Moving Again...and Darwin awards for the WORST boaters!!!

It is Easter Saturday, and I am standing at the kitchen counter typing this while breakfast cooks in the pan..well, some of it!

Yesterday, Good Friday, was a work day for us, while we sat at anchor waiting for the weather to do it's worst.

The wind was strong most of the day, and I had to hang onto everything when I was out on the boat, but the chop didn't bother us much...more of the same!

Waz needed to take apart one of the water pumps, clean and reassemble it. The bearings wont last much longer, but we have plenty of spare parts onboard. We may as well keep it going as long as we can. . We had good pressure last night at the shower on the back, after the pump overhaul.  This just took most of the day. Sorry no pics, as I was otherwise engaged, myself.

A boat constantly needs waxing and polishing, and I began yesterday with the fly deck, out of the wind. It was a bit like a sauna, or in our case (for gardening purposes) a Hot House. I did open one window and the back 'door' for ventilation, but the whole structure (not solid) whacked and groaned in the wind.
Having done most of the gel-coat inside, I sat down on the back of the fly deck and made my way around the outside,  and got her all nice and shiny. My hair looked a bit like a bird's nest at the end of it:) it needs another cut!

I moved aft on the cockpit deck and waxed all those heavy use areas before going to sit up front on what I call the 'apron' of the fore deck...just under the windshields. I waxed all that area and then down the front near the anchor lockers. It feels good to have that done. I also mopped the front of the boat and the side decks, which were salty and dirty. The rails also got a wipe...very virtuous we are feeling!!

Well, I will have to continue this later because I have 'under way' prep to do!!  We have decided to move!

7am....Black clouds, chop on the water and not pretty looking..

 

7.15am, the cloud front moves away out to sea...

7.35am, we see the first signs of calming waters, lower wind strength and maybe some sunshine??

8am....SUNSHINE!!! flooding the pilot house through the door, which is open, at this stage, to let some air into the boat.

 Our close neighbors with the sun on their sides.

...and it is up-anchor, and lets get out of here!! Was cleaning off the chain and anchor, which was a bit muddy as she came up.

We turned left out of the North Fork of Stuart Harbor, and straight under this bridge which was opening as we turned. We had a couple of other boats shoot through there alongside us.

 

 

The ICW has now gone from being the GICW (Gulf (Mexico) Intra-Coastal Waterway) to the Atlantic ICW..(AICW), as we are now running parallel to the Atlantic coastline. If you look at a detailed map (for all you non-sailors) of the Atlantic coastline of the USA, you will see that there are Barrier Islands most of the way up the eastern seaboard. The AICW runs inside those barrier islands, up the length of the East Coast to the Chesapeake Bay.

 

Our journey today took us from Stuart to Melbourne, Florida. We are just south of Cape Canaveral, where the Kennedy Space Center is. We may or may not get there this year! I have already been to the Space Center, but that is on Waz's bucket list, to do. It all depends on how long we stay in St Augustine! We will come back down by road.

 

 

AS we went under the first bridge, this morning, this gorgeous girl was on our right...She was one of two large motor yachts docked on the outside of the marina wall, as they are too large for the inside, obviously!

Not far out of Stuart, the lovely ICW front homes run down to the water in various ways. Some have sea walls, others have little private beaches at the bottom of the garden, while others have terraces and long staircases, leading down to their boat docks and jetty.

The ICW is populated with little islands like this one...hundreds of them, in the shallow waters. It would have been nice to just anchor off some of them and taken a nap on the beach:)

This home rather caught our eyes...Very different design to most of the ones you see.

 

That there 'gap', my friends, is the Atlantic Ocean, out there!
At this junction, we took a hard left turn...see the chart.

You can see where we have come from on the left side, and the boat has made a right angle turn to port (left) to follow the ICW, parallel to the Ocean, going north. Yes, we are in the St Lucie River. As you can see...it is shallow!! how unusual!!!

I love how lots of bridges have long piers with lovely lights, where people can stand or sit and fish.

Some also have playgrounds alongside...:) and bathroom facilities!

 See what I mean?

 

Lots of room for us to get underneath, but we followed a yacht, today, that barely made it!

 

Not far up the ICW we came to Jensen Beach. We went there by car, not so long ago, and to visit Katie and Dean, who were docked at the Marina at Nettles Island.

Those  homes you see in the foreground are on Nettles Island...the high rise condos are on the Atlantic coast, literally across the road from the Island.

 

 Nettles Island used to be just an RV park, but it has since had many permanent homes built there.

 Some double and single wide trailer homes are sandwiches between more permanent structures, of homes.

 That's us going by Nettles Island, along the Indian River...which the ICW goes up.

This photo shows the Nuclear Power Plant not far from Fort Pierce.

We wondered what the heck was going on, with these two yachts, especially when the left hand one pulled right out in front of us, to pass the right hand yacht. We had to throttle back a bit to allow for this, then motored past them both. It was a slightly risky move for the left hand yacht, because of all the boat traffic at the time.

 

 

It is amazing how we amuse ourselves, some times...when things get a bit boring!!!....This is Waz's version of 'Auto-pilot'!...As he said, we could have turned it on, but all the yahoos out there today would have made it dangerous!

Just after lunch...and this channel affords us 12.5 ft! WOWOWOWOW!!!

We  caught up with this lone sailor in his pretty Cat, just as the bridge went up...he lowered his sail, but was quick to put it back up again, after clearing the No Wake zone. It was windy enough for the best sailors, out there.

 Just to the right of us, along the Atlantic Seaboard.  I am always amazed at how many condos there are!

Lots of people playing on and around the islands, with their ironwood trees and the odd Pine, along with Mangroves.

Time for the garden to get it's Vitamin D!

The water was a lovely pale turquoise, which made a great change from the tannin filled waters we have just come through. The bottom here is white sand, obviously!

 

What a great place to play!

 

 Good heavens...an AUSSIE FLAG!!! outside this lovely home on the ICW.

These homes were on John's Island...along the ICW

This boater was a bit of a nuisance, but his kids were having so much fun. We had to stop and start to accommodate him and the kneeboard riders behind.

Lots of kids out in boats and on jetskis...at least this one has a life jacket...so many of them didn't, and on little boats with almost no freeboard...gives us the creeps!

PARTY!!!

 Back to the really shallow stuff and it was time for afternoon tea...nuts! We drank our thermos tea at lunch time, so we had to settle for water, not wanting to put the genset on just to make a pot of tea!

The manicured Mangroves crack us up...Only in Florida!

We would have love to join them, but it was way too shallow for our boat.

Puppies having a run around, on this island.

There was a large sportgfisher coming barreling towards us on OUR side of the channel...we didn't have any room to move to the right, as this sandbar, that you can see as a finger out into the water, was right there in front of us.

Waz took us as close as we could, and ended up in barely 4ft of water. We were pretty pissed with the other boater, who didn't even throttle down as he passed.

There were more than a handful of inconsiderate boaters today, and we repeatedly heard the same boat name being mentioned on the radio, as going too fast when passing, and not slowing down, and behaving like and idiot. Grrr....it makes it too dangerous out there for others.

 Yep..this is how close we got to that sand bar...those birds are STANDING in the water.

Same sand finger, out into the ICW. I have become good at waving other boaters down...to tell them to slow, to pass us, and to slow in general. We have not seen this number of speedsters before! I hate to think what summer will be like...aieeee!

 Everyone should have their own private beach!

:)

These kids were having so much fun:)

We had seen a couple of dolphin, but were surprised that none of them were interested in wake surfing...until..SLAP! It sounded as if something had broken, and we both went to the starb'd side to see what it was...a HUGE dolphin was eyeing us up and playing in our wake:) A real thrill. I have video, but cannot post it here without using all our wifi up! sorry...another time. He was the largest dolphin we have seen to date.

Well, we are parked up outside a tiny island with an osprey nest in one of the trees...the sun has gone down and we sat upstairs and ate our lovely port chops dinner, tonight. We sat in the gloming and watched three thunder clouds light up with lightening and it was quite a show. Fortunately that was all out to sea.

Waz is snoring again, and although it is only 9.45, it is a good time to go and get some extra sleep. We don't like the sound of the wind, tomorrow, and the ICW is supposed to be very choppy...we will make the decision to move, or not, in the morning. Lets hope the wind stays down, as it has now almost died...thank goodness. It has been a rough afternoon.

Night Night..