Saturday, January 03, 2009

Morning coffee up top with a pelican (whose beak can hold more than his belly can)

Dragon Pt to Vero Beach Fl

Wow - you can tell it's a holiday break weekend on the ICW. There were boats zipping in every direction around us, having a good ole time. Fishing boats, motor yachts, sailboats, cats, pontoons, and wave riders all going in and out of each others wakes. This area looks like a good run for family outings. There are a lot of islands to camp on and quite a few of them had camps set up. I wouldn't have minded exploring them myself, except to get to them we had to go through 1-3 ft depths, and the only way to do that is to anchor our boat in the ICW channel and dingy to them (not a thing to do...).

We got into Vero Beach at 4pm and there's no anchoring allowed - you have to moor. Worse yet, you have to raft to another boat on a mooring. Some boats are rafted 3 & 4 on a mooring. Wayne wanted to move on, but there's nowhere else to go - NO anchoring, so we stayed. Salt Whistle is here again - we left right before they did this morning and he got here before us and was busy rafting to another boat. We asked if there was anyone available to help out (since we'd never rafted before) and were told - "no". "Get in your dingy and tie to the mooring after coming alongside the other boat." "If there's someone onboard, they'll help you." Alrighty then... For our first rafting experience, it turned out to be pretty good. There was no current to contend with, so I was able to nose up to the mooring ball, stop the boat, and grab onto the other boat (Silver). Nobody was aboard the other boat and there's a large "For Sale" sign on it. After putting the fenders between the boats and snugging up, we discovered that we attached to the side of our boat with the boarding ladder on it (oops). So we had to move the ladder to the other side in order to be able to get on and off the boat. We then got the dingy lowered so we could go check in at the municipal marina ($12/night + $1.07/shower) and a fellow Bayfielder came by to say hi - Ken from Second Wind. There are 2 Bayfield 40s here. I wish we could have all rafted together. According to Ken they raft up to 4 boats together (last weekend was used as an example) at any given time. Yikes! Popular place. I was told not to worry - the moorings are snuggly screwed into the bottom so the boats can't break loose. I hadn't even thought of that - only of privacy.

We ran into Ray from the boat Maria. We'd met him in Annapolis - he was working on the boat show - and we chatted briefly with him. It was nice to remember him (I'm pretty bad at names) and see a familiar face here. Afterwards we took a walk under the bridge to the Riverside Café for dinner - a popular place with reasonable prices on drinks and food. Not memorable but reasonable. Wayne got dolphin (mahi mahi) and I got ribs (kind of disappointing - very unoriginal sauce that tasted like ketchup and hot sauce). The beer was good, the atmosphere friendly, and Wayne liked the mahi mahi - I liked the cole slaw. We'll probably come back but I wouldn't recommend the ribs.

I had a problem getting our lock to catch and lock onto the dingy - twice tonight. Once going there and locking up at the dingy dock and then coming back and locking her to the boat. I thought it was locked and when I moved the cord, I heard sploosh - when I looked down - no lock (sigh). We have more problems with locks...