Sunday, December 8, 2013

The wind blew harder last night than what either Chuck or I expected.  About 4 am, I heard a noise that woke me.  I thought Chuck was trying to start the diesel but the sound wasn't quite right.  Surely Happy Hours II must be dragging anchor!  When I went up into the cockpit to check things out, he was on the bow of  the boat.  Here, a noise woke him up also and when he went topside to investigate, Chuck discovered the hook on the bridle had come off and was banging against the hull of the boat.  Of course when we went back to bed, I just laid there and listened to the wind howl....

In the morning, when we got up to leave the Jensen Beach anchorage, there was a chop on the Indian River.  This didn't stop the kids out in their mini sailboats.  There were so many of them that it looked like a mini regatta!!  They didn't mind the wind at all. 

Our plans today are to go to Lake Worth.  I reserved 2 docks yesterday at the Old Point Cove marina.  (This is where Tyger Woods previously kept his yacht.)  Lynn and Sally from Southern Belle are meeting up with us to cross over together to the Bahamas. 

waiting for bridge

This turn out to be a beautiful but very trying day.  We had many lift bridges to pass under. The first was a fixed bridge, the next 3 were "on request" bascule bridges, and the next 3 were "on the hour and half hour", while the last was "on the quarter after the hour and quarter to the hours".  The whole idea is to time them right and everything works as planned with no delays.....yeah right. Things would have gone smoothly if only the mega yacht in front of us hadn't stopped once through the bridge to let the mega-mega yacht pass both of us.  This delayed us enough that we missed the opening of the next bridge by minutes!  And then there was that next bridge that we had to wait 25 minutes and when it opened a power boat almost hit us because we were over to port to get our mast under the bridge...the tender didn't have it lifted all the way!!  You better believe there were words said there!!

Even with all that excitement, we had a great day. It was a shorts and bare feet day!  When we got to Jupiter, the water was so blue it looked like someone had put tons of bluish green food coloring into the water.  Since it was Sunday, people were out in their boats, kayaks, paddle boards, you name it.  Some were even swimming....this is so hard to believe since it's December and Christmas is just around the corner!!

Scenes along the ICW today:

House at St Lucie

 

 

House at Jupiter



House on a barge!



 

Thought this was 1 house.

Yachts in front of houses!

Floating Hot dog shop

Condos? at Jupiter

Finally with gusting winds, we motored up the channel and into the Old Port Cove marina, fueled up, and docked.  We anticipated getting there at 2:00 but the delays put us in at 3:00.  We registered and checked the facilities out before Lynn and Sally arrived after 5:00.  They had spent the previous night at Vero Beach on mooring ball #1.  When they motored away from their mooring toward the Vero Beach Bridge a sailboat was grounded and they didn't realize this.  So, they went toward the boat and went aground also....they called TowBoat US.

This is a very nice place to stay. Most of the boats are yachts and large sport fishers.   I found out that Tyger Woods does not own this marina but he use to keep his boat here. Oh, his ex kept hers here too! 

Busy night of washing clothes and making plans to provision tomorrow morning for the next adventure of crossing over to the Bahamas!!