Another early start today, 6.30am anchor up to make the 7am opening of the Bridge of Lyons. The bridge actually opened early for us, and by 7am we were in the St. Augustine inlet heading out to sea. The forecast was for W winds, 10 - 15 knots with the possibility of some squalls. On the way to the inlet we had hauled the main, and now we also had the yankie flying. We reached our waypoint, turned right and tried to settle ourselves in for the ride to Cape Canaveral where we would again have a slight turn to starboard before our run down to Fort Pierce.
And the wind speed was ..................0! In came the yankie, the motor stayed on and we kept the main up to give us some stability in the 2 - 3 ft swell. By 10am the wind had picked up a little, but it was from the NE (not much W'ly direction in that), but at least we could fly the yankie and pick up a little more speed. Nothing much changed condition-wise until we reached our waypoint off of Cape Canaveral just around midnight. The wind had been gradually building and going more northerly during the day and as we rounded the marker and changed our course for Fort Pierce inlet we, of course, found ourselves again enjoying our favourite point of sail - running directly downwind. Ah, but we weren't going to be caught out this time, Oh No! Our jibe-preventer was already in place and the main wasn't going anywhere without our say so. No more slug ripping today!
By this time we were seeing 15 knots of apparent wind, so the true speed was probably closer to 20kts. The squalls which had been forecast for earlier in the day had also caught up with us, so we got quite wet. All in all, we weren't having a particularly comfortable ride; the following sea gave Magic a wonderful corkscrew motion, but at least the seas and the winds were heading in the same direction so it wasn't all bad. We reached the Fort Pierce inlet around 9am and caught the tide on the flood (more by luck than judgement we have to admit) which carried us through the inlet at a formidable 9.9Kts. YaHoo!! We were back in the ICW at 9.45am and safely tied on to a mooring at Vero Beach Municipal Marina by Noon. Time for a few days relaxation (and shopping!).
Vero Beach is a really good place for cruisers. The moorings are a scandalous $11 a day! There is a free bus service to the beach and the main shopping areas and the marina has good showers and a laundry. It is, therefore an excellent stop to top up on provisions, do laundry etc. and we planned to be here for a few days to do just that. The only downside, which we had not experienced when we were here last year, are the bugs! The no-see 'ums here have been a nightmare and I am being eaten alive! Different insect repellents have had little effect and even the mosquito coils we regularly burn have had little effect. Even Dave has been bitten, and they normally avoid him totally! A fellow cruiser we met in the laundry sympathized with my plight and told me that I needed to buy some Mango & Tangerine body lotion from the Body Shop located in the mall. So the following day Dave & I hopped on the bus and headed to the store. Now I'm perfectly prepared to suffer the indignity of smelling like a fruit-bowl if this works (actually, the perfume is really quite nice), and I do believe that it has had some beneficial effect, but I'm still being bitten so cannot say that I'm disappointed that we have made the decision to leave here today and make an overnight run to Fort Lauderdale (aka Fort La-Di-Da!). It appears that we may have a weather window on Wednesday/Thursday to make our crossing to the Bahamas. Fingers crossed!
One treat we did enjoy here last Friday was the Christmas Parade of the local boating community. Many of the local boats were decorated to the hilt with Christmas lights and paraded through the marina. The work that must have gone in to some of the designs was truly impressive and although we could not capture all of them on film we did get one or two which we hope you enjoy as much as we did.