Despite our plans to end up much further up the Florida coast, we ended up coming in the Ft Pierce inlet and then 15 miles north to Vero Beach. I'll write more details later, but the combination of no wind and warnings of thunderstorms made us decide to just motor across to the US as fast as we could. It was hot, boring and fossil fuel consuming, but we are here and legally checked in.

We went to renew our cruising permit yesterday only to find that once again, one branch of USCustoms and Border Protection does not know what the other is doing. We thought this time it would be straightforward. Wishful thinking. At least they were nice at Ft Pierce airport. We now have to wait till Tuesday when they might have a guy who knows how to help us, or Mon when we can get in touch with the Baltimore officer who said she would make everything work fine, but didn't.
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and now for the details...

You know what they say about cruising and schedules - they just don't go together very well. When we went up to Manjack Cay, we thought we were looking at a Monday departure and would have a few days to explore the cays further along.

We had a fabulous slow sail up there from Green Turtle Cay - just an idyllic evening despite the smoke drifting over from Great Abaco. Nancy and Jim stopped by for a visit on their way home from Savage Son and we made plans to go over to Solitaire at 6:30 the next morning to listen to Chris Parker's weather broadcast, and then to join the group for a 10 am walk to Ocean Beach.

After listening to Chris, we thought that we'd stand a better chance of getting north if we left on Thursday because we needed to be in off the water by Saturday night, and the next window might not be coming until later the next week - not on Monday. Solitaire was planning to leave on Friday for Ft. Pierce, and Sapphire said they and Savage Son were waiting for the next window.

So ... we went to the beach with Nancy and Jim - had a lovely walk through the trees, past the hand painted signs and under the leafy overhang. This is one lovely beach. The island residents keep it clean, and make it available to visitors. It was a hot morning and a dip felt wonderful before we made our way back across the cay to our waiting dinghies.

At one time, free wifi was available here but that is no longer the case. We understand that they were asked to refrain from offering this service to cruisers so that the folks who are in the business are able to get cruisers to sign on. (It is still free at Pineapples bar on Green Turtle Cay though!)

We said our goodbyes to everyone and headed out about 1 pm toward Great Sale Cay - sails up and engine on at low rpm's. Sapphire and Savage Son changed their minds and went roaring by us - headed for the US with all sails flying.

Just before dusk, we enjoyed a tasty farewell to the Bahamas dinner of tuna steaks, baked potatoes with sour cream and green salad with a ginger/orange dressing. Mmmmmm. I've learned from Nancy that freshly baked chocolate chip cookies make a good "crossing treat" so I pulled a pan of them from the oven to top off our meal.

By the time we got to Great Sale, we thought that perhaps we would just keep on going. We made that decision last time and wished we had stopped to rest, but we went and did it again!!

Starting at about 9, we could see lightning flashing in the sky ahead. As we travelled along, it stayed off to our starboard side for many hours, and by 4 am was pretty much behind us. I had the 12 to 4 shift and watched it on the radar as well as in the sky. The huge blob on the radar stayed off 10 to 12 miles and was never a threat to us, but it kept me alert! By 4, the light show was stunning. It lit up the sky behind a tower of cumulous clouds and was as dramatic as any I've seen. At watch change, Jim and I both sat in the cockpit marvelling at it for a while. We had regular radio chats with Sapphire until they got out of range, and after that we just watched and motored. At night, we usually use our staysail (which doesn't give us much speed in light winds), and we kept the engine low so that our fuel consumption would also be low.

Unfortunately, by the time we crossed the last of that beautiful aqua water of the banks at Matanilla Shoal and got into the deep blue water of the Straits of Florida, we had another decision to make. We picked up the NOAA weather forecast and discovered that it was calling for thunderstorms off Cape Canaveral for Friday evening. With the luck we've been having, it made us nervous. The light show the night before had been spectacular - from 10 miles away. We had no desire at all to be caught in the middle of one. At another time, we might have kept on going and taken our chances, but we are a little more apprehensive right now and we decided to play it very safe and head straight across to Ft Pierce. It was a real drag because we had no wind helping us in that direction, and we were working against the Gulf Stream. As I said in the first part of this posting, we were hot, tired of being anxious, and disappointed at ending up still that far south in Florida.

Because we no longer had to conserve fuel for a long passage, we pumped up the rpm's. The yankee was doing us no good at all so we had just the main up and the sea was so flat that we took turns having showers on the foredeck with the hot water from our solar shower. There was not another boat near us until we approached the Ft. Pierce inlet just before 10 pm. Large vessels usually call a Securite when they are about to transit a narrow passage to alert oncoming vessels so we knew it was coming our way. We could see it on our AIS, and a sport fishing boat that went in just ahead of us was also nice enough to call back to the "inbound yacht" (that was us) that "there's a big ship in the channel headed out!" We went slowly along just outside the channel till it passed and then headed on in. The inlet was pretty well marked - with the exception of a couple of missing lights - and despite the ebb current against us, we had no difficulty in making an after dark entrance.

The usual anchorages here have some shallow water and the tide was low so we weren't much interested in trying to get into them. I had read in one book that it was OK to anchor just off the Pelican Yacht Club, near the Coast Guard Station, in the inlet, so that's what we did. There weren't any other boats there and the holding was good even in the current. It didn't take long for us to get our anchoring chores taken care of and lay our little heads down for a good sleep!

In the morning, we woke up to find fishing boats absolutely everywhere - milling around us and heading out the inlet. Reveille sounded from the loudspeakers at the Coast Guard Station and we watched all the action as we drank our morning cup of java. By 8 o'clock we were on our way north up the ICW to Vero Beach where we planned to wait for a nice wind to blow us up the coast.

And I think that fills in the gaps of the crossing!



Nothing more has broken on the boat!!