Careening Towards Christmas!!

Location: Vero Beach, Florida
Position: N27 39.567 W080 22.290

We have heard that if you want to be in a warm climate don’t stop heading south until you get to Vero Beach. Well, we ARE here and it IS warm.

We left St Augustine on Friday morning.

There’s a kind of stone used in building the fort in St. Augustine and other old buildings in the area. It’s called coquina and is formed from compressed oyster shells and coral. Every morning as we raise the anchor we see the beginnings of this lovely rock, big clumps of mud surrounding shell pieces. At least it’s not smelly like the Chesapeake mud!

We once again planned to head out into the ocean and take a quick overnight hop down - we were all prepped and ready. We got up at 6am after a windy night in the anchorage and, not-so-surprisingly-anymore, the weather forecast had changed. High winds, high seas, thunderstorms, gusts to gale force, etc. Crikey!!

We have been in touch off and on with Rachel’s previous owners who are currently house sitting in Fort Pierce. They called to see what we were planning for Christmas and asked “Why don’t you come down here for Christmas?” This sounded like a great idea, so, instead of waiting for the weather to clear, we decided to “hit the road” figuring we could make the trip down the ICW in 3 long days and still have the option to pop outside to save time if the weather improved.

Day 1 - St. Augustine to Daytona Beach – N29 12.55 W081 00.455
It was really windy all day, but behind us most of the way, which is good, and sunny with lovely scenery. The wind was supposed to die down in the afternoon – not. We went past Daytona Beach, but had trouble finding a good anchorage with the depth we need, so we backtracked a bit and anchored right in town in the lee of the Memorial Bridge. We figured that when the weather cleared overnight we could duck outside at the Ponce De Leon inlet in the morning and make the rest of the trip pretty quickly. Needless to say the wind did not die down as predicted - all night long it howled and was now and again accompanied by pounding rain. Two or three times during the night we had to get up and adjust the anchor snubber. Needless to say, neither of us slept very well.

Day 2 - Daytona Beach to Cocoa – N28 20.986 W080 43.186
After our second semi-sleepless night we awoke to continued high winds and drizzle. We’re not sure why we even bother listening to the weather forecasts these days!! No going outside again today. We raised anchor at 7:15am and headed out. The good news - it is not cold, so although we are wet, at least we are not cold and wet!!

TowBoatUS are the friendly guys all down the coast who tow people off sand banks when they run aground. They seem quite happy to tell you about trouble spots and the best way to negotiate them. This fund of local knowledge is only a phone or VHF call away, but most folks don’t seem to take advantage of it. The Ponce De Leon inlet just south of Daytona has developed a reputation lately for being a bit tricky so Julie called to get the latest info. We were glad we did as the visibility was pretty bad and some of the navigation marks had been moved because of shoaling.

It actually ended up being pretty straightforward. Apparently lots of boats run aground here (three just yesterday!!), but it seems to us that it’s those captains who trust their chart plotters more than their eyes and the marks who are the ones keeping the good folks at TowBoatUS in business! We’re also glad we decided not to try and negotiate the inlet to the outside – about 30 minutes after we passed it on the ICW we heard an announcement from the Coast Guard that 4 buoys were out of position or adrift! That could have proven a bit problematic…

The rest of the day was pretty uneventful. After passing the inlet just after high tide, we got a huge boost from the falling tide for a couple of hours going down through Mosquito Sound. By late morning the rain had stopped and by lunchtime the sun was out. It was still pretty windy but we did manage to get out of our rain gear and hang it on the life lines to dry. We passed by Cape Canaveral, the shuttle launching base, which is surrounded by Merritt Island Wildlife Preserve. It’s a win-win situation as the base gets a wide open buffer around their launch facility, which is not used that often, and the public get a huge natural ocean front area to enjoy. We finally dropped the anchor at Cocoa as the sun was going down 5pm. We ended up making our longest run to date on the ICW - 67 statute miles - on the shortest day of the year.

Day 3 - Cocoa to Vero Beach N27 39.567 W080 22.290
We finally got a good night’s sleep. The wind died down and there was not much current on Indian River – it was like a mill pond (“What is a mill pond like anyway?”). A slight drizzle fell as we raised the anchor at 7:30 but soon it cleared and we had cloud cover most of the morning followed by a sunny and warm afternoon. Folks call this part of the trip boring. For us, however, it was relaxing – no shallow bits, no shoaling inlets, no tricky currents, not much tide, lots of marks – it’s like driving down a highway. After having to time our transits and be pretty vigilant most of the time through South Carolina, Georgia, and northern Florida, it was actually a bit refreshing.

Not too bored and looking forward to Christmas Eve tomorrow (Note from Julie – also our wedding anniversary Hint Hint!!),