Friday, December 22nd (Day 76) - Stuart
67 degrees. Water temp 67 (why isn't it warmer now?). Winds N to NE 5-10. Cloudy with occasional rain
Didn't move the boat today.
Since we were going to be on the boat for Christmas, we decided to take the dinghy into town for some Christmas dinner shopping. We had a turkey loin in the freezer but it wouldn't allow for the great Turkey Dinner leftovers. Let's get a whole bird!
We relaxed in the morning catching up on emails and current events. There is a great Chinese / Japanese Buffet in the Publix mall that has the best sushi. Did I say it was a buffet!
In the early afternoon I dropped the dinghy and got it ready for the 1 mile run to the Shepard Park in Stuart. There is a great place to tie up the dinghy in Frazier Creek near US 1 - less than 1/2 mile from Publix and the buffet.
We brought our wheelie cart and folding crate because our grocery list was a little long and included a small (10 pound?) turkey that would fit in our boat oven. It would make carrying all that back to the dinghy much easier.
No problems as we carried the wheelie and crate down US1 to the mall. Geez. Cars were zooming right by us and everybody seemed to be in a hurry. We had to be very careful crossing the couple intersections because nobody was slowing down.
There were several closed shops in the mall. I was hoping the buffet was still open. It was! I settled in for my sushi feast.
I was very proud that I didn't overeat (too much...). A short time later we walked over to Publix and found everything we needed at the somewhat smaller store. Then back to the dinghy down US1 where I was almost hit by TWO cars. One guy was taking a right on red and not looking my way (was on his cell I think). I was 1/2 way passed the front of his truck when he started going. "STOP!". He apologized. We walked on to the next intersection where a large pick-up almost ran us over in the cross-walk. Instead of slowing down for us in the cross-walk, he accelerated past us. I really want to get back to our calm boat!
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Laura and I had planned on going into the nearby Harbor Inn restaurant for dinner but we were both a little tired from the walk and grocery shopping. Good thing we didn't go since it rained for several hours in the late afternoon and most of the night. We would have had a wet dinghy ride.
Interesting sunset tonight through a little hole in the clouds.
Instead of heading out to dinner, we watched a few shows streamed with our Starlink Internet. One of our favorites is the new season of "Car Masters: Rust to Riches" on Netflix. The techs / mechanics are so talented it's hard to believe some of the cars they produce. Plus, there isn't a lot of arguing or drama like many other shows. Hard work = great product. Something you don't see that often anymore.
I screwed up a bit trying to find a new spot to keep the dinghy without pulling it back up on the davits. Since we would be using it over the next several days, I tied it up on the starboard side of the boat with a bow and stern line (always have to eliminate single-point-of-failure). It was fine until we went to bed and rain storms came through. The dingy was bouncing around right next to the open window near our heads. I REALLY didn't want to get up and move it because it rained almost all night. Finally I closed the window which cut down 90% of the noise. Lesson learned....
Saturday, December 23rd (Day 77) - Stuart
67 degrees, warming into the 70s. Water temp 68. Cloudy but clearing. Winds NE at 10-13.
Didn't move the boat today.
Yesterday we had minimal power from our solar panels and wind generator (cloudy / not much wind) so I had to run the Honda generator all evening for hot water showers and to charge our batteries. Today was much better as the Sun came out late morning and skies cleared.
Another affect from leaving the dinghy in the water was pumping out the 3" of water in it from the heavy rains last night. I moved the dinghy to the back of the boat, tied it to the swim-deck and climbed in. 160 pumps later with the hand-pump and it was empty. If I had pulled it up on the davits yesterday, I would have pulled the drain-plug and the rain would have run right out.
After cleaning up the dink, I decided to again run over and check the mooring field for any openings (I've been checking every morning). I wasn't too optimistic since we had stopped at the marina office on the way back from groceries yesterday and, when Laura went in and asked if anyone was leaving soon, was told, "Nobody has moved in months." My assumption is their monthly fee is so low ($450) that boaters use the moorings as "In Water Storage". Very few of the 67 boats on moorings seem to have folks living on them. Oh well... We will save the $45 / day mooring fee by being anchored just a mile away. We just can't use the marina facilities but shouldn't need laundry and we have an excellent shower on the boat.
Another nice thing about being on the anchor all by ourselves is we can run the Honda generator whenever and as loud as we want. Nobody around to bother....
By the way, this is my forth day in a row in shorts. Also haven't had to run the heat in almost a week. We're in the warm!
Laura is in full baking mode - her happy place. Linzer Stars with homemade cherry preserves. Yumm.
Oh oh. I might be in trouble. We're not in a marina to give away most of the baking. Who's gonna eat all these? Freezer I hope.
It was another warm day with temps in the low 70s. I worked a few boat projects in shorts and t-shirt. Around 4:30pm Laura asked what I wanted for dinner. I mentioned going into the Harbor Inn so no cooking. She immediately agreed and we both showered, put on clean clothes and headed in.
Hmmm. Not much action as we motored up to the Harbor Inn. It looked deserted. We asked a neighbor by the beach if the restaurant was still open. He told us they had closed during COVID. Bummer.
Instead we dinghy'd over to Sunset Bay Marina to try and dock by the Sailor's Return restaurant. There is a free courtesy dock right in front of the restaurant.
As we slowly motored around the huge marina and BIG boats, it was beginning to look like we couldn't "get there from here." Finally on our third try we found the right route and docked the dinghy. A few minutes later we found the walkway around the harbor and under US 1 to Hudson's. We'd been here 4 years ago and really liked the outdoor "sand beach" seating. Oh oh. Things here have changed a lot. There was a whole new building and the beach seating was gone. Instead we settled for the tiki-hut bar out by the water. It was a fun and interesting evening with a nice two-guitar band playing right next to us.
We had a great view.
We ordered our dinners and cocktails. When the food showed up the chowder was barely warm (but very good) and my french fries were cold. Bummer. My Mahi sandwich was excellent. A few minutes later our young waitress (Gabby) came by and asked how everything was. I said, "It's OK...". Now here is something a waitress never said to me. "Only OK? What can I do to make it better?" I asked for hot french fries and had them 5 minutes later. Wow!
What was even more impressive was the tip was automatically added into the bill (I hate that). Usually, this means the staff doesn't have a lot of motivation for better service.
After dinner we sat and listened to the music for a while then headed back to the dinghy. I dug out our navigation lights and was pleasantly surprised they still worked after a bunch of water poured out of the container. It was a pleasant ride in the dark back to the boat. Still lots of boat traffic that I worked hard to stay away from.
After hauling the dinghy up on the davits, Laura took a picture of this nearby house that was really decorated for Christmas.
It was a very nice evening ashore.
Hmmm. Now the weather is looking a little tricky for getting down the coast next week. The 2-3 day nice off-shore forecast is now only Wednesday. The showers and thunderstorms forecast for Tuesday have moved earlier into Monday (Christmas) afternoon. We may need to re-anchor as the winds will clock to the south which is pretty wide open where we are and may make for a rough ride sitting here. You know I'll keep a close watch on the updated forecast.
Sunday, December 24th (Day 78) - Start of week 12
68 degrees. Water temp 68. Rain last night and cloudy today.
We move the boat about 500 feet
Can you tell when I get bored I spend more time on blog details? Today is day 4 at our Stuart anchorage and I've run out of boat jobs. This morning I cleaned up the dinghy navigation lights and put them back in the boat. I also cut off the old (mostly broken) cable ties from the HAM radio antenna and put on all new ties (we haven't used the HF radio in over 5 years so this wasn't a priority..). Then I fixed a burner on our propane stove. It wasn't working very well and just needed a good cleaning
Laura started preparing for our big Christmas dinner tomorrow while I slept in a bit. I told her to let me know if there was anything I could help with and she was grateful but I think she enjoys doing the stuff herself. Kinda like me working on boat projects.
After checking the weather forecast again, I could see that the storms scheduled for Tuesday were now coming tonight and tomorrow. Oh boy. Christmas on anchor in thunderstorms. On the bright side, we would have better travel weather on Tuesday for getting to Lake Worth and staging for the off-shore run down to Miami on Wednesday.
Winds will be out of the east tonight (like the past 3 days) so this anchorage is good for that. Tomorrow, the winds will clock southeast to south-southeast and increase to 20-30. It would be better if we moved closer to the eastern shore for better protection from that.
Here is a screeshot from our chartplotter. Near the upper right you see a little boat icon next to the green anchor. That's where we moved to. The red X to the left of that was where we were. Not a big move. About 500 feet.
While we moved, I decided to motor down to the mooring field to check if anyone had left. There was a mooring open! I called the marina on the marine radio and they told me that open mooring was only for boats up to 37 feet. Bummer. Instead we motored back and re-anchored closer to shore. The hour or so running the engine helped charge the batteries (on a cloudy day - no solar) and heat up the hot water heater. Success!
Christmas 2023 (Day 79) - Stuart
72 degrees. Water temp 70. Storms last night with high winds. SE winds clocking S later in the day.
Moved the boat .7 miles to a better anchorage for SE to S winds.
I didn't sleep well last night as several squalls came through with high winds and rain. We didn't move around much as the wind was from the east - right off the shore next to us. The morning calmed a bit but very cloudy with more storms in the forecast this afternoon.
The forecast had changed a bit with winds more south later in the day. This anchorage was open about 1 1/2 miles to the south so that might bring us big waves. Instead, at 10am we moved the boat (again).
Another chartplotter screenshot showing our track (red line from right to left) to the new anchorage. Notice how where we were in the upper right corner was open to the south.
It was a quiet day on anchor as Laura prepared then cooked a 10 pound turkey and all the fixin's. The turkey was cooking while we moved to the new anchorage.
A few hours later we sat down to a wonderful Christmas dinner in the cockpit.
It rained a little on-and-off during the day but the big south winds never showed up. On the radar, it looked like the nasty stuff went south of us. We both spent time Face-time and texting family during the afternoon and evening.
In the later afternoon I was playing my flute in the cockpit and decided to try recording a few songs. Geez. I was cracking under the pressure. How come when you are just playing a song, it is perfect but when the camera is running it's a whole new ballgame? After several tries I eventually recorded two Christmas songs what were not too bad. Click on the YouTube videos below to check them out if you like.
We streamed Polar Express (one of our favorite Christmas movies) and hit the sack early. On the move tomorrow. Yea!
December 26th (Day 80) - Stuart to Lake Worth
72 degrees. Water temp 74. Light rain showers then clearing later in the afternoon. Winds W at 10.
36 nautical miles today (1,434.5 total trip miles)
We both slept well (probably all that tryptophan from the turkey) and were up quickly with the 6:30am alarm. It was still dark out but that would change quickly.
Last night in bed I remembered that we hadn't taken the outboard off the dinghy. This is part of our normal preparations for off-shore. Don't want that extra 100 pounds swinging around on the davits. So, I set the alarm for 1/2 hour earlier to give us time for that in the morning.
After stretching and exercise in bed, I completed all the engine checks then we both went out on the back deck to lower the dink, raise the outboard onto the deck rail mount, then bring the dinghy back up on the davits. It was a very light rain and I don't think we even got wet.
Anchor up at 7:30am then we motored 20 minutes to the Old Roosevelt Bridge. This is a weird bridge. When you look at the bridge schedule, they are closed for morning and afternoon rush-hour plus only supposed to open on the hour and 1/2 hour. But there is a little note on the schedule that "The bridge tender will open at any time on request."
Yep. We got there at 7:50am and only had a short wait for another sailboat to catch up. This was the first of 8 bridges that have to open for us today between Stuart and Lake Worth. One down!
No problem with the Hobe Sound Bridge and only a short wait at the Jupiter 707 Bridge. I was hanging back about 1/4 mile from the bridge waiting for them to open because there was a sailboat in front of us that was kinda wandering around and lots of current pushing us toward the bridge - sometimes a dangerous situation. Finally the bridge tender got on the radio and said he was waiting for Second Wind. No problem. Here we come!
Around the corner crews were working on the new Jupiter US1 bridge. Just a little channel for us on the left side of the picture.
We had a 10 minute wait for the Indiantown Bridge (only opens on the hour and 1/2 hour). Our Skipper Bob is wrong here which I knew from previous passages through this area. Skipper Bob says only 3.2 statute miles to the next Donald Ross bridge. It's actually about 1/2 mile farther than that. We should be able to easily make 3.2 statute miles in 1/2 hour at 6 knots but we never can. My GPS showed 3.3 nautical miles to the bridge.
We had some helping current so I decided to let Gertrude (our Perkins diesel) loose and added another 100 RPM over the usual 2,100. Guess what? We made it!
On the way to the Donald Ross Bridge, I spotted this house being built along the waterway. It was going to be beautiful with white walls and all those windows.
We had a rain shower go through a little while later.
No problem with the remaining 3 bridges and we approached the Lake Worth inlet anchorage around 2pm. Boy. This place hasn't changed. Still derelict, moored and anchored boats all over the place. After searching around for 1/2 hour, we finally anchored near the channel for a quick getaway tomorrow morning - probably in the dark.
While we were anchoring, this little boat went by.
Ok. Now we are perfectly staged for a long off-shore run tomorrow down to The Keys. Weather forecast is excellent for some morning sailing (west winds 10-15) then probably motoring on a calm ocean in the afternoon and evening.
It is 60 nautical miles from here to Miami but we'll probably keep going another 40 miles and anchor off Key Largo in the dark around midnight. This will set us up nicely for the last 45 miles to Marathon on Thursday. Some kinda weather front coming through on Thursday morning but the big winds should be out of the north so off the land. We'll just put out a "handkerchief" of a sail and let the 25-30 knot winds push us home.
Next blog should be from Marathon!
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