Happy Thanksgiving!

This is unusual.  I am blogging on a day when we did not travel.  I just want to say Happy Thanksgiving to everyone.  We plan to make a downsized traditional dinner on board, stuffing a hen instead of a turkey.  There is no dessert in the plan, but that could change.  Maybe I will go work on that now. 
The temperature has dropped about ten degrees since this morning, and the winds are fierce again.
We took the bicycles out today for a ride down to Sailorman, a new and used boat parts store.  We were in search of cheap life jackets to put in the dinghy.  We forgot that ours disappeared when the dinghy sank in Sanford.  We also stopped at Advance Auto Parts so Ray can rig navigation lights for the dinghy also.  The red and green were not required when we had the small engine, but now we have to have them.  In Delray Beach we held a flashlight up inside them for temporary.  Probably not very legal, but neither was the absence of life jackets we forgot to throw in.


A random old boat from days ago.

For those of you who are avid blog readers, I added some pictures on the November 17th entry.


Change of Plans

We were going to stay another day and explore Delray Beach some more, but the winds started picking up again.  We thought we might have slid at anchor just a little bit, but maybe the rode was just taught in the windy conditions.  Either way, we were not going to be comfortable enough to leave the boat, so we decided to move it.  We pulled up anchor at 7:45 a.m. and went back north for about two miles to get what we found to be the cheapest diesel price in the area.  Just after eight o'clock we pulled up to Delray Harbor Club Marina to get just over 200 gallons, which gave us a ten cent discount per gallon.
Back underway by 8:40 a.m. and heading south, we could once again hear "Silver Lining" calling bridges.  Okay, they definitely changed their name.  Did it depend on which drunk was driving, or just according to whether they were getting yelled at or not.  We really thought they were drunk when we saw them heading north.  They ended up turning back south behind us.  Then we wondered if they were just waiting for another boat to come to hail the bridge tender so they would know the name of it.
Thankfully, we got to leave them behind as we continued on to Ft. Lauderdale.  We confirmed that we could come earlier than our original reservation at the New River Downtown Marina.  This is one of our favorite spots.  We weren't even here an hour and we were just enthralled with the activity and coordination of the traffic on this river and the size of some of the vessels.
We have decided to stay here through the Thanksgiving holiday, assuming that Biscayne Bay is just going to be a boaters nightmare this weekend.  We plan to depart on Sunday and hope that most of the amateurs will be back at home by the time we want to dock at Boca Chita, another one of our favorite stops as the water gets prettier and prettier from here on south.

More exciting

Forgot to mention that yesterday we encountered probably the second worst wake we have ever experienced.  It toppled our bicycles over again, along with both of the miniature Christmas trees we put up, and Santa was found face down on the couch.  Linda put up the Christmas decorations while in Vero Beach thinking that we would just be on the ICW so everything should be fine.  Well the Christmas trees have been laying over more than they have been up, so that theory didn't work out too well.
We pulled anchor up out of Hell Gate earlier than we really planned, but decided to just go ahead and get this show going at seven o'clock again.  A few hours into the trip we could see Flagler Memorial Bridge being raised up ahead and debated trying to speed up to catch that lift, or just wait another half hour for the next scheduled opening.  Unfortunately we opted to continue at our slow pace.  Unbeknown to us, the bridge was under construction, therefore on a reduced opening schedule, only once an hour.  So at 10:30 a.m. we anchored north of the bridge to wait for the 11:15 a.m. opening.  Good thing we got an early start.  There ended up being another bridge with the same construction reduced schedule, but thankfully we did not need that one open.

This is where the area homes are enormous.  This particular one had
a boom truck in the back yard putting up the holiday decorations.

Now obviously sailboats need all of them opened, so all day long we heard "Silver Lining" calling bridges ahead of us.  We were laughing at the drunken sounding Captain.  We eventually caught up to them at a point where this bridge was opening and there was another one three miles ahead.  "Silver Lining" thought he was talking to the bridge that we were about to go through on the VHF radio, but was hailing the wrong bridge name three miles up ahead, causing a bit of confusion.  "Silver Lining" apologized for the confusion stating that he did not have a chart for this water he was on, therefore did not know the names of all of these bridges.  Well, the current bridge tender gave him the what-for, telling him he was responsible as a captain of that vessel to know where he was and that he should have a guide book.  We definitely agreed and had already mentioned how scary it was that we are on the same water with these idiots.
When we got to the next bridge though, this same sailboat that did not have a name on the boat, started calling itself "Event Horizon".  We debated telling the bridge tender that all of the sudden now that he got yelled at by the previous bridge tender he changed the vessel name, but decided to just stay out of it.  We also thought, well maybe in his drunken slur, we just misunderstood it all day long.
This last bridge we had to get opened and went through together was at Delray Beach.  There was one more bascule bridge ahead, but we did not need it opened.  Just after that we anchored in Pelican Harbor, about four miles south of town.  We took our time getting the dinghy down to head for the Mellow Mushroom.  It was almost an hour later when we were back on the ICW with the dinghy when we crossed paths with this same sailboat.  We laughed and said maybe they stopped in Delray Beach to buy a guide book.
We enjoyed a pizza and part of the Buffalo Bills football game at Ford Stadium in Detroit while at Mellow Mushroom.  Ray went back to the dinghy once to make sure it was still okay since this is where it got swamped in the spring.

Still Windy

Well, I guess we could have sat in Vero Beach forever waiting for the winds to die down, especially since our car delivery fairies had the pimpala there for us, but six days seemed long enough.  That was longer than we planned.  The wind direction changed to the south, so we untied from "Ookpik" and mooring ball #30 at seven o'clock this morning with rain up ahead.  We couldn't even get the fenders and lines put away before the rain caught up to us.  It was intermittent light rain all day with the southern winds blowing right through the windshield.  It was nice to have warm enough temperatures to have it open again.  Linda did most of the nine hours of driving to go 51 miles.  The tide was almost always against us again, typical for us.  We dropped anchor at Hell Gate near Jupiter, Florida.  We love this anchorage in southern winds.  The huge dry stack building is a perfect protector.  You would never know it was windy once we got in there which was wonderful since the winds did not lay down as much as originally predicted, but it didn't really matter.

Windy

Our second peaceful night's sleep.  It was calm again and we loved it.  We woke early by our alarm clock as usual, and talked about making a pancake breakfast.  Unfortunately it did not take long for the captain to declare that it was already raining and we should get out of there as soon as possible to beat the predicted incoming weather.  This weather seemed earlier than predicted with the grey skies.  It took a couple hours for the clouds to pass by quickly with the wind that was blowing us out of the channel, along with the two sailboats we were in sight of. 

Linda at the helm.

It must have been something with the weather too though, but we saw sights that we have never seen before.  First was a gull sitting on a pelican's head trying to steal the fish away from the pelican.  First we thought it was a fluke, but we watched the pelican fly away and catch another breakfast only for the gull to do the same thing.  Next was a sting ray jumping/flying out of the water, which we have seen before, but this was probably the largest we have ever seen, and it flew out more times than we have ever witnessed.  After that, we were observing how many bait fish seemed to be breaching the water when a two to three foot shark entirely jumped out of the water.  That was definitely a first.

Pirates! Pirates!

We bumped up the RPM's to try to beat the weather, but it seemed like it didn't matter as the winds were already upon us.  Listening to the VHF radio, we heard that Vero Beach Municipal Marina's mooring balls were already full, so it was time for rafting to vessels already on a mooring ball.  When we arrived and called in, we were instructed to tie up to "Ookpik" on mooring ball number 30.  Fortunately we know them, so we felt more comfortable with that.  Unfortunately, they were not aboard their vessel to throw us a line, etc.  It made for a very scary three attempts at rafting to them, grabbing their lines the graciously left, although tied and hard to get free in these windy conditions.  Thankfully, no damage was done, and we secured without incident.
We stayed aboard for a while thinking that our other friends on "Meridian" would have to raft with us also, as we observed three vessels on some mooring balls.  It ended up that they had to raft with "Rickshaw", another boat we know, and just saw them in Sanford.
Once we felt that we should take advantage of the nice weather now, mom and dad came and met us again to take us to the beach for another delicious lunch/dinner.  We introduced them to their local attractions.
Back at the boat, we sit now and wait for the cold front to come through.  We will stay here for a few days.

Maw & Paw

This was our most peaceful night's sleep since we left Sanford.  It was so calm, we did not feel like we had to keep one eye/ear open.  The boat parade has diminished as the faster boats have obviously made it farther ahead.  We did have one sailboat far off in the anchorage with us, but it got away ahead of us.  It ended up being a very uneventful day with the autopilot set almost in a straight line all day.  Our 44 miles of travel landed us near Melbourne Beach to anchor by two o'clock in the afternoon.  That gave us plenty of time to get the dinghy down and meet Linda's parents at the pier.  They drove us for a delicious lunch/dinner in town.  When we drove back to the beach we perused the local grocery store that all the boaters brag about.  After that we ventured to The Bikini Bar, which reminded us of why we were not impressed with it last time.  We thought it was going to be a very early evening by the time we walked back the pier.  We got distracted though by a party we assumed were attending a wedding earlier when we arrived, that were now going to light at least 25 sky lanterns by our count.  We personally knew it was too windy for such an event, so that made for more entertainment.  Of the 25 lanterns we predicted five would launch.  We were close as seven launched, as the rest of them plummeted to the water.  Thankfully there were not burn injuries that we heard of.  That made for an early night back to "The Second Noelle", where we made a bowl of popcorn for a snack before bed.

Daytona

It was another fairly early departure, pulling up anchor from Ormond Beach just after 7:00 a.m.  We cruised through Daytona and New Smyrna Beach without incident.  We even had a good push from the tide.  Just about the time we were entering Mosquito Lagoon, where the long "Slow Speed/Minimum Wake" area ends, we got waked by a sport fishing boat worse than we have ever been waked.  We actually wrote down all the information we could immediately just in case there was damage that their wake caused.  Thankfully we did not find anything as of yet, but our bicycles taking a tumble might not be apparent until we ride them again.  Of course we could hear several boats ahead make complaints about the same boat waking them.
There were plenty of pleasantries today though, especially amongst the wildlife.  We even saw three raccoons on an island.  We kind of got tickled at that.
We were originally going to anchor in Mosquito Lagoon, but it looked very exposed to the 10-15 mile per hour winds out of the northeast, so we continued on.  We were thinking we would just get a mooring ball at Titusville Municipal Marina, but then decided it should be calmer anchoring behind the railroad bridge just to the north instead.  It proved to be a great exception.  This is the calmest water we have experienced so far on this trip.  We enjoyed the entire evening top side.  The only disturbance was a train that went by, but you have to expect that, right?

Several days ago I should have explained our trip this year.  I forget there are those that don't realize what we did all summer.  At last blogging in May when we arrived in Sanford, Florida, that was partly because we were supposed to get a boat delivery job out of Marathon, Florida.  Well, that never happened, but by the time we sat there long enough to find that out, Ray got four houses to build in Murphy, North Carolina.  So we spent the summer in Murphy, commuting back to the boat about once a month to check on it.  Now, one of those four houses was one for ourselves.  We now have a very small home in North Carolina again.  A place to lay our head when Ray has work there.  That also means that we will never attempt to avoid bringing the boat back to Chattanooga every summer again.  We have tried going up the east coast of the United States two summers in a row and it has not worked out.  I guess it is just not in the cards for us.  We missed our Chattanooga friends and boating gatherings, although we were fortunate enough to join them some on their boats this summer.

St. Augustine

We had a fun time in St. Augustine.  On Wednesday we brought the bicycles to shore.  We rode west to a used boat parts store, a West Marine, and Winn-Dixie.  After taking our purchases back to the boat via dinghy, we went back to shore and rode our bikes east to Mellow Mushroom.  We walked off some pizza in the old district and called it a fairly early evening. 

On Thursday we rode back west to a canvas shop we stopped at the day before inquiring about material we needed.  She sent us back with a sample to make sure that's what we wanted before we purchased the wrong size again.  When we got there, she was not in the shop to give a price on the material we wanted and would not be back until after lunch.  We couldn't think of anywhere else to explore except back to the east at the lighthouse.  We climbed to the top ahead of the school group, but those youngsters were already up there by the time we were ready to head down the 217 steps.


This was the view from the top.  We could actually see "The Second Noelle".

This was the view of the lighthouse
from our cabana for lunch.

By the time we left the lighthouse we were hungry so we stopped at The Conch House for a lovely setting and delicious lunch.  We worked off those calories by riding back to the other side of town to the canvas shop once again, with success.  Upon returning to the mooring field we went ahead and dinghied the bicycles back to "The Second Noelle", assuming we would not be using them anymore.
For the evening we met up with Terry and Donna from "Meridian", inviting them to join us for our planned free dinner at A1A Ale Works.  We knew they were associated with one of our favorite restaurants in Chattanooga, but found out that Chattanooga is actually the corporate headquarters.  With that information we asked if they would honor a coupon we got for a free entrée for Ray's birthday.  They said yes, so we printed the coupon plus turned in our points rewards on their passport card and got $50.  It was a great evening, wonderful food, and splendid live music entertainment to boot.
This morning we were up fairly early thinking we would leave close to low tide and get a push from the incoming tide.  That didn't work again of course.  We puttered along all day at about six miles per hour.  It was like a parade of boats today with all of the snowbirds heading south.  We were overtaken an unfathomable amount of times today.  We did overtake one sailboat.  We tried pulling into one anchorage, but found it too shallow, so we fell back a couple of boats in line.  We ran an eight hour day to anchor just outside the ICW channel in what is labeled Halifax Lake near Ormond Beach.

One of the many boats that overtook us today.

Veteran's Day

We got an early start out of Sister's Creek this morning at seven while the current was not so swift.  The north winds still made it a little tricky to get off the dock with not much room for error since we were the first of the five boats to depart.  No problems though, and we were soon finally heading south with a trailing wind. 

The day started with many bald eagle sightings, including this one being the closest, but the sun did not make for a great picture.  Also notice the clouds in the background.  They were in the most unusual formation this morning, but did move away quickly for a sunny rest of the day.
We did catch the current for about the first two hours of travel, then it was reversed because of the next inlet at St. Augustine.  About the same time of slowing down we heard "Meridian" being hailed on the VHF radio.  They are people who have become friends since crossing the Gulf of Mexico together last fall.  Linda sent them a text and they were soon hailing us on the VHF radio.  They were heading to St. Augustine too today, along with "Cajun", another boat that crossed the Gulf that same time, although we never met Arch.  They were about five miles ahead of us, but believe it or not, those guys had not seen each other since the crossing.  We did see "Meridian" quite a bit in Marathon during the winter.
After our six hour day of travel to go 39 miles, we tied up to mooring ball #24 in the north mooring field at St. Augustine Municipal Marina, just about three boats away from "Meridian".  It did not take any of us long to get our dinghies down and head to shore to get off the boats in the north winds opposing the outgoing tide.  "Cajun" got a slip at the marina, so we all met up on the docks. 
We got introduced to Arch, who is single handed on his boat, and reunited with Terry and Donna.  Come to find out, Terry and Donna never made it any farther north than Beaufort, South Carolina because Terry got hit by a car on his bicycle there and broke his back.  Thankfully, he is now recuperated, and we all walked into town. 
We were a little early for the 3:00 p.m. happy hour special at Pizza Alley, but stayed long enough to take full advantage of the two for one drinks and free slice of pizza that lasts until 6:00 p.m.  We also ordered a pizza.
Upon walking back towards the docks, the girls got distracted by the shop windows and did some shopping.  It seems the guys all departed ways.  We found Ray at The St. George Tavern, not knowing where the other two guys went.  Linda tried calling Terry, but then Donna remembered that they left their phone on the boat, so that didn't do any good.  The three of us found Arch on his boat at the docks, but he did not know where Terry went.  It was not long before Terry called, obviously back on "Meridian", so we took Donna back to their boat on our dinghy.  We went back to the marina office via dinghy for a bag of ice and enjoyed the now calm waters in the mooring field back aboard "The Second Noelle" for the rest of the evening.
We plan to stay here in St. Augustine for three nights.  Will tell of the adventures once we are underway again on Friday if things go as planned, but don't count on that.

Taxi

It was a pleasant evening reuniting with friends we have not seen since the winter.  About an hour after anchoring last evening, we dinghied over to "Soujourn" at Ortega Landing Marina and met up with John and Kris was also there from "Miss Kitty", which is just across the fairway.  John was gracious enough to drive us to Mellow Mushroom and then to the grocery store.  It was fun catching up and hearing stories, especially the rumors about Ray's recent delivery job.  We still have to find out how all of that came about once we catch up with some other cruisers in Marathon.  We actually called it a fairly early evening after the previous one.
Today was mainly dictated by the Florida East Coast railroad bridge in downtown Jacksonville.  It is in disrepair and under a reduced opening schedule.  This is the same bridge that is going to be closed for a week or so next week and why we wanted to get through it before that delay.  We opted for the 9:00 a.m. - 10:00 a.m. opening because the 2:00 p.m. - 3:00 p.m. opening would not give us enough time to reach or intended destination.  We pulled up a very muddy anchor out of Ortega River at about 8:30 a.m. to try to time or arrival just right.  We did a great job, but there was a train coming so we got delayed anyway.
Linda mentioned the possibility of stopping at Metropolitan Park in downtown to wait for the tide to turn in our favor.  Ray was afraid we would not leave once there and didn't think the current would matter that much.  Well, we barely made five miles per hour all day and were easily overtaken by a large ship just as we went under the Dames Point Bridge, which has a 169 foot vertical clearance.
The tide finally turned about the time we reached the Intracoastal Waterway, which then again did not help us.  We actually turned north for just a short jaunt up to Sisters Creek where there is a free dock courtesy of the city of Jacksonville.  There were two sailboats already docked prior to our arrival, then a third sailboat docked behind us making an even less gracious approach than we did in this ripping current.  The last vessel to arrive, a power catamaran timed their arrival much better when the current was not so strong.
Tomorrow we will officially start heading south.  We are going to try to time our departure at slack tide and ride the current down the Intracoastal Waterway to get a push.  Well, we try to do that as much as we can, it just never seems to work out.  We'll see.

Bugs Again!

It was a slow start this Sunday morning.  We didn't want to face the bugs that were on deck.  They were not as bad as in the spring on the way south when we entered Lake George, but still bad enough that Ray spent the morning vacuuming them up once we were underway after 10:00 a.m.
We were greeted with out own personal one plane air show this morning.  It looked to be an old military bi-plane.  The pilot even dipped his wings side to side in a wave.  He circled us a couple times before heading into the horizon.
That was about the only excitement today so far.  We are now anchored in the Ortega River near Jacksonville.  The Ortega Landing Marina is right next to us where a couple boating friends are supposed to take us out to dinner.  We're hoping for Mellow Mushroom so that we can say we have been to all of them in Jacksonville, but we'll see.

Crab Shack

It was a cloudy six hour day of travel from Murphy Creek to Palmo Cove.  Shortly after the anchor was down, we dropped the dinghy in the water and headed up Six Mile Creek to the Outback Crab Shack.  It wasn't very busy for a Saturday night, but we enjoyed dinner and some beverages.
It was raining just a little bit on our way back and when we returned to "The Second Noelle", the blind mosquitos were already collecting.

Chilly North

Good thing we went to bed early last night.  The winds started picking up around 4:00 a.m., waking us up, so we were out of bed before 5:00 a.m. with the stern slapping.  By first light we were out of there around 6:15 a.m. even though the full moon was just about as bright anyway.  Once we were underway, cruising the remaining length of Lake George was uneventful other than going around a fisherman waving us to do so as to not interrupt his mate pulling up their trot line.
The remainder of our 32 mile travel day continued to be uneventful with nature displaying several bald eagles for us, including a pair on one of the green navigational day markers, and a large alligator sunning itself on a log just prior to us anchoring.


Here I was taking a picture of the white birds in the trees.  After taking the picture I realized there was a large alligator on the log below them.  The best picture I got of a small alligator today is giving me grief to get on here.

Our five hour trip left us plenty of time to go play.  We routinely got the dinghy down and decided to travel the uncharted waters we missed.  You see, when we traveled south on the St. Johns River in May we turned off behind Murphy Island to anchor, then exited out Murphy Creek at the south end.  Today we entered from the south end to anchor in the same place because we enjoyed it so much last time.  Besides that, Ray wants to hear the fire-breathing dragons again.
Anyway, this afternoon we traveled all the way around Murphy Island in the dinghy so we can now say that we did not leave any uncharted waters on the St. Johns.  Upon that cruise we discovered that there is a primitive campground on the other side of the island.  We discussed moving "The Second Noelle" to that dock for the night, but didn't figure it would be that much different than this side.  We also came across about three alligators, but were only able to capture the picture of one.

Just a bit of the fall color of Florida.

Coming back to the mother ship.

Underway Again Finally!

This morning Linda's parents came to see us off around 8:00 a.m. after we pumped out and filled up the dinghy gas tank.  They are being kind enough to take our car down to the Keys for us.

 

The day was filled with plenty of scenery including these bunches of purple flowers that added color to the little bit of fall color of the leaves amongst the mainly green vegetation.  We did see manatee around Blue Springs State Park but only one alligator was spotted throughout the day and we were not quick enough with the camera to capture any of those images.
Linda refused to let Ray get any ideas when he saw this pontoon boat coming down the waterway.  It's funny, he said "Here comes Huck Finn" when he saw it coming.  Neither of us noticed the name on the back of it though until we downloaded the pictures.
It was an eight hour day of travel for us.  We ended up going farther than we planned.  The winds were fairly calm, about 6-10 miles per hour out of the northwest, so we continued on into Lake George.  About three miles up the western shore is Silver Glen Springs, a place we used to take our bow rider many years ago.  We attempted to bring "The Second Noelle" in, but got deterred when we could see the grassy bottom once the water got clearer.  Instead, we turned around and brought her back into Lake George to a more comfortable six feet of water and anchored there, just outside the mouth of the springs.  Almost immediately, we dropped the dinghy.  Actually, we almost dropped the new dinghy motor.
Yes, we purchased a much faster 15 horsepower motor while we were in Sanford this summer.  Unfortunately, we almost lost it shortly after its purchase when a downpour of rain sank the dinghy while we were in Murphy at one point.  Thankfully, our friends were there to save it and fog it so that it was running just fine again.  We even tested it out again yesterday to make sure before heading off this morning to head back to Marathon, Florida for the winter.
So as we were using our pulley system to place the motor on the dinghy, the newly purchased strap that is for this purpose, broke.  Thankfully Ray had tied the extra length of the straps into a knot behind the motor.  This is the only thing that saved it from crashing onto the swim platform and worse.
We did get to make a successful trip via dinghy into Silver Glen Springs.  It has not changed much, and Ray was glad we did not bring the Second Noelle into the shallow and potentially hazardous area because it was kind of disappointing to him.  The water was clear and beautiful with lots of fish and birds observed.
We were back to the mother ship before sunset and moonrise.