Thanksgiving Day in Vero dawns with blue skies, mild
temperatures, and a pleasant breeze.
This is the day we have been long anticipating. A record number of cruisers and some land
based retired cruisers gather at a first class park pavilion near the
marina. We come bearing an amazing array
of potluck dishes to accompany the many donated turkeys and hams – it is going
to be a memorable feast. We grab the last available table, joined by our
Australian friends, Claire and Andrew, another couple we met at the Annapolis
Gam in 2011 and see occasionally along the way, and a couple new to
cruising.
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| Site of our Thanksgiving dinner on the porch overlooking the water |
It proves to be an amicable
group as we enjoy the feast and chat about all our sailing experiences. After dinner we are entertained by musicians
on the deck and a raffle of items donated to the cruisers’ Thanksgiving by
local merchants. Claire and Andrew are
the big winners, with Andrew receiving a gift certificate for a local seafood
shop and Claire claiming a harmonica, complete with neck holder. Now, Claire has never played a harmonica and
perhaps never even seen one before. We
laugh to think of their fellow Australians’ reaction – so, American
Thanksgiving includes the distribution of harmonicas?!? But Claire is a diligent student and within a
day she has almost mastered When the
Saints Go Marching In.
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| The happy winners - cover your ears! |
At the conclusion of the day, I am “awarded” a
plaque emblazoned with “Regulation Basket Weaving” by retiring cruiser and
friend Sue Scheidt. For years Sue has
overseen the basketmaking group in Georgetown,
Exumas, and she is now passing on that responsibility to me. I have to question her judgment, though, as
all the baskets I made last year resembled modern art since none were the least
bit symmetrical. Woe be it to the poor souls I instruct this year, but I’ll
give it my best shot.
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| Sue, Prue, and the handover of the awesome responsibility |
With Thanksgiving over, everyone is busy preparing to leave
Vero. I beg our musician friends,
Bentley and Jim from Salty Paws, to play at one more happy hour at the marina
on Friday evening. Despite the last minute
arrangements, we have a huge turnout and people stay well beyond dark.
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| Bentley, Jim, and friends provide music for happy hour |
Tomorrow most will be heading further south,
and it will be a long time before a group of cruisers this size will congregate
again.
The next morning we grab Claire and Andrew and dinghy over
to our favorite breakfast place on the shore.
We have a leisurely meal, take a walk along the boardwalk, and bid them
farewell.
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| Claire and Andrew on their way to breakfast in their Australian flagged dinghy |
They will leave in the
afternoon, heading to the Bahamas and then Cuba as soon as possible as their
six month visa for the States is about to expire. After sailing with them off
and on during the summer and fall, it is likely we will not see them again as
their long range plans are to head across the Pacific to Australia. That is the downside to cruising – the friendships
can be wonderful and intense, but they often come to an abrupt end when boats
permanently head in different directions.
So, a day later we head down to Stuart, an easy 30 mile
motor on the ICW. After a night on a
mooring ball, we pull into a dock at a boatyard that Mack Sails uses for their rigging
customers. We are excited to get started,
but they are a bit short handed, and all that is accomplished before we leave
for Ohio is
measuring the rig. We hope to return to
find the new rigging installed, but what could we have been thinking?? We’re dealing with the marine industry, and
rule number one is to allow double the amount of time necessary to complete a
project. And, what else could we have
been thinking? Just like Murphy, if anything can go wrong, it will. Once we return to Stuart, all the rigging
goes up easily except for the forestay and furler. There is some galling between a cover and an
interior piece of metal. That portion of
the furler is taken to a machine shop and repaired. When it comes time to
reassemble the furler, it doesn’t go together properly. Of course it is Friday evening and nothing
more will be done until Monday morning.
We move from the expensive dock and anchor about a mile away.
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| Rainbow while at anchor in Stuart - did I mention it rains at least a little everyday here? |
Monday we return to the dock to find out if
we had requested a monthly rate, it would have been much cheaper. They take pity on us and refund us a goodly
sum, and now we can stay at the dock for the rest of the month – fine if your
plan is to be in Stuart for a month. Somehow Monday the gods are smiling on us
and the furler miraculously goes together.
Loose ends are completed and the job with Mack Sails is done and is quite
satisfactory.
But, we’re not done. Do
refer back to rules number one and two. Burt orders a piece of bent stainless
to support the solar panels from another source. It takes over a week for someone to come out
to the boat to take measurements. Once
that is complete we wait several more days for the material to arrive, a few
more days for someone to get around to bending it, and an extra day before
delivery as the owner (who, incidentally, had worked for many years with Micky
Rupp of Mansfield renown) has decided to go duck hunting. When it finally arrives it is three inches
too short, so it goes back to the shop for welding and several days later it
show up and is installed. Now that we
have a place to put the solar panels, we are ready to order them from a source
in Fort Lauderdale. It will take a day for them to ship to Stuart,
we are told. Friday we anxiously wait the arrival of the panels but nothing
shows up, and late in the day we give them a call to find out that their
computer crashed and all the orders were lost.
Back to square one, and with a weekend intervening, it will take four
more days to get the panels.
Negotiating the monthly dockage plan now seems like a good
idea as we will be in Stuart for almost a month. Now, Stuart is not a bad
place. We are at a nice dock with water
and power, although it is a boatyard right next to a very active, noisy
railroad line. There are no other amenities at the yard, and it is a bit lonely
here as virtually all the other boats are uninhabited. We can bike just about everywhere, including
a huge mall area with all the standard stores, an excellent grocery store, a
laundromat that is a bit far, and all the attractive shops and restaurants in
the restored downtown portion of Stuart.
We long to get back underway, though, and look forward to spending
Christmas in Miami
if all goes well. We are decked out with solar powered LED lights around the
cockpit and a small artificial Christmas tree (with LED lights, also, as power
conservation on a sail boat is a big consideration) below decks. But, it just
won’t seem like Christmas until we can rejoin our friends in the cruising
community. Thus, we have ground to a halt.
