Today is just as cloudy as yesterday, but there is no wind. It was easy to back off the dock and spin around to head north. The tide was against us until we got past the St. Johns river and into the Sister River. Doing steady 1,800 RPM we watched our speed go from 7.4 knots to 9.7 knots. (Our average at 1,800 is about 8.1 knots. So it’s a healthy 1.6 knots when the current gets going.

There were some shallow spots on the way up the Sister River where there was less than 4′ below the keel. With the tide swing of about 6 feet that would be a problem for boats coming through at low tide.

A few boats and some birds was all that was keeping us company on the trip. Just outside of Amelia City Susan saw a crab on the surface swimming as fast as it could. She then looked forward and saw the huge pod of dolphins and birds feeding. I guess it was the all you can eat Crab Buffet.

We docked at the Amelia Island Yacht Harbor. It’s well off the ICW so there isn’t much current, and we are back to floating docks. The dock hands got us tied off and I got a ride to the other side of the marina to the office. In addition to the docks they have a huge dry stack business.

And they are super nice people. We were able to get a ride downtown with Bill the marina manager.

Amelia Island has been on my todo list. My sister has been doing a charity event called Curts Ride for Cancer https://www.facebook.com/curts.ride for the last few years. The starting point on their 620 mile is Amelia Island (last stop is the “Southern Most Point In the US”). It looks great from their pictures. Since we’ve done from Key West to here, I wanted to spend a little time. She gave us good tips on places to go, and we headed off.

First was Cafe Karibo, one of the local brewpubs in town. I had two of their three beers (down from 29 the day before). We had a great lunch there, the place was jammed.

Walking down the main street we hit a number of different places. There is a pirate theme to downtown with three differen pirate places (avast ya dog, turn over your Master Card!). We checked out the Ameila harbor which was pretty well silted in. They are doing their annual dredging project, according to the curator of the Shrimp Museum, they pull between 250-300 dump truck loads out every year. I think Mother Nature is trying to tell them something.

The town is called Fernandina, it’s one of the oldest towns in Florida. It has a rich heritage of early Spanish settlers and a pretty good Shrimping industry today. The town has stayed small the three big industries are tourism, the local government and the pulp mill at the end of the island. It’s a little weird seeing a power plant to the left, harbor center and pulp plant to the right as you look out to the water. We saw tree truck on the way into town, it reminded us of the cardboard plant in Mississippi.

One of the places we stopped in was the Antique Mall, a full square block of everything you ever wanted. Things were from my kids childhood through things my Grandmother had. About ½ we hit “junk overload” and it was downhill from there.

We got a ride back to the dock and there was an Adventure Craft at the end for sale. I tracked down the broker ( next dock over) and chatted with him. Next over was a nice Bayliner 4550 (the older sister to the 4588) and we chatted for awhile. We meet the nicest people on Bayliners!

Dinner tonight was at the on site eatery “The Galley” The recommendation was the smoked fish / cheese dip, it was wonderful. The view is out across the marina, a very nice setting for dinner. We had a great time, Amelia was a great place to visit.

When I was texting my sister, she has decided she and her husband will do Curt’s Ride again. (So I think the Loop is hard, but a 620 mile bike ride in 10 days is just crazy talk). But if you have a few dollars from your trip, they will take the contribution!)

Day two in St. Augustine. We did some boat chores and then headed up to do a package mailing. There was a pretty good breeze so it was nice walking.

We walked along Treasury Street, named since it was the route from the Spanish Treasury to the waterfront. It’s the narrowest street in the USA, it’s wide enough for two men and a money chest. That keeps someone in a carriage from coming by and taking it from you. (I’m thinking if the horse ran them over you could still steal the money, but not sure how it was done in the 1600′s.)

Aviles Street is the oldest street, but it’s also narrow, we saw one of the Red Trolly carts hung up on the wall. Glad we are on foot, since it looks like driving here is kind of a hazard.

We spent time in the Lightner Musuem. It started off as the Hotel Alcazar, one of Henry Flagler’s uber-fancy hotels. It had an indoor pool, sauna, etc for all the guests. It was converted to the offices for the City of Ft. Lauderdale in 1973, they took over the guest rooms. The ballroom, pool, sauna, etc. Was converted into the Lightner Museum. They filled in the pool to put a restaurant there, so sad.

Lots of artifacts from the age when it was one of Flaglers places. Lots of cut and hand blown glass,great chairs, tables, etc. One of the scientific glass blowers of the day made a steam engine out of glass. It doesn’t move today, but I can just imagine what it was like.

It was neat to see the vast marble benches of the sauna and the picture of people swimming in the indoor pool. If you had money in the late 1800′s it looked like it was a great place to go.

Speaking of money, walking down King and some of the other streets is a shoppers paradise. If you couldn’t afford items from Worth Street in Palm Beach, you can shop here instead. That tennis bracelet you coveted from Tiffany’s for $10K is only $7K here. I was impressed with the number of jewelry and art places.

Lunch was at Gaufres & Good, we had polish food and it was very good.

A few more shops (one was an antique map shop) and a few more museums we were done for the afternoon. Susan came back and napped and I worked on the blog again.

One of the things that I have been unwilling to do is update software on the trip. Lots of stuff I depend on and I really don’t have the time to dork with things that are broken. So I’m behind on versions of WordPress (the blog software), IOS for the iPad, etc. I had a problem with the Gallery Software a few weeks ago and I had upgraded the version. Well it turns out that it managed to break the commenting option. I sort of wondered how my spam went from a few hundred a day to zero, but I wasn’t going to look too hard. Today was dig into the innards of WordPress and figure it out.

I was able to make that happen, so you can now comment away!

Dinner was back at JP Henley’s. New Belgium Brewery was holding a tap night, they had 4 of their beers on tap. So we had three of them and pub grub (an assortment of sausages and cheese along with a Ruben sandwich). It was fun and we picked up some beer swag for Dave.

After dinner we walked down to Harry’s. We had missed out on the Oreo Beignets last night, but not tonight. There were six Oreo cookies dipped in batter and then deep fried. The process makes the cookie soft and melts the filling into creamy goodness. It was well worth coming back for. I also had the key lime pie. It was store bought, but it was pretty good once it warmed up some. (It was served in that just before frozen state. If you want it, order it first so it thaws as you eat your dinner.)

Back on the dock I saw that the crew of the “Boundless” was aboard their boat. It’s a 36′ Seaton, one of 5 built in 2005. I was invited aboard and got the quick tour. Galley and salon are at the same level. Three steps up and you are in the pilot house with great visibility. Three steps down forward you are in a huge main cabin with a master head that runs the width of the boat (It’s under the pilot house, lots of headroom) Tons of cherry wood gives it a very warm look. Flybridge access from either side door up three stairs. The side doors are “dutch doors” so you can have the sea breeze but keep the lower door closed for the waves. Very nice boat, but with only 5 in the world, one isn’t coming my way soon.

At the end of the dock was an American Cruise Line boat. They run from Maine to Florida. They are spending the night here so people can visit the town then they will head north. I expect to see them on our trip as we move up the coast.

Turned our keys in tonight and the dockmaster showed me the new packets they will start handing out. It turns out that there is a cruisers shuttle that runs between all the marine and hardware stores in the morning and the two grocery stores in the afternoon. An all day pass is $5 so it would be worth it. It wouldn’t have helped me, since it was down today for maintenance. But I now get the $20 mooring, water taxi, pump-out, and a $5 shuttle along with hot showers. Staying on the mooring ball wouldn’t be a bad deal.

We had heavy rain this afternoon and expect more tonigh. On the plus side the extra gasket material is working pretty well.

Today we go to St. Augustine. At only 15 miles it’s one of our shortest days in awhile. It brings back memories of short 6 and 7 mile trips between islands in the North Channel.

We had a good current flow behind us so the trip was short at 2 hours. High point of the voyage was two adult and a baby dolphin. It was neat to see the big leaps and this tiny body coming after them.

We got into the dock and found that the wireless is really good. That and getting here at 10AM gave me the morning and part of the afternoon to get caught up on blog posts. I’m current except to talk more about the broken shaft from two weeks ago.

Lunch was at the A1A brewery, we both had cheese soup and the Crab BLT. They had five beers on tap and of course I did a flight of them (their IPA was my favorite).

I spent some time with my hosting service and the speed of QVMarine. It’s been running 6-8 seconds for the user facing pages and about 10 for the internal pages. It appears to be more of a “Wordpress is a pig” issue than anything else. I’m going to post on the WP tech support site to see if they have any suggestions.

I made some minor changes with the caching and I got rid of some calls to external fonts that I wasn’t using, so we’ll see how that works out.

While I was doing bloggy things, Susan was out walking around the town. She reported back with a number of places she wanted to go to but were closed on Mon/Tuesday, so we decided to stay one more day and check things out.

We went to JP Henly for beers instead of Docktails. They have about 70 beers on tap and about twice that in bottles/cans. I got 8 samples to try, all of which were pretty good. It was crowded when we got there, but it turns out from 4-6 their $6 pints are only $4, hence the crowd. When we were ready to go at 6:10 PM the place was almost empty.

Dinner was at Harry’s, it’s mostly Cajun style food. We started off with Voodoo shrimp, it was nothing like any other Voodoo Shrimp. The 8 shrimp came in a cast iron pan about 4” across, bubbling in a brown sauce. The sauce was very flavorful, but with spices, not with the pepper burn that I’ve associated with Voodoo Shrimp in the past. The best method to eat was to take the toasted bread slices, dip them in the sauce and perch a shrimp on top. Perfect!

Susan had the Shrimp and Grits, they were sweet grits because they had put sweet corn kernels into the corn meal (the grits part). The sauce had a really great flavor. I had the Jambalaya, it had a ton of shrim, chicken and sausage. I’d ordered a side of Maque Choux (since I’d never had it as that name). Its a mix of corn, peppers and onions in a buttery cream sauce. A great companion to both of our dishes. We were to full to eat the Oreo beignets, and we knew that getting them to go would be a failure. Another time.

While we were eating Cajun food our discussion turned to the crew of Moondance. They had been the leaders of the epic “Mississippi / Ohio and Lock 52” flotilla. It’s interesting how food takes us back to places and people that we’ve met on the trip. A few days ago, “Midas Touch” crossed their wake and mentioned butter tarts and we were instantly transported back to Canada. Ahh butter tarts, how I miss thee.

After dinner we walked a little of the downtown area, it will be nice to hit some of the shops when they are open on Wednesday. Just need to hope the rain holds off.

They are real! We met them in person. After talking to the crew of Chamba on the radio, we got to meet them. We decided to get pumped out since we had missed the bridge opening. While we were there they slid up to the dock. “Hey Quo Vadimus!!” The are very nice people. We said we’d try to meet up a marina up the ICW where we could sit and chat.

Weather the last few days has been rain in the afternoon so we are trying to be at a dock around 1 PM.

The ride up the ICW was nice, it goes from wilderness to houses and back again. Still not sure what’s up with boaters on the ICW. It’s a closed area like a river and we’ve been good about giving people a slow pass. Wish the guy in the Mainship had done that when he went by. He managed to break Susan’s wineglass from Manistique, MI. Sigh. We tried on the radio, but for some reason these idiots don’t have their radio’s on. He went up a few miles and came back. Both of us yelled and waved, he just waved when he went by. Double Sigh.

We were on the lookout for manatees, we had seen them on our last 4 travel days. There were some dolphins on thje way but no manatees.

About noon the sky got dark and there was thunder and lightning on the horizon. I was hoping to get to the marina before we got drenched. But there was a snout, it was a manatee. We slowed and drifted up, our momentum kept us going at his pace. But he decided that he was done with us and with a wave of his tail he was gone.

We got to the dock about 10 minutes before the sky opened up, so that part worked out well.

After naps and dinner we went for a short walk to Marineland. This is one of the earliest dolphin places, they have been around for 75 years. Susan had been there in her 20′s but they have done some updates since then. It was closed and we walked around it to the beach. Next door was a block long raised board walk with a huge parking area. Not sure what it would have been in a prior life.

On our dock was “Kilt Drifter”, Loopers from Washington State, but had purchased a boat in Alabama. We chatted for awhile, they are staying for a day to go to the grocery store.

Tuesday will be a short day, 15 miles to St. Augustine.

Sunday was another nice day, but rain in the forecast. We decided to hit some of the local brewing companies and do some shopping. Hitting the K-Mart we found replacement throw rugs for the boat. Ours have taken a beating with us walking on them for the last year.

Lunch was at Tomoka Brewery a few miles away. They have local beers and are known for their great pizza. We arrived just in time a party with about 2 dozen people had just left and we were able to get a table in the corner. We got a flight of six different beers to try out. Most of them were pretty good and it was fun trying new beers out. Susan’s not much of a beer drinker, when we have beer it’s up to me to pick something she will like. These little tastings make it easier for me to pick from a range of styles and types.

The pizza was great, it was thin and crispy the way I like it. Susan was pleased that they had fresh mushrooms so it was a good meal experience. We’ve settled in on Sausage, mushroom, green pepper and onion (sometimes with pepperoni) as our go to pizza. They had used tiny peppers so we had quarter sized slices of pepper, good visual appeal on their part.

Our next move was divide up our efforts. I would go to Ormond Brewing Company and she would go to Publix. Ormond Brewing is in the back of an industrial park, when I would expect a brewery to be. I had low expectations on the tasting area, but was surprised to find a 10 seat bar inside and a huge area out back with tables and games (Giant Jenga anyone?).

The barman was nice, he set me up with their 12 beers that were on tap. I’ve gotten smarter on these tastings I’ve been taking my iPad with me to take notes on. So it’s easier to keep up with what I’ve had and how I liked it. They have a wide range of styles so it was fun tasting them and scoring them. The barman and I had good conversation about the beers.

One of their beers, Bootlegger, only comes in bottles and I was going to pass. But the barman decided to share one with the bar. It’s one of the new style of beers that brewmasters are aging in kegs that have had a pre-life, in this case Jack Daniels. It’s pretty good, with a hit of Jack vs the other ones I’ve tried that tasted like they dumped a bottle into the barrel.

Dinner was at Leahanns. It is a huge menu of items, if it comes from Asia you can order it. I got my favorite of shrimp black bean and cashews. Very good, if we come back to Daytona we will come back here.

We stopped by Mara Beel for a night cap and to say Goodbye. Mark and I shared some of his Tempelton’s Rye. It’s very good, it’s history is that it was Al Capone’s favorite during prohibition. We are heading off in the morning, the will be in Daytona for the rest of the week. They will catch up to us about South Carolina since they do longer days.

Another dead calm morning, so we are on a roll, every day this week we’ve gotten off to a nice start and a good sail day. We are both looking forward to time in Daytona Beach, we will have been on the move for 7 days in a row. A new record for us, our prior record was the mad dash down the West Coast of Florida in 6 days.

About 8 AM were were in Duck Roost Cove. It’s very pretty, wilderness in a 340 degree view and then the Worlds Largest Freestanding Building, NASA’s Vertical Assembly Building. There is a launch in a few days, this would be a great place to stay and watch it from.

A little farther on there is a cut in the island. For the next 3 miles we saw over a dozen manatees in the water. It was very cool to see them floating in the water.

Around 10:30 there is a long slow speed zone. We saw about six sets of dolphins, they all appeared to be feeding. We were tipped off by the smaller fish jumping into the air and then seeing the dolphin fin break the surface.

We also had our daily radio chat with Chamba, they were going to go to Daytona Beach to an anchorage south of the city.

At New Smyrna Fl the ICW goes to the left through a channel, the river runs along the barrier island. Rather than do the canal we took the river side. We were rewarded with white sand beaches and some really nice areas. It is about the same difference and only about 5 miles of the alternate channel.

We picked up a pretty good current in Port Orange. Normally at 1,800 RPM our cruising speed is 8.1 knots. With the current we ripped along at 9.8 knots. Nice on the fuel mileage and makes the trip go faster. We ended up docking about 10 mins earlier than planned. Total miles today was 41.4, the biggest one day jump since leaving Miami a week ago. We’ve covered 243 miles in the last week, so we are making good progress!

On the dock I met the Captain of Haley’s Comet, he owns a boat similar to mine and is on the Bayliner Owners Forum. He was about to run out and get parts and offered to take me with him. We went to the local discount marine place and I was very good, I only spent about $30. I got LED lights that later on turned out to be pretty useless, but they were cheap.

Another round of Doctails, tonight was on the “Mara Beel”. More good discussion, but one of the Admrials was pretty adamant when the Captains started talking shop about motors or oil or … to shunt the conversation in a different direction.

Porkchops and pierogi were on the menu for the night. Looking forward to some down time.

Another pretty dawn with no wind so it was easy to get off the dock and heading north again. We did another try at going up on plane to clear the front bilge out. Same result as yesterday, wet carpet, my turn to clean it up. On Friday we will try again, going a lot slower.

About 8 AM we heard “Greeks Folly” and “Sweetwater” on the radio, we had crossed with them from Apalachicola to Dunedin back in November. It was nice to catch up with them. And it’s a good sign that we are back with the Loopers.

A few moments later we noticed a huge disturbance in the water ahead of us. Slowing we came up on a number of rays, they were flipping around in the water. Susan did some research, the were either feeding or mating. It’s the right time of year and the frenzy of activity matches up with what she found. We’ll find out later if the pictures came out.

Mid morning we came up behind “Joint Adventure”, they are a Gold Looper. We chatted for a few moments on the radio and agreed to catch up in Titusville.

Of course we came up to “Chamba” that we’ve been playing tortise and hare with all week. They are doing fine, they were going to bypass Titusville and would look for us on Friday.

We started hearing “Thanks for the wake Sapphire”, “Hey Sapphire slow down”, “You idiot Sapphire!”. We looked and there was a 35 Hinkley headed our way. And of course due to the channel he came about 20′ away and waked both us and the sail boat we were trying to give a slow pass to. Some minor damage of things getting dumped on the floor. I radioed the Coast Guard, they seemed highly disinterested. We then listened for the next 30 minutes as Sapphire continued to wake boats as they traveled north.

We docked and were met by the crews of “Marabeel” and “Serenity”. Yay!! We had seen “Serenity” at Tavernier, but it had been December since we had been with “Marabeel”. They along with the crew of Charis were off to the beach, but they would meet us for docktails.

After lunch I headed to the Titusville US Walk of Fame Museum. There are a number of monuments along the waterfront and then a museum with some great artifacts. While most museums are about the astronauts, this one is about the thousands of workers that made the space program possible. They have a huge collection of patches and buttons from all the missions, consoles from the control centers, tools, bolts that were used to keep the rockets upright, etc. Lots of pictures of mission control teams, people working on rockets, etc.

The docents all had stories of who they had met, things that they had worked on, etc. One told the story of how they got stuck on a bus in traffic for a launch. On the other side of the road was Glenn Campbell and his tour bus. Since there was nobody coming out of the launch area they had a clears shot. Their bus driver knew the other drivers and it was the same company. So he lurched across the media and joined the group of buses. They got to the launch site, got to meet Glenn Campbell, and just as they did they scrubbed the launch. So they had an easy trip back out since they were first in line.

Next stop was Playalinda Brewing Company. They have 15 beers that they make and 5 more guest taps, along with a Ginger Soda they make. So of course I had a flight of all the beers they make. The owner, Ron, sat with me and talked about each beer as I sampled. Very cool. He said that it’s a struggle to keep all of the beers on tap, he’s making 3-4 different beers each week. It was nice to get a guided tour of all the beers. One of the things he’s doing is Can Growlers. They only cost him $1, so they are disposable and a easy way for people on the fence to buy his beer. Downside is they only hold 20 oz, so they don’t last as long.

Then it was time for Docktails!!! We hadn’t been to Docktails with Loopers since we left Tavernier. “Mara Beel”, “Serenity”, “Charis” and “Prime Adventure” had a great time. Really missed the crew of “Mara Beel”, they are great people and I just love talking to Mark.

Some of the talk was about the benefits of joining the MTOA. They set up lots of cruises, they are very active in the Chesapeake Bay. The other is access to discounted insurance policies. The members save more on that than the cost of the dues.

Dinner was grilled chicken with the zucchini noodles that I love so much.

A pretty great day!

Another dawn departure, we have a short day today but we’ve been doing better traveling in the morning when it’s cooler.

I put the boat up on plane to help drain the forward area into the mid-bilge. I did it too fast and was rewarded with water in the hallway that Susan sopped up. Sigh.

We are starting to see the same sets of boats during the day. We passed Chumba, a sail boat for the third time this week. While it takes us about 4.5 hours to go the 30 miles, it’s an all day sail for them.

We docked at Melbourne about 11AM, only 27 miles today. We did more white vinegar in the bilges. We played some with Susan’s camera to see how it shoots video. It does pretty well, but if we decide to shoot some real ones we’ll need a tripod.

I changed out the starboard fuel filter. I’m getting much better distance out of them last run was about 150 gallons, well up from the under 75 I have been getting. We are getting bounced more by wakes here, so I’m thinking that the bottom is getting stirred up. The last fuel load was Valtec, it’s got a cleaner in it that will help with the particles.

We caught a taxi to a brew pub and we found that taxi services in Melbourne are about what they are in NYC. Our 4 mile taxi ride was $17. Yikes!

The Intracoastal Brewery was great! They have 10 different beers on tap that they make and guest taps from other Florida breweries. We got the flight of 11 to try. There were lots of very good ones, it was hard to pick our favorites out.

Like the Soo Brewing Company (Sault Ste Marie) they have a huge stack of table games. We played “Cards Against Humanity” a game that matches well with our snarky senses of humor.

We ordered food from the local “Philly Place”. We got cheese steaks that tasted like home. We also got “pig wings” Susan texted Dave and he said they were rib ends. They scrape the meat up some and then deep fry them. They have the chance to become our new snack food.

The karma of the day was tarnished a little by the 40 min wait for the Yellow Cab (really, do you have only one cab working at dinner time? And the $20 ride home. It would have been cheaper to take the Quo Vadimus at those rates.

Boat smelled better tonight, so we are getting in front of this problem!

A pretty sunrise this morning as we pushed out of Loggerhead Marina in Stuart. It’s 5 miles back to the ICW and we are the only people on the water. At 8 AM we go under the East Stuart Bridge, the water is pretty flat and it looks like another good day underway.

Susan has been missing her dolphin friends since we left the keys. In the Indian River a pair came over to the boat to visit. While the ones in the keys didn’t jump as much, this pair was excited to see Susan as she was to see them. Big splashy fully out of the water leaps, very, very cool to watch.

About 15 mins later we passed a turtle, it looked like a Loggerhead, but it was only on the surface before diving down.

The ICW along here is a mix of houses and wilderness. The houses are nice, but not the mega-homes from farther south. We are seeing lots more seabirds around us which is a good sign.

We land at Loggerhead Vero at noon and spend the next 30 minutes dumping 151 gallons of fuel into our tanks. At $2.90 it’s the cheapest so far on the trip and has helped drop our average cost of fuel to $4 a gallon. That makes me really happy, we are well under my $6 gallon budget. But we are over in dock fees between the extra two weeks in Tavernier and the two weeks in Miami while getting repaired.

While at the fuel dock Susan found a chameleon on one of the safety stanchions. He was bright green and didn’t look happy. She scooped him up and put him in the grass. We are thinking he came on the boat in Palm Beach since we were close to shore. Other slips have been well away from the water.

Once we were in our slip we again attached the weird smell problem. Susan sprayed white vinegar all over the chain in the locker and then rinsed it with water. We put vinegar in the forward bilge and into the catch pan for the air conditioner. Hopefully this will start killing whatever is growing down there.

There were Gold Loopers in the marina, but they were not aboard, maybe another time. There was also a boat called “When Pigs Fly” but we were not able to get a good picture with First Mate Pig. We borrowed bikes to go to the store and to the new pizza place. [Let me say that the “ease of borrowed bikes” was soon outweighed by them not being multi-speed and having fat cruiser tires that wobble. ]

On the way I was almost killed. We were coming up the street where the cross street had a stop sign. An older couple came through the intersection at speed, passing about 10′ in front of me. Had I done an extra two pedal pushes I’d been road kill. I was watching and thinking “umm too fast”, but not enough to really do anything.

The pizza place was mobbed. We ordered wine,beer, salad and pizza. She came back a few mins later and said it would be 30-40 mins for pizza. We said OK we can wait. We ordered garlic knots (ummm butter!) with their red gravy. Very good. But time ticked on. More drinks and the salad came. Right at the 35 min mark our pizza arrived. Waitress said that the drinks, salad and knots were free. They had only been open 8 days and they were still on the learning curve.

The pizza was very good, the sauce was good and the dough was tasty and well baked. (I expected that if they were rushing they would give us a ½ baked pizza. Our bill was $16 and I left the waitress a $15 tip.

Did a minor grocery shop and Susan found Cheerwine! Yay! With water and Cheerwine I was again lamenting my decision on borrowed bikes. But we made it back safely.

The boat didn’t smell as much this evening, so we may be on to something. We’ll keep the AC running hand the ports open to help air things out.

We are back to leaving at 7AM, with sunrise at 7:15 or so, there is enough daylight to go. We can do our 30-35 miles and be at the next dock around lunch time. We motored out of Palm Beach past all of our new mega yacht friends and made the 7:15 AM bridge opening. We were on our way for another day.

There is a harbor north of West Palm Beach. The winds were from the east and we saw a container ship backing in dragging their anchor. I’ve heard of doing that to keep the speed down and help control the bow, but it was the first time I had seen it in action.

Lots of houses along the water again, but most of the boats were up on lifts to keep them out of the salt water. There were not any other bridges that we needed to wait for, but there were some tricky spots where there were sailboats stacked up waiting to get through.

Pretty soon the homes dwindle away and both sides are covered with mangroves. It gives more of a feeling of being on a river vs being on a big canal. Lots of wildlife, a number of trees with osprey nests in the tops of them (unless the bald eagles here are pretty small)

Only saw one looper today. They are from TN and they had come down from Stuart. They were going south a little farther then heading east for the 60 mile run to the islands. They have a pretty good weather window. They will stay for a month and then head north to the Chesapeake. They won’t do the Northern part of the loop until next year.

About 11AM we turned into the St. Lucie river and motored the 6 miles to Stuart. We are at Loggerhead Marina, on the north side of Stuart. A nice marina, full services, laundry, etc. The dock hands (Jim and Tim) were pretty helpful.

Lunch was at Wahoo’s, their happy hour starts at 11AM! So we had ½ priced drinks, a pound of mussels for $7 and crabcake sliders. Very nice place, good view of the water and a nice breeze. The kind of place you could stay all day.

But there were errands to do and laundry to take care of. So we spent our afternoon doing those and then it was back to the boat to figure out what the “smell” was.

When we had gotten back on the boat on Saturday there was a strange “plastic like” smell. We thought it was from the protective plastic mats they had put down when they had worked on the boat. But Sunday when we had run the AC it was strong. I thought it may be a problem with the AC. We opened up both sides and ran the AC, but there wasn’t any smell coming from the AC’s. We ran the AC a few mins and when we went down below, the smell was back. Turned the power to the AC off and I kept searching around for what it could be. No idea, but it was dinner time, back to Wahoo’s

We were low key, getting a trio of tacos, beef, chicken and pork. Another nice time on their deck, this time watching the sunset paint the sky with colors.

We have great internet here, so we streamed “Mad Men”. It’s the last season and the last 8 shows start this week, we are both huge fans.

Susan had heard from our friends on “Marabeel”, they are about 35 miles ahead of us. We should catch up to them in Daytona Beach at the MTOA spring meeting. It will be fun meeting up with them, we last saw them in Dunedin FL.