Paying Attention?

Wednesday, April 17, 2013

We slept in a little bit for no real good reason other than the north end of the mooring field in Vero Beach is a peaceful place, except for the dog barking on the sailboat, in the mangroves.  We unhooked from the mooring ball and headed north around 8:45 a.m.  We traveled 39 miles today in six hours to tie up to mooring ball number 50 at Vero Beach City Marina.  It was Linda’s first time of driving while Ray picked up the mooring line.  So if you are paying attention, you should realize that we turned around and headed south around noon.  Upon receiving a phone call that our business partner in Murphy, North Carolina is getting too busy excavating to do work for us.  You know what they say, if you want things done you have to do them yourself, or something like that.  We decided we should go back to Chattanooga with the boat so that we can hopefully make some money instead of spending it going up the east coast.  We have already made arrangements to stay at C Dock at Gold Point Marina for the summer, if not longer if things are really picking up in Murphy like we have been hearing.  Once we arrived back at Vero Beach we checked in again and then took the free city bus to the beach where we enjoyed the setting of Waldo’s Restaurant at the Driftwood Inn that has been there for 75 years and then we walked back.

Thursday, April 18, 2013

Continuing south, we retraced our path of two days ago, just in the opposite direction.  Six hours into the trip we turned west on the Okeechobee Waterway, which is how we are going to cross Florida to get to the west coast.  We have not done that trip in eight years, back when we first brought the boat to Chattanooga.  At 3:45 p.m. we dropped anchor in the St. Lucie River North Fork near Bessey Creek.  A little over an hour later we realized we were dragging anchor as we were planning our trip across the Okeechobee.  We picked up anchor and moved back two miles to Sunset Bay Marina in Stuart to mooring ball number ten for more security.  This mooring attempt was our worst ever in the wind that caused us to drag anchor.  Linda had to drop the boat pole, which was still attached to the mooring line to make another attempt.  Ray was successful at retrieving the mooring line and boat pole while Linda did the driving instead.  I think this might start a new trend.