Sorry this is such a long post…….

Sunday, April 26^th around 10 AM, we left Bonefish Marina to start our journey, on the outside, in a thunder storm. Why, would you leave in a storm you might ask (as did I). Well, you’d have to ask my husband for the detailed reason, but, something about “getting ahead of it”. We saw lots of lightning and heard even more thunder and we were bouncing around pretty good for about an hour. Then, after going under the Channel Five Bridge and entering the ICW, things settled down, the thunder and lightning stopped and the sun came out. I guess we “got ahead of it”.

Our plan was to anchor off Gilbert’s Resort in Key Largo, Florida around 4:00. When we reached the resort/marina it was shuttered as expected. The anchorage didn’t look inviting at all, with all the derelict boats, so we opted to continue on. About two hours later we found a beautiful little anchorage at Pumpkin Key. We joined two other boats and had a lovely, quiet and calm night on the hook, after a long day of over eight hours.

Up before 5:00 AM (Monday, 4/27). Went to put the coffee on and the generator wouldn’t start. After a night of TV and all the associated electronics charging off the inverter, the batteries were too weak to make coffee. No generator means no coffee, no cooking and no air-conditioning – NO GOOD! Hoping it was just the generator battery, and not the charging system, we decided to try to find a marina where Michael could repair it. Surprisingly, the first marina we called in Ft. Lauderdale, Bahia Mar, was open and, accepting transients. How lucky are we? Michael Ubered to Home Depot, bought a battery, installed it and we were all good to go again!  An excellent stop in “normal times”, the marina is right across the street from a beautiful white sand beach (which was patrolled by police so you couldn’t walk on it) and on the opposite side of the street were shops as far as the eye could see. A ghost town today though.

We left Bahia Mar around 9:20 AM and traveled, mostly, in a no wake zone  We encountered about 20 bridges today, Tuesday, 4/28. Twelve of those bridges had to be called to request passage. Some opened on demand, some on the hour and half-hour, some on the quarter-hour and three-quarter hour, some on 20 minutes and 40 minutes. Needless to say, there was lots of waiting which made for a long, slow and intense day.

We arrived at our Lake Worth anchorage just before 5:00 PM, a rather large anchorage surrounded on one side by luxury homes and across the channel by commercial stuff and about a mile from the Rivera Resort and Peanut Island. We anchored in about ten feet of water with about 20 other boats, mostly sail boats.

About 11:00 PM we heard someone yelling “we’re to close”, we’re to close”. We looked out to find the catamaran next to us was NEXT to us. We starting pulling up our anchor when our windless quit and we had to finish pulling it up by hand. Did I mention it’s midnight now? We got it up, moved, and re-anchored. Michael asked the guy on the cat how much scope they had out and he said 150 feet. Really?.. 150 feet in 10 feet of water?  I guess his 150 feet allowed him to come over and become chummy with us when the wind shifted. Note to self: ask about scope the next time before anchoring in a crowded anchorage.

Didn’t sleep much after that fiasco so we got up at 5:00 AM (Wednesday, 4/29). Michael repaired the windless and we pulled up anchor at first light (6:27 AM) and headed out and immediately ran hard aground. I mean HARD aground, engine stopped and we were stuck! We called Tow Boats US. Before the captain of Tow Boats even reached us he started saying, “don’t feel bad”, “you didn’t do anything wrong”. Said he pulled three boats of this exact same spot yesterday. Said Navionics took you on the wrong side of the marker, eh? He gently pulled us off and, fortunately, we had no damage so we were up and running again within an hour.

It’s now day five since we said bye bye to the Keys. What will today hold as we head for an anchorage in the Manatee Pocket, Stuart, Florida? We stopped in Stuart for diesel ($2.33/gallon) before going to the anchorage. Both anchorages were full of derelict boats. Not for us, let’s keep going. Just north of Jensen’s Bridge, Jensen’s Beach, Florida we found a nice large anchorage with four other boats. On shore was a little BBQ shack serving to-go food that we took back to the boat. It sure was nice to eat food prepared by someone else for the first time in a long while. Yum.

Pulled up anchor this morning (Thursday, 4/30) at about 7:30 AM headed for an anchorage in Melbourne/Eau Gallie area. We decided on Palm Harbor. It was extremely shallow getting in and actually took us four tries to find the path to twelve feet of water. It wasn’t a particularly pretty spot but it was quiet and calm and had a small park dock we could dinghy to and take the doggies for a walk. 

Up very early this morning and inched our way out at about 6:10 AM (Friday, 5/1) headed for Titusville. First anchorage too exposed, second one smelled awful. On to New Smyrna but anchorages were too exposed or full. Are you sensing a Goldilocks syndrome here? Kept going and ended up in Daytona Beach, Florida with no anchorage. Started calling marinas and yacht clubs and finally got a referral to Daytona Marina and Boat Works which had space. We fueled up at $2.10/gallon and pulled into our slip after more than ten hours of travel.

Released our lines about 7:30 (Saturday, 5/2) this morning headed north to St. Augustine, Florida where we have reservations at the Municipal Marina for Saturday and Sunday nights. Arrived at St. Augustine about 2:00 PM and went for a walkabout. It was quite different than our southbound stop here. There were just a few folks wandering about in the beautiful downtown area as compared to it being jam-packed on our last stop. Most folk had no face masks and almost all were eating ice cream from one of at least four different shops we counted. Hmmm, ice cream must be an essential business here. We found one restaurant open and serving take-out. It was a Mexican restaurant where we ordered a burrito and two margaritas we took back to the boat. Yum!

Sunday was the day for chores. Michael Ubered to Walmart for storage boxes and we spent all day organizing and packing all the stuff we originally brought on the boat and didn’t need. A long and tiring day!

Almost there … will keep you posted.