07/24/2011, Vero beach City Marina
Giving Vero its due
When we passed through Vero Beach in April we were not keen. Our main purpose to stop in Vero then had been to hook up with our friends Bill & Karen (Island Moon) who had just returned from the Bahamas. We pulled in here yesterday on our trek north to get some relief from the unrelenting heat. We plugged into AC and will stay until Monday Morning. After arrival yesterday we took the free bus into Publix. Had a nice pasta supper on board. T
his morning Al promised beach time since we have never explored the beach area here. The beach was the most pleasant surprise. Not crowded and worth the 25 minute walk. We erected our beach umbrella and we swam and enjoyed the rolling surf for a couple hours. The water temperature was about 15 degrees cooler than the Keys and felt refreshing. We opted for a late lunch at the ocean side Mulligans Bar & Grill. We shared a meal and had a beer.
When we got back I took Miss B for a walk to the off leash park right next door, another bonus here. She chased her Frisbee until, she couldn't and I brought her back for the coolness and some water. The rest of the day will be relaxing before we start travel tomorrow morning. We are only 2 days away from our final fall destination of Harbortown at Cape Canaveral.
Al's finger is much improved today. Its moving more freely and the colour is better. For those concerned I would have totally popped for the price to take him for a consultation if warranted.
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07/23/2011, Vero beach City Marina
Our cruising from Fort Lauderdale to Vero Beach has gone well. Our engine and new transmission seem to be in harmony. The boat is working best ever. Cruising along and sounding wonderful.
We have enjoyed several nice quiet anchorages since last week at FL. We landed in Vero Beach at noon today and are comfortably plugged in with the AC on.
Two nights ago Al was fishing off the aft deck and caught a salt water cat fish, can any one say UGLY. Well in trying to release it off the hook the SOB horned him mid forefinger. It bled like a SOB and Al was in obvious pain. We had no wifi so I couldn't google info on what we should do or the seriousness of such a puncture. I did offer to call a hospital for advice but Al said he'd be fine.
Its still hurting and it looks WEIRD so I'm not convinced he's fine. Its purplish and to me looks like venom was shot up into it that looks Indigo in colour. Its mildly swollen and very hard to the touch and numb. Al and I both googled it and I think its looking necrotic and may need to be amputated. What he read said polysporin was the way to go. I also read the immediate antidote was to rub the injured part on the underside of the cat fish. Da! We totally missed that window. I'm just hoping his finger tip doesn't fall off before we make it back to Ontario where we enjoy socialized health care. I think the look of that finger would get him to the front of the line up pretty fast. I'm glad he's not the knitter in the family.
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07/19/2011, Marathon to Fort Lauderdale
New Pics on Picassa.
Today was supposed to be a beach day but the weather was thunderstorms & rain so I decided to tackle the Honda Generator pull cord. After a bus ride to Ace Hardware I am happy to report after much swearing, it is fixed. Actually it was easy, but putting it all back together was painful. We had a wonderful pasta dinner with wine on the boat. Tomorrow we start to get going again.
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07/19/2011, Fort Lauderdale Municipal Marina
West Marine FACTS
No matter where your port of call or marina is, it will be guaranteed that West Marine will be the furthest commercial retail outlet from where you are. I truly believe in every municipality there is code that a West Marine has to be as far away from cruisers as possible. They have to be in cahoots with the public transit and Yellow Cabs. Yesterday Al and I took the public bus from Los Olas Marina to West Marine to get our new battery. The bus was $1.50 each. We took our back pack to bring the battery back. I picked up a new whale blue skort, some Velcro for the handling lines, I wanted marriage savers (head phones) but they weren't in the budget just now. When we checked out the, battery weighed about 80 pounds and was just shy of fitting in our pack. So we called a yellow cab to bring us back to the boat. As luck would have it we got stuck on a bascule bridge allowing two sail boats through, tic, tic, tic goes the cab's metered clock. The return trip cost us $18 including a tip. Thanks West Marine for sucking the life out of the cruising Kitty.
When I run the cruising world, I will make it law that every marina has at least a satellite West Marine or at least a courtesy shuttle to and fro.
We then went to the beach for a beautiful swim. We figured we would arrive at our summer destination on Sunday, so we have decided to stay another day here in beautiful Fort Lauderdale, so we arrive on a Monday & take advantage of more A/C & more beach.
Peace out.
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07/17/2011, Fort Lauderdale Municipal Marina
This is going to get away from me I know. I have been planning to do a post for a while about our visitor counter. It started with Ruth but Al restarted it last December with Close Knit. Our friends on Nelleke gave us the idea. If you identify yourself or selves as the 10,000 th hit on our blog you will win a prize. I know Nelleke gave away a weekend on Nelleke. That was brave, fortunately for them the winner was a former co-worker of Barb's; EASY. We would offer up a similar prize as long as the identified person(s) isn't a WEIRDO, following us. Some of our family members could potentially fall into this category and we would totally welcome you on board with loving arms. ( We're a bit weird ourselves). However in keeping with safety standards, I'd like to offer up a knitted item for the winner. Not a sweater but a lovely crafted knit in the Mitten, Hat , or Scarf family if you identify your self as the 10,000th hit on CLOSE KNIT, I suppose if you identify yourself as a total Non- weirdo and wanted to get yourself to Close Knit we could be charmed into an excursion on board. Todays posted picture is of the back deck we affectionately call ourselves "Trawler Trash"
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Andrew
07/17/2011, Fort Lauderdale Municipal Marina
We arrived at Los Olas Municiple Marina by 3 pm today. We are hooked into AC and ready for a roast beef supper. It was a long day leaving just before 7 am but for all intents and purposes it was a fine day of travel. It was a bit crazy coming through Miami navigating the weekend crowd. Close Knit handled better than ever while Al negotiated us into our slip ( Pete you would be proud). Tomorrow we will visit West Marine for a new starting battery because the pull cord pulled out of out Honda 2000. So now that has to be repaired. They don't make it easy to get into so it will be a service call. The post is of the Dolphin following us yesterday. It stayed with us for quite a while but as usual as soon as I got my camera it would not surface.
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