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.