We did walk over to the Atlantic beach at Vero, but it was a line of real estate, accountancy practices and investment houses, along with a few high end boutiques; just our sort of place. The following morning we fuelled and watered up and left for the 35 mile ICW trip to Mellbourn. It was nice to escape from the ubiquitous no seeums and a new pest, the love bugs. These are two non biting flies that are mating on the wing and are around in swarms, but only for a couple of days. Most of the bridges are now 65 ft clearance so there are no delays and we anchored for the night in a large anchorage on the East of the ICW at Dragon Point. The next day we were off to Titusville where we planned to pick up a municipal mooring ball , rent a car and have a day at the Kennedy Space Centre. We were a little concerned over the depth in the mooring field but found one that gave us 2.5 metres at LW so were good to go. The next day we duly went to the space centre and spent a very interesting day there seeing the shuttle, a life sized Saturn V and several documentaries on the various NASA missions and the future. The next stop was to be New Smyrna and we chose an anchorage that promised enough depth and space for a comfortable night. This worked out OK but in 20 knots of wind there was not much manoeuvering room when anchoring, but we managed to stay afloat. Our plan was then to go out into the Atlantic through the Ponce de Lion Inlet (he seemed to get everywhere) about 5 miles north of our anchorage and then travel two days an nights to Charleston. We left at 1300 and cleared the opening bridge between us and the inlet OK and set sail for the North. Overnight when I checked the weather we decided to stop at the St Mary inlet on the Georgia side,about 100 miles up from Ponce de lion, due to impending storms and high seas...where did they come from? So we came in to the inlet, a very deep and wide inlet because just up the river is one of the locations for the US Trident nuclear Sub fleet. We followed the North shore and anchored off Cumberland Island to wait out the thunderstorms. Looking at the weather it was clear we would be here for a few days as once the storms had passed by close of play Monday, the winds turned to come from the North until Thursday. We met a Swedish couple who were OCC members and we booked onto a Cumberland Island tour on the Tuesday. The tour was really interesting, seeing the history of the island from before the Civil War all the way through to the '50s. The involvement of the Carnegies post Civil War and the fate of the slaves who worked for the original plantation owner after the war.The guide looked like Jimmy Carter and sounded like Bill Clinton and was excellent. Today Wednesday we are having happy hour with another OCC couple who were on the tour, having traced a water leak on the engine which had me fearing the worst, and changing the engine oil as the hours keep clocking up after all the ICW motoring. We plan to stay in Charleston for a week and get a few small items sorted and have a good look round, this will be a marina berth or slip as they say here. The photo is of the anchorage on the Cumberland river, the island is about 25 miles long and about a mile wide and has,allegedly, an 18 mile Atlantic beach with no buildings behind it.