Fall(ing) Towards Florida

It is October 20^th and we depart the lovely marina at River Dunes Resort to begin a series of offshore runs to Florida. 

The harbor at River Dunes

The weather is cooling off but otherwise pleasant.  We ride the tidal currents from the Pamlico River, down past Beaufort, to the beautiful protected anchorage at Cape Lookout.  We are nestled in a harbor almost completely surrounded by barrier sand dunes.  

Sunset at Cape Lookout with the light in the distance

Only a few boats are here, and on the other side of the dunes we can hear crashing Atlantic waves. 

We leave Cape Lookout the next morning at 4 am for a 32 hour passage to Charleston.  The seas are lumpy with waves and wind from different directions.  Only in the last five hours does the wind tighten up, and we have a glorious sail into Charleston Harbor with speeds exceeding 9 knots. Of course we get a bit of help from the fast flowing currents. We anchor in Charleston across from the Mega-dock where all the large yachts tie up.  

With the mega-yachts docked in the background, local fishermen work their crab pots next to the anchorage.

Over the intervening days it becomes quite a show.  Meanwhile, we enjoy all that Charleston has to offer – bicycling the historic old town,

One of many charming houses in the Charleston Old Town

And for Burt, biking over the Ravenel Bridge - too steep for my liking.

attending an extravagant farmers’ market, and meeting up with friends and fellow cruisers for happy hours and dinners. Charleston is a great destination for foodies! One day we take the water taxi from the downtown to Patriots’ Point and ride a bike trail about ten miles out to Sullivan’s Island, a beach community on the ocean.  We stroll the wide beach 

Looking south along the wide beach at Sullivan's Island

and have lunch at Poe’s, a restaurant themed on Edgar Allen Poe who was stationed at a barracks on Sullivan’s Island.  The ride back more than works off lunch.

Finally a weather opportunity opens for us to head further south.  We reposition the boat near Fort Sumter and depart the next morning at 2 am. The current is with us, but we are dodging lots of commercial traffic on the way out.  800 foot ships seem even bigger in the dark of night.  We motor sail along the coast until the wind picks up, giving us a spritely sail into Hilton Head Island come early afternoon.  We have never stopped at Hilton Head before and have reservations for a dock at Sea Pines Plantation. 

Exuberant tied up at Harbortown Marina

With the boat tied up, we unload the bikes and begin exploring the 85 miles of paved bike trails that wind across the island. Within Sea Pines, the trails are paved, skirt several golf courses, and weave through live oak forests dripping with Spanish moss.   

Warning - alligators along the way!

And, yes, we see them sunning themselves along the way.  This one is about three feet long  - not too intimidating.

Although it is quite hot and humid, the shaded trails are delightful. We stop by a beach to watch the waves roll in. 

Scenes along the Hilton Head beach

Another day, we leave Sea Pines and explore other parts of the island.  The trails access commercial areas and pass by gated communities.  We arrive back at the boat sore and exhausted after the 35 mile excursion.  That night we meet up with friends from Mansfield who have retired to Hilton Head. After a drink on the boat, we head out to a local restaurant.  It is interesting to hear about their new life and new home.

Again, the weather allows us another opportunity to continue on.  We leave with St. Augustine as our destination, a 26 hour passage.  We mostly motor sail but get in several hours of excellent sailing with the noisy engine off.  During the night, we observe an impressive lightening show inland and are happy to see that it does not move out into the open water. The channel into St. Augustine has issues with shoaling, but with decent light, we are able to pick up the navigation marks and easily head into the mooring field right off the old city.  St. Augustine is always a fun stop.  We join in a night out sponsored by the local cruisers at an excellent restaurant and meet up with different cruising friends other evenings.  Our musical friends on Salty Paws record a live CD outside a local gallery during the First Friday Art Walk – we serve as the applauding audience in the background. We ride our bikes through the old town area – St. Augustine is the oldest city in the United States – and admire the Spanish influenced architecture. 

An interesting gate along a side street

The Bell Tower at Flagler College

One Saturday we bike out to Anastasia Island State Park to walk the beach.  Nearby is a Farmers’ Market where we stop to browse and pick up a cold beverage - it is another hot and humid day. And, with the assistance of the free bus service for transient cruisers, we can easily reprovision.

From St. Augustine we will continue down the ICW as it parallels the coast and is well maintained.  After an overnight anchorage south of New Smyrna where we are eaten alive by no-see-ums, we head to Cocoa and anchor off a park with dinghy docks.  Cocoa is trying to encourage cruisers to stop by, and we would highly recommend it.  Burt enjoys an amazing, old hardware store while I indulge in the nicest knitting store on the east coast.  There are plenty of restaurants for gathering with friends, and just strolling through the streets and alleys of the renovated old town is enjoyable.

After several days in Cocoa, we head a bit further south to Eau Galle/Melbourne where the Seven Seas Cruising Association is hosting a Gam.  The anchorage fills up with around 50 boats while many others arrive by car.  We have three days of socializing both at the Gam and also at Squid Lips, a waterfront restaurant/bar nearby.  During the day well know speakers present seminars ranging from world-wide cruising destinations to technical information. A sub-theme this year is cruising Cuba.  While foreigners have always been able to cruise Cuba, the opportunities for Americans to head there are only beginning to open up.  After listening to the legal ramifications, it will still be a few more years until we will be willing to go there.

From Eau Galle, it is a half day further to Vero Beach.  With winds out of the Northeast, much of our trip down the ICW has been sailing, and this portion is no exception.  When we arrive in Vero, we find the mooring field is crowded so we raft up with friends on Anania. 

Our mooring is next to a mangrove islet which is guarded by the resident Blue Heron  which make a major commotion if any of the neighboring pelican intrude on its territory.

Now, Anania has a cat named Dorie, and Dorie REALLY likes Burt.  She immediately jumps on to our boat and for the entire duration tries to make Exuberant her home.  It is lots of fun for us to have a pet on loan, but eventually Anania leaves with Dorie restrained on board and friends on Magnolia pull up alongside. You are never lonely in Vero.  It is Thanksgiving time and the marina and the local CLODS (Cruisers Living on Dirt) host a wonderful Thanksgiving dinner for over 200 people at a nearby park.  The locals provide the meat while the cruisers provide all the side dishes.  We gorge ourselves on all the food and then relax to a jam session provided by Salty Paws and other cruising musicians as the sun sets behind the rustling palm trees. 

We are busy in Vero.  We are concerned that our batteries are aging, so we order new house batteries to be delivered to the marina.  Getting the new batteries on to the boat, changing them out, and returning the old batteries to a recycling center proves to be a complicated undertaking. Also, this is our last opportunity to access big box stores.  We rent a car for a weekend to deal with the batteries and also do significant provisioning that will take us through to next spring. All goes well, and we end up with Sunday afternoon free.  With ready transportation, we head down to McKee Botanical Gardens, just south of Vero.  Originally the property was a tropical game animal theme park, but with the advent of Disney World, it fell into disrepair. In the 1990’s funds were collected to refurbish an 80 acre portion of the property and open a tropical botanical garden. There are few other visitors as rain is threatening, so we virtually have the place to ourselves.  Paths wander through jungle like growth, skirting streams and ponds.  

The density of vegetation is sometime overwhelming.

In one area there is a huge stand of Royal Palm trees planted in rows and towering over our heads.  

The Royal Palm Colonnade

The gardens are famous for their orchids 

and waterlilies, 

Beautiful waterlilies - this one even has a snake swimming through the maze.

and we marvel at the variety present. They also feature some non-indigenous tropical plants that boarder on the bizarre.

We call this the Pink Fuzzy Plant - botanists probably wouldn't agree with our terminology.

This unique plant from Africa entices flies to enter its throat to help with pollination. Upon completion, the flies are released.

While in Vero, we are experiencing some very strong north to northeast winds, some up to gale strength. While we are protected in the lagoon mooring field, bike rides to the ocean beach show us mammoth waves and considerable beach erosion.  No one is going anywhere until this settles down.  Many people here are awaiting weather to make the passage to the Abacos in the northern Bahamas, but we simply want to head further south to the Keys.  We have a friend in Marathon who is keeping tabs on the availability of mooring balls there, and the news is not hopeful.  Most are full of boats intending to stay the whole winter.  We are feeling the pressure and when the first possibility to head offshore arrives we opt to go directly from Vero to Marathon.  We head ten miles down the ICW to Fort Pierce (otherwise known as Port Fierce due to the nasty standing waves at the inlet entrance) where we slip through the inlet into the ocean.  The Gulf Stream is running strong and quite close to the shore so we fight current almost the entire way.  We arrive offshore at Miami during the middle of the night and realize we will have to continue outside the reef until we have sufficient daylight to watch for the lobster pots that populate Hawk Channel.  It is a slow and bumpy ride in steep waves and winds up to 20 knots, only moderating once we cut into the channel near Key Largo. Even as we curve to the west, the wind remains at a constant angle of 60 degrees off our portside.  It should be a comfortable ride but we are beginning to think there is even current within the reef, something that is very unusual.  We arrive at Marathon late afternoon, 35 hours after leaving Vero, and find there are only three moorings left that will accommodate our length and draft.  We feel relieved as we tie up and turn off the hot and noisy engine.  And hot it is.  Temperatures are abnormally high and the humidity is closing in on 100%. Towering clouds over the Gulf Stream and flashes of lightning at night tell us we will be in for several “interesting” days before a cold front sweeps through and clears out the heat and humidity.  Meanwhile, torrential rains fill our dinghy, giving us the fresh water necessary for washing all the salt off the decks and hull.  We will stay in Marathon into January when we will begin to look for opportunities to cross over into the Bahamas.