Stay Over in Vero Beach

—Blogpost written by Bob

Christmas Day in Vero Beach

Our day began with a 15-minute rain shower--then the sun came out.  However, it was warm (in the low 70's).  It certainly didn't seem like Christmas.  Our weather window for crossing the Gulf Stream has moved to next Thursday, January 2, and we have decided to extend our stay in Vero Beach for several more days.  (Vero Beach is commonly referred to as "Velcro Beach" for good reason!)  

On the top of my agenda for the morning was cleaning and polishing the aft two 50-watt solar panels.  This required that I take down the bimini so that I could get access them.  I removed one at a time, cleaned and polished them individually, and then remounted them.  This job was completed by 10:30 AM.

I cleaned and polished all three solar panels
on the bimini--they now look great!

Next up was checking all our running lights.  We haven't used them for a long time and we will need them for the start of our Gulf Stream crossing (which will start out in the dark).  Sure enough, one of the light bulbs (an LED) was burned out--the port running light.  None of the spares that I had onboard worked either, even though voltage was getting to the light fixture.  So, it's off to West Marine to buy some bulbs tomorrow!

In the early afternoon, a Christmas luncheon was planned for everyone in the marina.  About two dozen people showed up with covered dishes.  It was a nice informal get together.  Late in the evening the clouds came in again and it looked like a rain storm was imminent (but it didn't rain until late in the night).

Thursday, December 26

In the morning we made arrangements for a mooring for the next 4 days and then moved our boat to mooring #16 again.  Shortly thereafter, we caught the bus into the shopping area to look for the lightbulb for the port running light.  We came up empty at West Marine Express in Vero Beach.  While in town we had lunch at Panera Bread.

Florida is completely flat and shopping centers
tend to be strip malls as shown above.

When we returned to the boat, I searched on google for the bulbs I needed and found them in Washington state.  To overnight them here, the shipping costs were 3 times the cost of the bulbs but I needed to get them before our Gulf Stream crossing.

Today was a beautiful sunny day in the 70's!  Our solar panels did a great job of keeping up with our electrical demands.  We are also keeping track of our weather window for our Gulf Stream crossing and the wind in West Palm Beach for January 2 thru January 4 looks great!

The wind predictions for January 2 thru 4 at
West Palm Beach where we will be
crossing the Gulf Stream.

Friday, December 27

The weather is overcast and rainy today but it's warm (70 degrees).  Every once in a while the sun comes out and we produce nearly 10 amps of solar power.

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It’s hard to believe that we’ve been away from Baltimore for nearly 2-1/2 months already. The places we’ve visited on this trip have certainly left an impression on us. For the most part they are places that we have visited previously and have liked—Beaufort NC, Southport NC, Georgetown SC, Beaufort SC, St. Augustine FL, and, of course, Vero Beach FL. (Charleston SC and Wrightsville Beach NC are also favorites of ours too but we didn’t stop in either one on this trip.)

Some places have been not quite as favored such like Daytona Beach (on this trip) and Belhaven NC (last season). Hampton VA is another place that we will probably not visit on future trips—but we’ll see, it's a good place to provision.

As we get into the Bahamas, most places we visit this season will be new to us, except for West End on Grand Bahama where we will enter the country. This year our 5-month+ stay in the Bahamas will be longer than in previous years, nearly two+ months longer.

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This morning I noticed that the state of our battery bank was 12.70 volts which is great.  This was always my measure of how well our solar charging/battery system worked (12.5 volts or greater before any morning recharging).  The cleaned and polished solar panels made a big difference!

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Late in the morning I made a pasta salad using bowtie pasta, diced green apples, diced yellow pepper, celery slices, some dried cranberries, cubed cooked chicken breasts, and halved grape tomatoes, all with mayonnaise mixed in.  It is a dish that we have made several times this season, each of which was different.  We rarely made pasta salad before this trip but six or seven times during this trip.  Who knows why?

Today's pasta salad just after mixing.

Another thing we have done differently this trip is that we have had lunch as our big meal of the day.  We frequently skip a late meal for the day and just have some snacks with our happy hour.

Looking out over the marina (N-dock) just
before the afternoon rain shower.

After we finished taking showers 
in the afternoon, a rain shower 
came through the marina.

Saturday, December 28

Today's weather was overcast skies with rain showers scattered throughout the day--pretty much like yesterday.  (Aren't we in the "sunshine state"?)  At least our weather window for our Gulf Stream crossing didn't change--it was still Tuesday, January 2.

In the morning we tried to get Lola into her new life preserver--this was fun!  (not!)  We managed to get it on her but she ran allover the boat trying to discard it.  I finally got a picture of her wearing it when she ran into the v-berth (her sanctuary).

Lola trying on her new life preserver.  It still
has the tags on it at this point.

Our big goal of the day was to watch Penn State play Memphis in the Cotton Bowl--the football game was on ESPN (cable only) so, we had to go to a sports bar to watch it.  The nearby Riverside Cafe proved to be a good solution.  Penn State won by a score of 53 to 39 and it was a close game until the fourth quarter.

Sunday, December 29

This morning I felt kind of crunched because our weather window has moved forward to Wednesday, January 1, and our arrival of our package containing our replacement running lights will arrive by Monday (January 30) noon!  Fortunately, we could still make everything happen but it doesn't leave a lot of room for error.

The weather has been mostly overcast all day but with long periods of bright sunshine in between the moisture-laden cloud banks.

Today is provisioning day!  We bought more groceries at PUBLIX to last us until we get to Nassau, after spending a more than a week in the Berry Islands. We had to make a run to the pharmacy in the afternoon as well as do some laundry.  We got everything done by about 4 PM.  Now, except for getting a package containing my lightbulbs tomorrow morning and filling our water tanks, we're ready to leave.


Stay tuned for our fifth Gulf Stream crossing...


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