Wednesday, January 28, 2009

This is the only picture that my computer would let me download tonight. Next time I will try it again. This picture is a bascule bridge which we have to get permission to go through and wait for the next opening which is usually on the hour or half hour.

We have spent a lot of time waiting for these places to let us through for the past two days. Florida has more bridges than any other place we have been. Thank goodness, lots of lthem are fixed and we can just go right on through. We even have waited for some swing bridges but there are not as many of them here.

We left Vero Beach on Monday afternoon around 1:00 and headed down South again. We really did enjoy our stay at Vero Beach Marina and will definitely stop there on our return trip back to North Carolina in June. We anchored to the left of the Ft. Pierce bridge in front of several condos. We had a delicious shrimp & pasta dinner with Chris & Marie on Spirit and when Dean & Susan arrived, they too joined us. The weather was beautiful, but windy. We left there the following morning headed south and pulled in to anchor at Hobe Sound off the Indian River. It was another beautiful but very windy day and the ICW was not wide enough for sailing so we motored all the way. We invited Chris & Marie to our boat for a dinner of roast beef and potatoes(Nelson's favorite food). We pulled anchor Wednesday morning headed south again but the winds were not as bad and weather was warmer. We made it today to Palm Beach. What a city! I never saw so many tall condos and beautiful very large houses all along the waterway. These people must have lots of money here. Once we anchored, we took our dinghy over to the land and walked several miles into the beach area but never saw the beach. All the homes we very large and had tall fences which kept us from seeing the ocean or their houses. We got tired of walking and then came back to Chris & Marie's boat for a fish dinner. Delicious! Talapia!

We are anchored just beyond the Southern Blvd bridge. Tomorrow, we are going to stay here, walk across the bridge and catch a bus to see the town of Palm Beach. We are planning to leave here on Friday. It's getting late and I am getting sleepy. Take care and we hope to see everyone soon.

Last boat, Spirit, & Autumn Bourne connected to mooring ball in Vero Beach. We stayed in Vero from Thursday through Monday. We did laundry, bought groceries, went to Walmart for supplies and also West Marine. They have city buses which picked us up at the marina, on the hour wherever we needed to go. We used the bus a lot. Autumn Bourne has a yellow lab, just like our Chase. We have enjoyed getting to know Sydney. We have missed Chase who by the way, has gone to live with his best friend, Jackson . We are in our favorite eating place with our boating friends at River Cafe. We love their shrimp sandwiches. We take our dinghies there and it is not far from our anchorage.

Hello to all!

We are so excited. We have finally found some beautiful weather. We are at Vero Beach, FL. We arrived here Thursday afternoon in the cold weather still. But, each day here has gotten warmer. At 4:00, it is 78 degrees and we are in short sleeve shirts for the first time in quite a while. Nelson even wore his shorts when we walked to the beach today. There were lots of people on the beach and even some were swimming. No, the water was not warm.
My last post was at Cocoa Beach. Since then, we spent Wednesday night in Melbourne. After anchoring, we took the dinghy over to some very high docks which were not fun to climb and walked down Main St. and checked our the historic part of downtown. We stopped in one little shop for some delicious ice-cream even though it was still cold weather. It as a nice walk but we were not that impressed with the area.
The next morning we left and motored to Vero Beach. As we were leaving, another sailboat was coming up the ICW headed south. We noticed that they were waving like they might know us. Well, they did recognize our boat name from St. Marys. After checking our boat cards, we found their names and gave them a call on the radio. They were also going to Vero and decided to join up with Last Boat and Spirit to continue our 30 mile journey. We all arrived here in Vero mooring field around 2:30. The trip was a pleasant one as the weather was warmer, less wind and beautiful houses on the ICW and lots of islands with birds and manatees and many dolphins in the water.
Today is Sunday, and we are still here. We have loved this area. We are tied on one mooring ball but there are three of us boats together. We are tied to the middle boat, called Autumn Bourne. It feels like we are at a dock as we have had no movement since we have been here. It is great and we all three couples get along and enjoy each others company. We all are planning to leave tomorrow morning after breakfast.

Wednesday, January 21,2009

Hello Everyone,
I have been under the weather and have not felt like getting on the computer. I finally went to the doctor yesterday to make sure I was not getting pneumonia and found out that I am just having asthma and needed a different kind of medicine than I was taking. Thanks to the doctor, I am feeling much better today. It is scary when you are having trouble breathing and aren’t sure whether you will continue to breathe or not. I asked her why I was all of a sudden having this at the age of 62. Her answer was…”for living on this earth for 62 years.” Really, they don’t know. Could be that I am allergic to something or contacted some germ, or inherited it. We arrived this windy, cold afternoon into Cocoa Beach, FL. We are anchored just off the ICW across from a Marina and looks like the downtown area. We are just here for the night. We motored down the ICW on Saturday to New Symarna Beach. We did see the rocket that they shot up that night. We saw the burning pieces fall through space. That was exciting.
We spent Sun. and Mon. nights in Titusville, FL. I put a damper on our excursions and we only went to the Medical Center there. We were not close to any of the Space Center and would have had to take a bus to visit.
Thanks to Keith Abbott, our neighbor, we got to see our house on Brookview in the snow this morning. It was really pretty. We are having very heavy winds and cold weather today and also tomorrow. I guess the winds are blowing the cold air from up north down to us. We are still waiting for Florida’s warm weather. When does it start? We can’t wait to put these winter clothes away.
Cocoa Beach was cold and windy. Nelson, Crris, & Marie motored into the city docks and walked around the town area after we anchored. They were not too impressed.
We pulled the anchor about 9:45 this morning and motored again in the freezing cold and have just arrived at Melborne, FL. It is just as cold here and the wind is still blowing. Hopefully we will have warmer weather tomorrow when we get to Vero Beach.
Nelson & Ondra

Saturday, Jsnuary 17 2009

Happy New Year!
We are now on Last Boat and beginning our trip further south to the Florida Keys.
We left Rocky Mount on Sunday, January 4. We spent the night in Myrtle Beach with Justin and Lindsey and arrived in Jacksonville, FL on Monday afternoon. We spent the nights with Nelson’s sister Loretta and her husband, Mac, but went to the boat every day for a week doing various projects to make our trip more enjoyable. We now have our dinghy out of the water on davits behind the boat. We hope this will allow our boat to go faster as the dinghy is now out of the water and hanging behind the boat in the air. This was a major project which took most of the week. The boat was as dirty as I have ever seen it when we returned due to all the construe action and road work being done near the Marina that we left her.
We had to give it a good bath before taking it anywhere.
We took Loretta, Danny, her son, and his family on a boat ride on Saturday and it was a beautiful day to be on the water. They acted as though they enjoyed their ride. We took our car back to Jacksonville when we returned and have enjoyed having it to run back and forth to the boat and do our errands before our trip south. We picked our friends from Connecticut at the airport in Jacksonville and took them to where their boat was docked in Palm Coast. It was raining all Tuesday so; we decided to wait until Wednesday to leave on the boat. We drove our car over to St. Augustine both Mon. and Tues. And looked around the town and went to a boating parts store while there. Yes, we bought something but not much. They did not have just what we needed.
Finally, Last Boat left Beach Marina on Wednesday, January 14 at 8:00a.m.
Headed to St. Augustine, Florida. We decided to ride through and on to Fort Matanzas for anchoring that night. What a neat place to anchor. Our boat was sitting right in front of the smallest little Fort I have ever seen. We did not get a chance to visit as it was closing when we arrived and we left before it opened. Our friends had anchored there before Christmas and said that we could not have carried our little boat there but had to go over to the other side of the water and ride the Ferry boat over to visit.
Maybe we can do that on our return trip. After a meal of grilled chicken, we watched American Idol and went to bed. Oh, I forgot to mention, Nelson dropped one of our pieces of chicken overboard so we had to share.
We departed around 9:30 after a big breakfast and headed south to meet our friends Chris and Marie who were further off the ICW at Palm Coast waiting for the high water to come in so they could get their boat off the bottom and away from the dock where they had left it for the Christmas Holidays. We finally found anchorage near Daytona Beach and pulled in about 3:30 and waited for our friends. They arrived just before dark. We had them over to our boat for steaks. It was great to have our traveling buddies back with us. We stayed another night there and took a long walk around the busy parts of town.
We pulled anchors this morning and traveled the ICW until we found a good anchorage called Rockhouse Creek which is near New Smyrna Beach. Ondra has another bad Bronchitis and therefore, decided to be a boat bum all day today. She is coughing and wheezing most all the time. Not a very pleasant way to be on a boat. But, she will survive.
We plan to leave here tomorrow and go more south. The weather is still cold here in Florida. We are looking for warm Florida, but have not found it yet. We are thrilled to be on the boat and going south again. Keep in touch and we will do the same.
Nelson & Ondra