Sails are up these days! We left Vero Beach about noon on Sunday and used the staysail to help us along down the ICW to Ft Pierce. It really helped too because when we rolled it in just before the bascule bridge, we dropped almost 2 knots. On Monday, we motorsailed (with the main and the yankee) on the outside to Lake Worth. I wished - as always - that we could dispense with the engine entirely but we'd have run the risk of not making our anchorage till dusk and we'd rather not take the chance.

There was a lot more wind than we had expected on Sunday afternoon and we took a look at the anchorage just past the bascule bridge because it would be more protected from the W wind, but after a short circle in, the depth was dropping rapidly and there wasn't a lot of room anyway. We continued to the Causeway Island anchorage where we stopped two years ago. It is important to stay close to the 2 reds leading through that channel after leaving the ICW at R 188. The shoals are encroaching, and the G shown on the chart is missing. There were only 3 other boats there so even though the wind was still strong, we were in 20 feet of water we could let out lots of chain. Fortunately, by about 6:30 the wind dropped from the 20 kn with gusts to 30 that we had been seeing and stayed down all night.

We spent Monday night at the anchorage just inside Lake Worth Inlet, left about 7:30 and sailed outside to Fort Lauderdale on Tuesday where we plan to stay a few days at Cooley's Landing Marina on the New River for a few days.

I heard someone say on the radio, "The water is BLUE!" and sure enough, it is now. There were 4 or 5 other boats out there on Tuesday, the sun was shining even though the wind was fairly cool and it was a beautiful day to be on the water. I looked at the ICW chart now and then and said to Jim, "If we were inside we'd be coming to this bridge now." or "The channel would be really narrow there." How lovely not to have to worry about those things any more.