Vero Beach - Part 2

--Blogpost written by Bob

This blogpost covers additional days in Vero Beach while we wait for a weather window for  crossing the Gulf Stream from West Palm Beach.  This blogpost covers our visit through Tuesday, December 12.  More on our visit in Vero Beach will be included in our next blogpost, Vero Beach - Part 3.

Sunday, December 10

I captured this image of Lizzie as she was looking my way
around the cockpit controls and under a bath towel
hanging to dry at the helm.  It is not a very 
recent photo and I realize that I should 
have focused on her eyes.  She
is a real boat cat!

It got pretty cold early this morning, down to 44 degrees F--not as low as the 39 that was predicted, but still cold.  We went out for a very nice breakfast with Mike and Vicki, local friends, at The Lemon Tree near the beach.  When we returned to the boat, the weather was already starting to warm up.

Crossing Weather Window Update:  As of this morning, Sunday (12/17) & Monday (12/18) look like our best possibilities according to Weather Underground, both days with light southerly winds.  (Predict Wind has no information yet on these two days but we have general agreement between the two apps for Friday, even though it is not as good a possibility.) 

We did laundry after breakfast, went out for lunch, and picked up some fresh groceries for the next couple days. We decided not to provision for any extended time until we were closer to the time we anticipated crossing the Gulf Stream.

By the early afternoon, the temperature had climbed up to 59 degrees F as the cool 12-knot wind blew from the north. (Tomorrow is forecasted to be similarly cool but, by next weekend, it will be up in the 80’s.)

Our stay in Vero Beach has been a welcomed reprieve from traveling on the ICW. There are a lot of fellow cruisers here right now, more than any other time we’ve been here. Most of the cruisers are like us in that they are retired, sold their land-based homes, and, now, live on their boats. It is rare to find younger people with this lifestyle, even though you can find a lot of YouTube videos online made by younger cruisers.  

Even being here in Florida, I’m very grateful that we brought along our full cockpit enclosure—it not only provides an outdoor shelter from the wind, but keeps us nice and dry in the cockpit during periods of heavy rain. I’m also glad we invested the time in waterproofing the canvas—it has made a huge difference and has held up well.

Dusk from Mooring #2 in Vero Beach City Marina
on December 10.  Mooring #1 is on
the right side of this image.

Monday, December 11

December 11 started out as a cool morning but a little warmer than yesterday.  We went out for breakfast at Cravings--it is a casual cafe near the beach. 

Cravings is my kind of place for breakfast.  A lot of locals
and tourists frequent this cafe with more
seating outside than inside.

After breakfast, we went to the local West Marine store to pick up a solder-less PL-259 antenna connector to replace the one that connects to the masthead antenna.

This is a new Shakespeare solder-less antenna
connector that we purchased to replace
our old faulty one at the masthead.

Crossing Weather Window Update:  As of this morning, Sunday (12/17) & Monday (12/18) still look like our best possibilities according to Weather Underground, Monday being the best day with light southwest winds.  The wind on Sunday is forecasted to be from the southeast.  My concern is that I can't get agreement with my Predict Wind app yet. So, we are planning on leaving Vero Beach on Friday so that we get to West Palm Beach on Saturday afternoon.  We will be prepared for a Sunday departure but most likely will wait until Monday if the weather window holds.

We had lunch at Mulligan's Beach Bar & Restaurant, while
enjoying a beautiful view of the ocean.

This afternoon we got new neighbors sharing our mooring ball--a nice couple from Canada.  They will be leaving their boat here for a month while they fly home for the holidays.

Tuesday, December 12

Today we have a busy day planned.  We have a guy, Peter Brocker, coming by to change the connector on our masthead antenna (right after lunch) and then we take our two cats to the vet for their health certifications--our cats will have to be taken to land by dinghy and then by rental car to the vet--this will be very interesting since the cats have never been in the dinghy before.

s/v Le Repos out of Montreal is our
new mooring neighbor.

Crossing Weather Window Update: As of today, Monday (12/18) still looks like our best possibility according to Weather Underground but WINDY now shows 15 to 18 mph winds out of the east (which would be bad). Predict Wind now shows 15 mph winds out of the north (which would be worse) for Monday.  We decided to leave Vero Beach on Sunday morning, which gets us into West Palm Beach on Monday afternoon.  We will continuously evaluate the weather window while in West Palm Beach—by that time, the three different weather apps should show some degree of agreement. 

As an experiment, I tested the accuracy of the three weather apps for our current location, Vero Beach, at the current time, 9:15 AM, while our masthead anemometer was reading 7.8 knots (9 mph) out of the southwest. Below are the current wind conditions and today’s wind forecast from four weather apps:

Weather Underground: now = 4 mph out of the west; forecast = 15 mph from the west

Predict Wind: now = 5 mph from the west; forecast = 15 to 20 mph from the west

WINDY: now = 7.3 mph from the southwest; forecast = 12 to 14 mph from the west

Accuweather: now = 10 mph from WSW; forecast = gusts to 18 mph from the west

All four of the above weather apps seem in pretty close agreement for today in Vero Beach.
(Note: Wind in the afternoon was between 12 and 18 knots which was in good agreement with all four apps.)

This morning, we cleaned the raw water strainers—it is only the second time we’ve cleaned them on this trip—they weren’t bad (maybe 50% blocked with marine growth). (The blockage was no where near as bad as after one week in Baltimore Harbor in the summer!)

The fridge’s supplemental cooling water pump failed again yesterday. This time, it made a squealing noise like it was running dry. We turned the pump off as soon as we noticed the noise. This morning after cleaning the raw water strainer, I re-primed the pump and it ran fine again. So, either there is a tendency to lose prime OR the 50% blockage of the raw water filter has the same effect. We’ll keep tabs on this as the trip continues. (The supplemental raw water cooling improves the efficiency of our refrigeration system.)

Peter is up our mast changing out the antenna connector.
With the new connector installed, nothing changed.
Now, we begin a further process of elimination.

After changing out the masthead antenna connector, the most likely culprit, nothing changed.  Tomorrow, I will take the radio from the navigation station and see if it works properly in the cockpit.  If it does, the problem can be narrowed down to the masthead antenna or the coaxial feed cable.  Stay tuned as we continue to figure out this problem...

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