You decide
14 November 2010 | Eau Gallie
Sunny days, cool nights
Finishing a week here in Eau Gallie and can't decide on the title of the blog tonight.
Mi casa es su casa:
Oddly, the wildlife viewing here in the harbor has been some of the best of the trip. Manatees swimming by but only occasionally does the tip of the nose break the surface. I have yet to actually see a manatee like one sees dolphins. Pelicans swooping by on a low pass, pulling up and plunging into the water for a bite. Herons perching on the top of the two daymarks I am tucked between. Ospreys wheeling about overhead. One particularly well fed one has taken up residence on Calypso's wind indicator. King of the harbor.
My kind of town:
Eau Gallie is definitely a sleepy little town. Not much going on here except an art school and a bunch of galleries that sprung up around it, plus the Civic Center where we are having out meeting. As a municipality, it has been taken over by much larger Melbourne to the south. Across the Indian River bridge there is an assortment of strip malls and stores. For the first five days, I had the harbor to myself. Admittedly, the cruising guides are not very encouraging. While the holding is suspect, it is completely protected, and I sleep at night with nary a ripple. (There's the small matter of the freight train engineer each morning at 4am who insists on blowing his whistle virtually continuously as he passes.)
I got a walk-in haircut by a barber who has been cutting hair in Eau Gallie for 45 years. The bike shop fixed the tube on my tire while I waited.
Yakity yak:
The SSCA GAM was much bigger than Annapolis. Lots of good tidbits in the various presentations. Saw some folks whom I had met at the Annapolis gam and met some new ones too. At the annual meeting portion of the weekend, I was pleasantly surprised when they pulled up Calypso's blog as an example of how sailors are keeping in touch while cruising. Spent all day today in a weather seminar with weather guru Lee Chesneau. Kept me from spending too much money at the nautical flea market. However, I took the plunge on a highly rated WIFI antenna from one of the professional vendors.
On to Vero Beach tomorrow for a week on a mooring. Will pick up Alex in Orlando tomorrow night.