Vero Beach

Apr 4 thru Apr 6

—Blogpost written by Bob

Wednesday, April 4

Last night, I found out that our replacement galley faucet was sent to our mailing address in Green Cove Springs, rather than our current location in Vero Beach City Marina. The faucet will be reshipped from Green Cove Springs to Vero Beach, costing us a additional 3-day delay in getting back to normal. (I had a feeling that like something like this would happen when I made the purchase.)

These are the most colorful chaps I have ever seen!
Chaps are canvas covers that protect the
dinghy tubes from the sun's rays.

This morning, after a light breakfast, we began the task of getting the insides of our boat back together from the partial re-wiring project yesterday. With the salon table and the floor boards, we had to reinstall 74 screws. While things were apart, we changed the fresh water filter and the raw water strainer for the fridge’s supplemental cooling—it was partially clogged up (maybe as much as 60% clogged) with something that looked like a mixture of sand and clay of the consistency of kitty litter. (I’ve noticed that our fridge has been working harder lately—I hope this helps.) We got everything back together by 10 AM.

This small catamaran is slowly sinking while tied to a
mooring ball in Vero Beach City Marina.

The wind shifted around from the west at mid-morning when we went into the marina to take showers. (Before leaving we shifted the boom to starboard so that the solar panels were fully exposed to the sun during the day.) We went from the showers to an early lunch (Panera Bread) and then to PUBLIX for provisions. 

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Because sweet potatoes have 27% fewer carbs than regular white potatoes, we have been using them pretty extensively lately.  Sweet potatoes, I've recently learned from this book, are available in a number of different colors, orange fleshed is the most common.  Some other colors include white-fleshed and purple fleshed.  While at PUBLIX today, I picked up two white-fleshed sweet potatoes for grilling along with steak or chicken.

Two white-fleshed sweet potatoes sit
in our hanging veggie basket.

For grilling, we normally cut them in half lengthwise and spray each half with olive oil and then wrap them in aluminum foil.  We cook them for 45 minutes--so, we have to start them 15 to 30 minutes before the meat we are cooking, depending on the type of meat.

Thursday, April 5

Our first task on this windy day was to take our cat, Captain Jack, for his grooming.  For him, it involved a dinghy ride to the dock (about 1/2 mile) and then a car ride (about 30 minutes) to the groomer.  He was unusually mild tempered about the whole exercise.

Captain Jack before grooming.

Captain Jack after grooming.

After Lizzie's passing, a good day is defined as having the the same number of crew members at the end of the day as we had starting the day.  Today was a good day.

Friday, April 6

Today is Friday and this is the end of our second week here at Vero Beach City Marina. We still plan to leave early Tuesday morning, unless one or more of our packages don’t arrive before then. There is a light breeze coming from the south. The temperature is currently 65 degrees but it is expected to reach 82 degrees by this afternoon. There are only a few cumulus clouds off to the north and the east. 

Captain Jack, our cat, just joined me in the cockpit and he is licking his face of remains from his just-devoured breakfast. His new lion cut seems to give him a new more confident attitude, although he is still very passive.

Maggie’s new camera lens arrived yesterday. She has a very small Nikon 1 J1 camera with a 13.2mm x 8.8mm sensor, which is considerably smaller than used on other cameras. The (interchangeable) lenses are also very small.  She had two lenses, a 10-30mm (wide angle) and a 30-100mm (telephoto).  Her new lens (which we purchased used is a 10-100mm so she doesn’t have to carry two lenses around with her.

Maggie's camera with her new 10-100mm lens
attached shown with her iPhone for
size comparison purposes.

In the late morning, I installed a new small LED light to light the area aft of the navigation desk—this was always a difficult area to see things.

Our replacement faucet finally arrived and we spent the better part of the afternoon installing it. I realize that sounds like a lot of time but we were working blind with our outstretched arms under and in back of the double sinks. It’s an impossible place to work but we finally got it installed. Now we can manually do dishes without needing to rinse them in the head sink.

Rafted up on a Vero Beach City Marina 
mooring at dusk.

Stay tuned for more of our adventure heading north...Thanks for following our blog!