We are now at Spanish Wells, so let me see if I can get you caught up.

First off, we did get Tony to the water taxi this morning (Sunday) and then to a land taxi that took him to the airport.  His flight left on time, he landed in Atalanta, and we just got word that he is now in Cincinnati and at his car.  That is a lot off of our minds as this virus thing is really putting a kink in everything.

We left Highborn Cay on Monday and headed the 61 miles over to Governors Harbor in the Eletuheras.  French Leave is a beautiful resort but not much in the way of a marina.  The docks were very high and tough to get on and off the boat at low tide.  After getting the boats tied up and hooked to power, we walked around to check things out.  Turns out that in order to use the pool and the resort's golf carts, which are needed to get to the beach, you need to pay a $50.00 per day resort fee.  This surprised us we thought it was included with the high dock fees.  We ended just eating dinner at the resort.  Pizza was the special, but it really was not that special.  After dinner we had a bourbon, cigar and watched the sunset.  One nice thing about the dock was that we did have a nice covered gazebo to sit in.

View coming into Governors Harbour

 View from the back of the boat

Boat at high tide.  When at low tide the boat was about 3 feet lower, making it hard to get on or off.

Sunset from back of boat 

 Sunset pic

 Resort pool

 Sunset from resort restaurant

On Tuesday morning we decided to walk up into town since Tony was not scheduled to arrive until the afternoon.  Town had a few shops, a library, and we found a great lunch spot called Buccaneers.

Library

 Looking up the stairs at the library

View of the harbor from town.

It was not long after we got back to the boat that Tony arrived.  We got him settled on the boat and then started happy hour pretty much right away.  We took the dinghy out to the beach for awhile and then motored around for a bit to check things out.  After getting cleaned up, we walked back up to Buccaneers for dinner.  The place really had that Bahama look and feel to it.  We had Bahama Mamas to drink, the fresh grouper for dinner, plus Tony had to get dessert.

Back at the boat we did a nightcap of Bourbon and cigars.  The next morning, Tony and I chartered a 1/2 day fishing trip.  Richard, a island native, picked us up at the boat at 8:00 and we went about 3-4 miles out to fish a hole.  I caught the 1st fish, the biggest, and the most, yet again securing my place in the fishing hall of fame.  We had a blast, catching mostly Amberjack and 1 yellow tail snapper.  Tony hooked a monster, but was unable to get it out of the reef before breaking the line.  

Tony fishing on the bow of the 24ft boat

 1st fish caught

Richard cleaned and filleted the fish right on the boat.  You can see how much bigger the Amberjack is next to the snapper.

We seasoned and then grilled the fish up for dinner on the dock.  The fresh caught fish was really, really good.  Tony and mine are the ones with the blackening season on them - of course.

After we go back from fishing, but before cooking dinner, we joined Mark and Deb at the pool.  They had paid the resort fee for that day, so we just kind of tagged along with them.  We swam in the pool, and then we piled 5 people into a 4 person golf cart.  We drove over to the beach and hung out there for a little while.  Then we were driving around and found the old Club Med Resort.  It was destroyed in 1999 by hurricane Floyd.  It never reopened, but it was cool to look at what is still left.  Felt like we were walking through a movie set.

At the pool

Old Club Med

Back at the boat, we had dinner which I already talked about above.  Think we might of had a cigar again as well.  Not much to do in Governors except to hang out at the resort.  We decided to move to Spanish Wells on the North tip of the Eleuteras on Thursday.  We confirmed that we could get a water taxi for Tony and then a regular taxi to take him to the airport on Sunday.  Actually it will be closer and cheaper to do it that way.  

We made the move on Thursday, and today is now Sunday.  I will update the blog on our Spanish Wells activities tomorrow - hopefully.  I know I am behind but I am trying to get caught up :)