My trip north postponed the launch of Light Reach. Actually the yard was behind on work orders due to the hurricanes and Light Reach was in serious need of a bottom job. It had been two years since we had it painted and it showed. When the hurricanes threatened a ton of boats had come to the yard for haul out and decided to stay for the duration of the season and have work done. American Custom deals with many mega yachts well over 100 feet, which all pay way more than our tiny little sailboat. It took some wrangling but Scott finally managed to put us farther up on the list and get her painted while I was gone. Today we splashed her for the season.
The extent of the hurricane damage in Florida has been devastating to many of the areas that cruisers travel to for the winter. Mooring fields in St Augustine, Dinner Key, Marathon and Key West are either only partly functional or closed all together. With the Snow Birds migration South down the ICW in full swing places to anchor, moor or even dock are going to be in short supply this winter. Our original plan was to return to Marathon for the season but Irma changed that. Marathon is open but not all the moorings have been inspected since the storm and it is at your risk if you pick up a ball. The Marina doesn’t have phone or internet service at this point. We do know folks who are there and the clean up continues but there are still many folks without homes in temporary housing and some folks who left never to return. We decided not to stress their infrastructure any farther and stay up in mainland Florida at least until March.
This left us thinking of where we could go. Vero Beach and Titusville came to mind. Vero puts multiple boats on one mooring which is fine for a short stay but an entire season makes for pretty close neighbors and not a lot of privacy. We don’t know much about Titusville so might explore that at some point. Right down the river from American Custom is Sunset Bay in Stuart. We checked them out and found they had moorings available on a first come first served basis. Sam the dock master said they normally fill by Thanksgiving. The marina has nice facilities and is walking distance to nearly everything you could possibly want. Perfect fit, if not a long journey, so this year our total sum of our cruising was the 6 miles down the river. It was an uneventful trip, Sue and Roger on Dancin Downwind were already on a ball at the marina. We had discussed this plan with them when we visited them in Hilton Head. They were kind enough to come over in their dingy and help us pick up the mooring. It was blowing like stink. Once tied on we headed into the dingy dock to sign in. We’ll be traveling back and forth for the next couple of weeks, clearing out the condo and getting settled into the boat. More on that and Stuart in another post.
The picture is the St Lucie River in front of American Custom, that’s the I95 bridge, the first on we passed under on our way to the mooring field.