St. Augustine to Stuart Florida

Monday, after leaving St. Augustine, we only motored for only 39 miles and anchored just off the ICW at Butler Beach.
Tues., Nov.16, at 6:30am, we pulled the anchor and headed further south. The sun was shining bright in the morning but the afternoon became cloudy but never rained. We traveled 73 miles before anchoring 15 miles south of New Smyrna Beach.
We noticed a lot of smoke in the forest beyond our anchorage. Later when we were watching the news on TV, we realized that this was the fire off 95 which had stopped traffic going north. The next morning, we had soot all over our boat and the air was so heavy with smoke that I had to stay in the boat for over an hour to stay away from the strong smoke fumes. They are not good when you have asthma. (I am not having any problems now and do not want to do anything to cause them. We motored 67 miles and finally anchored 10 miles south of Melbourne Beach. We had a nice day after leaving the smoke area. The weather was wonderful. We had shorts and short sleeves on all day. Our anchorage was great!
Thurs., Nov.18, we pulled anchor and headed south again. You are right. We are not visiting every place this time, we are just moving further south everyday so we can get to Cape Coral before Thanksgiving. We covered 73 miles and the weather again was great! There are always other boats on the water going south so we are seldom alone. We are very pleased with the progress we are making. We are so thankful that we had our prop repitched and now we are moving faster than our last year’s trip. Today, we anchored in Stuart, Florida. We plan to start our journey across the Lake tomorrow and will have our boat heeled over to get under the railroad bridge just before we enter the Lake. Should be an exciting day.