Tt. Pierce, Palm City, Daytona to Isles of Palm

April 4th

Saturday Daniele the diver scrubbed Snow Goose's bottom and said our paint was holding up well We had a lot of barnacles and some grass. We took the shuttle to Walmart and bought supplies again, hopefully for seven days.

Sunday we topped off the water tanks at the fuel dock (Bill had filled up the jerricans on Friday).and headed for Ft. Pierce. It was a little tense for the first few miles after leaving Manatee Bay heading north on the ICW as we had only 6 to 8 inches under our keel (close to grounding out) which makes for holding your breath. It seemed to go on forever. Then it opened up, we furled our headsail and had a beautiful sail into Ft. Pierce. We anchored early and enjoyed the downtime.

Monday, April 4th, we woke up to winds of 25 to 30 knots. We decided to hang out here and do some bright work. While doing bright work sanding, we saw a large fish come out of the water, do a 180 flip and go back into the water and it was big! We managed to get the stern done with one coat of varnish and the toe rail (the first one third) sanded. While sanding the toe rail we spotted a very large sea turtle and hundreds of little yellow tailed fish swimming along the hull. At 8 pm the wind is finally subsiding. We received a phone call from Ken, Francie and Skipper that they had crossed the gulf stream from Grand Bahama and had arrived safely in Ft. Worth. The winds picked up again and didn't die out until some time early AM. Bill and I took turns up during the night checking the anchor. Another boat here in the anchorage had a bad night, dragging anchor into the swallow water. However, they got off bottom with the tide and moved to a deeper area.

Tuesday, April 5th, as predicted the cold front came through about noontime, blowing and raining with a little thunder, but we missed the high gale winds and lightening. It is 4 pm now and the temperature has dropped from the morning high of 78 to 62 degrees. The rain has stopped but a lighter wind continues to blow at 15 mph.

Thursday, April 7th. We left Ft. Pierce on Wednesday AM April 6th. The wind continued to blow and the waterway was choppy. We had to wait for a couple of bridges, but we managed to get in 30 miles and anchored behind a spoil in Palm City. We promised dinghy he too would have his bottom cleaned, so we took dinghy into the beach on the spoil island and have him a good cleaning.

Today, we probably set a record in Florida with the bridges and actually traveled better than 50 miles! We are anchored in Titusville .The day was sunny and traveling much easier as there was a whole lot less wind. We did experience the typical Indian River lack of water and managed to clean the kelp off the bottom of the keel in a couple of places. There was also a dolphin who I am sure got a thrill when he came right up out of the water next to the boat and Barb at the helm. Tomorrow we plan to fill the tanks, get ice and continue on Daytona.

Saturday, April 9th we had an uneventful trip to Daytona -- again doing over 40 miles.  The waterway was very busy with weekend boaters.  We picked our anchor spot before the first of three bridges over Daytona.  As we were positioning the boat to drop the anchor we hit a shoal and bottom.  However, those weekend boaters came to our rescue creating rolling wake that lifted us off.  We chose another spot to anchor but it was silty and holding was not great.  We decided in the middle of dinner to move again.  I felt like Release.  Anyway, it was a restless night on anchor watch. 

Sunday, April 10th, we started through the three bridges only to find the last one, Main Street bridge out of order.  We pulled over to one side of the waterway and dropped anchor with two other Northbound sailing vessels.  However, luck was with us because as soon as the anchor was overboard the bridge tender called that they were putting up the bridge.  Just a little anchoring practice.  We fought the tide all morning and decided we were not going to make St. Augustine.  We have pulled into Isles of Palm Marina and treated ourselves to showers and a meal of very tasty pizza at a place we discovered in January.

Monday, April 11th, we are waiting for the tide so it will be coming in when we get to Devil's Elbow in the Matananzes River--the shoal we had to be towed off last year.  We should see St. Augustine today.

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