The sound of velcro being pulled apart has always annoyed me. My sons used to pull their velcro shoes tabs just for fun - a little habit that for some reason grated on my nerves. Well, here we are preparing to pull away from “Velcro Beach” and there is an annoying sound - the two of us moaning about leaving such a great place. Yet we know that it is time to move on - after all we have been stuck for a month! Vero Beach is truly wonderful; it offers a beautiful beach, fine dining, shopping, easy transportation and many new friends. The Thursday evenings sunset gatherings has allowed us to pick the brains of other sailors. This has been a great place to learn about preparing for our crossing to West End in the Bahamas. Additionally, we have had the lovely opportunity to get to know Ingrid, Erik, Connie, Alec, Jim, Peter, and many more new friends.

New learnings while here have included such things as: what happens when you overfill the oil reservoir in the motor for the dinghy (smoke, smoke, and more smoke), how easy it is to run the dinghy over your own mooring ball in the dark (me), and the fun of running in 85 degree weather with 95% humidity! We’ve had practice using our dinghy as our “taxi” to pick up supplies, water, laundry and fuel and figured out a few tricks for getting onto the boat when unloading. Believe me it doesn’t look like dance moves as we attempt to move from Dimples to Les Miserables. Picture holding on to the back of the bigger boat while balancing as the little boat lurches up and moves away from the bigger boat as a result of your weight shifting. Crawling onto the dock has been known to happen- including in front of an audience. It isn’t pretty. Finally, while no-seeums truly cannot be seen they can definitely be felt - scratch - scratch - scratch. That is at least for me while they have not yet developed a taste for Wiley.

However, our favorite part was watching a family of dolphins come in and feed right in the harbor; Dimples took us up for a close look. A dolphin turning to look up at you from the water conjures up feelings that somehow you are communicating with this wonderful, intelligent creature. It could all be the “pathetic fallacy” - but still there is a glimmer of hope that maybe it is not. The birds - pelicans, crane, parrots, woodpeckers, ibis, and more are all part of the joy of being here. There is even a small barracuda that likes to hang around the dingy dock.

While we continue to miss the cultural opportunities in Chicagoland we found that the art festival Under the Oaks at the Vero Beach Art Museum was fabulous as was the museum itself.

We plan on leaving early in the morning to travel to an anchorage prior to getting to Lake Worth. It sounds like a beautiful spot where we can take Dimples to the ocean beach. Our next stop will be at Old Port Marina in Lake Worth and it is here that we hope to connect with other boaters who are planning to cross over to the Bahamas. Our plan includes letting everyone know just before we leave to cross over the Gulf stream by using our Spot system that provides our longitude and latitude via e-mail - it also has an SOS button to push should we need help. So while we can barely tolerate the sound of the Velcro being pulled away - we are doing just that pulling away to our next step of our adventure.