Friday April 27th/12
We left West End along with Ocean Dreamer at 6am to cross the Gulf Stream, bound for Lake Worth. Too many early mornings for a woman who is NOT a morning person!! We had the best crossing ever! It wasn’t a good sail as the water was completely calm and we had to motor all the way. I didn’t care! It was daylight, the sea was calm so I didn’t need gravol and there was absolutely nothing to worry about! In fact I baked cookies as we motored which we enjoyed eating on the way. I know Cathy hates crossing the Stream too so there were 2 happy women that day!
We arrived at Lake Worth at 2:30pm and decided to just relax and catch up on sleep for the rest of the day instead of rushing to clear customs. The next morning the 4 of us got a taxi to the customs building and had no trouble at all clearing customs. We have heard horror stories of people trying to clear in at various other places, but we have always found the Lake Worth customs officers really helpful. We stocked up on groceries on the way back to the boat so that we were set for our travels up the intra coastal to Titusville. We travelled with Jim and Cathy the next day to Peck Lake where we stayed for 2 days and nights. There was a sunken boat in Peck Lake which wasn’t there the last time – luckily it was marked by 2 or 3 floats so that it’s position was marked and could be seen at high tide. It was a bit of a noisy stay as there was a dredger working there day and night – it didn’t stop us sleeping or enjoying ourselves though. It was great to spend time with Jim and Cathy, but we left them at Peck Lake to continue our journey up to Titusville. They were going back to Lake Worth to meet up with their son who had decided to visit with them for a while. We will hopefully meet up with them next season.
We arrived in Fort Pierce on the 14th and made contact with Barry and Susan from Nighthawk. They picked us up in their car and we all went to the Golden Corral for supper. As they said, it is a great place to eat when you have been in the out islands for a few months because there is absolutely everything there you could want and it is all you can eat!! Ice cream!! We had a lovely evening with Barry and Susan, and they were kind enough to take us to Best Buy the next morning where we bought a Kindle Touch which has 3G and Wi Fi and would give us access to e-mail even in the Jumentos, solving the very worrying problem of being able to keep in touch with family. Unfortunately we found that we had bought the wrong Kindle!! We carried on up the waterway though to Vero Beach and picked up a mooring there. What a great place! No wonder people stay there for a long time. They are extremely boater friendly and there is a great bus service that does pick-ups and drop-offs right at the marina. There is even pizza delivery to the marina, which we took full advantage of. We were able to solve the Kindle problem by taking a bus to a Best Buy to return the Kindle (touch screen) and then another to a Staples store where we found the Kindle (key pad)we really needed. Hooray!!!
We stayed in Vero Beach for 3 nights before carrying on up to Titusville. We stayed in the marina at a dock for several days while we worked on getting the boat ready to be hauled. We worked really hard!! Windrush was ‘put away’ in much better shape than at the end of last season and we were much happier to leave her like that.
It was great fun to watch the manatees too! I had really been looking forward to seeing them as I think they are just lovely. Ugly but cute! It was mating season for the manatees so there was a lot of splashing and ‘playing’ going on all around us – lying in bed at night we could hear all kinds of splashing going on! They were really quite curious and loved to lay on their backs to drink the fresh water running off the boat as we washed it down. There would be 4 or 5 at a time jostling to get their mouths under the drips of water!
We also met up again with Rich from Feral Cat, who lives in Titusville and keeps his boat at the same marina as we are in. We had him aboard for supper one evening, met up with he and Patricia (the marina manager) for lunch one day and also joined him and met some of his friends aboard Feral Cat for drinks. He was kind enough to take us shopping for various things we need for the boat and also offered us a ride to the airport for the day we were leaving for home.
Windrush was hauled and put “on the hard” on the 25th. Almost everything was crossed off our ‘to do’ list and she looked great. We stayed on board Windrush for the last time this season and set the alarm for yet another VERY early morning start. We took Rich up on his kind offer of a ride to the Orlando airport in time for our flight home. Our trip home to Nova Scotia was very uneventful and we arrived safely in Halifax. Kirsty and Shawn and their beautiful new puppy Bella - a Nova Scotia Ducktoller Retriever – were there to meet us. Soooo good to be home again – but eagerly looking forward to next season and more adventures aboard Windrush!