Vero Beach

Mar 26 thru Mar 28

—Blogpost written by Bob

Monday, March 26

I feel like there is big hole in my heart after Lizzie’s passing, even now, 4 days later. I recently found out online that “all cat breeds may be affected by congestive heart failure, but Maine Coon cats may be genetically predisposed to it.” While this makes it a little easier for us to accept, we still miss her very much. It is rare to find a cat with her outgoing personality and her adventurous and trusting attitude.

About a week before Lizzie passed away, we were sitting in the cockpit and Lizzie walked over to be close to me. I put my face right next to hers and she rubbed her face against mine. I then rubbed my face against hers. This went on for a few minutes with us taking turns on who initiated the face rubbing. This is just one of the many sweet things I remember about her.

Lizzie’s passing seriously affected us both—we could no longer enjoy being in the Bahamas. Colors didn’t seem as vibrant to me, I had no interest in taking photographs, or reading one of the many unread books on my Kindle app.

The next day after Lizzie’s passing, we decided to leave Green Turtle Cay for Great Sale Cay on our route back to the U.S.  In a way we were running away from our grief, but it followed us nonetheless.  (I had to be very careful not to let my feelings affect the navigation decisions before us.)  Friday, March 23, was a long boring day of motoring against head winds of 12 to 14 knots. We got into Great Sale Cay at 6:30 PM—there were 27 other boats anchored in Northwest Harbour at Great Sale that night, an unusually large crowd. Leaving the next morning (Saturday, March 24) at first light, we got into West End by mid-afternoon. A lot of the same boats that were at Great Sale Cay, showed up in Old Bahama Bay Marina in West End with us while some left from Great Sale to cross the Gulf Stream via Memory Rock to Fort Pierce.

We had previously identified a weather window for our Gulf Stream crossing, leaving West End at first light on Sunday morning and arriving at the Fort Pierce inlet during the late-afternoon/early-evening. This meant a daytime crossing (which we prefer) with a southerly wind direction, a wind velocity of slightly less than 10 knots (from the south and southwest) for most of the day, and a favorable swell height prediction of about 2 feet. (We used the WINDY weather app for this forecast because it has proven to be reliable so far this season.) 

So, we left West End at first light on Sunday morning. At the start of our trip, the wind was blowing out of the south at perhaps 12 knots. There were times that we experienced 15 knots of wind from the west and this caused some larger-than-expected swells. However as the day progressed, the winds diminished in strength and clocked around to the south again. (Most of the day, the Gulf Stream helped us achieve a boat speed of 8 knots. In fact, the northerly current affected us throughout our entire crossing, even though it was a little higher at the halfway way point.)

We arrived at the entrance channel buoy at Fort Pierce at 5 PM (10 hours later) and then anchored along the ICW heading north, just south of the draw bridge in Fort Pierce. We were thoroughly exhausted from three long days of being on the water. The night was cool and we slept very soundly.

This morning, a dense fog covered the anchorage in Fort Pierce and we had to wait for the fog to clear in order to leave. After the fog lifted (about 8:15 AM) we motored north on the ICW (about 3 hours) to Vero Beach City Marina where we rented a mooring and picked up a rental car.

After we picked up a rental car, we made a visit to our vet in Vero Beach to help us better understand the congestive heart failure condition that Lizzie experienced. I learned that they (Cat Hospital of Vero Beach) dealt with these types of cases many times in the past. They would normally refer such cases to one of three veterinary cardiologists in southern Florida. (I never knew such specialists even existed.) I think that if we were here in the states (particularly in southern Florida) when it happened, Lizzie may have survived the condition—she certainly would have received the professional medical attention required and much sooner. This visit helped me better deal with Lizzie’s passing, although I feel some guilt for being in a remote area where we couldn’t get the professional help that is readily available here in the U.S.—this is one of the pitfalls of the Bahamas.

Tuesday, March 27

When we awoke this morning there was a strong cool wind out of the southeast. The sky was partly cloudy but the forecast was for good weather for the day.

Our objectives for today are twofold: (1) to check in with Customs & Immigration in Fort Pierce and (2) to take our RAINMAN water maker to Fort Lauderdale for service.

There is only one word to describe the
Homeland Security Office in Fort
Pierce and that word is CREEPY.

We arrived at the (creepy) Fort Pierce Homeland Security office where two other couples were waiting.  We turned in our passports and provided our given arrival number (provided after our initial phone call to customs and immigration) and the Homeland Security Officer went into the back room and processed all the passports at the same time.  This exercise is a complete waste of time and money.  First, if we wouldn’t have called in when we arrived, they wouldn’t even know we were back in the U.S.  In fact, they had no knowledge that we ever left the U.S. back in December.  (A drug dealer would not have called for clearance, by the way.)  In the Bahamas there is no checking out of the country—they have no way of telling who is still in the country and who isn’t.  No one in the Bahamas ever checked our cruising permit after we got it in December and paid our $300.  No one ever looked at our boat, either in the Bahamas or here in the U.S.  (For all anyone knows, we could have been towing a barge full of illegal drugs.)

After that completely useless exercise, we drove to the RAINMAN distributor in Fort Lauderdale, about 2 hours south of Vero Beach.  We left our water maker with him to repair the high-pressure pump and then to take it in consignment for resale.  This went rather smoothly except for finding their office.

Our day ended with mail call.

Wednesday, March 28

This morning started out with overcast skies but they cleared up as the day progressed.  We are on mooring buoy #52 at Vero Beach City Marina--it is way up on the north end of the mooring field.

Morning in the mangroves.

It is very quiet out here in the north mooring field.  We are concerned about no-see-ums if the wind does down but we'll see--I think we are well prepared for them this year.

Driving a rental car in heavy traffic around Fort Lauderdale yesterday was mentally exhaustive for us—for Maggie as the driver and me as the navigator. We need a day to recuperate, not only from the busy events of yesterday but, from all that has occurred in the last seven days.

My only objective for today is to look into the antenna cabling on the radio end of the VHF transceiver to try to find another splice in the line. We have been planning to replace the entire antenna cable while we are here in Vero Beach but I want to be sure it’s necessary—finding the second splice will make me feel better about the need to replace this cable. The reason that we know there is a second splice is that the cable into the radio is black--not white.  We have a meeting setup with Mike Giannotti later today to discuss and plan the cable replacement.

This is the (first) splice that we found in the
coaxial cable from the masthead antenna.

We removed and cutoff the coaxial cable connector from the radio and worked backward toward the base of the mast removing cable as we go.  We found, not one but, two additional splices and one (shown below) was clearly bad.

This splice did not even use a coaxial connector.
I don’t know how this happened but I’m
sure it was the primary problem.

Our next step is to replace the coaxial cable between the base of the mast and the VHF radio (and, of course, to replace the masthead antenna)—if all this effort fixes the radio problem, that will be the end of our effort. If it does not fix the problem, then we will replace the cable up through the mast.

The masthead light re-wiring is a bit more complicated. Tomorrow, we will disassemble the dining table and remove the floorboards so that we can trace the triplex cable that we believe is the one to the masthead light. 

-----------

The weather here in Vero Beach is virtually the same as we recently experienced in the Abacos.  It got to a high temperature of 80 degrees F today and the low will be about 64 degrees.  However, there is a huge difference in the clarity of the water.

Stay tuned for more of our troubleshooting on the masthead light cables...Thanks for following our blog!