Further Adventures Of SV Nutmeg

 1/29- North Palm Beach    What a fun day! Our friends Joe and Nancy took us snorkeling down at Peanut Island. They picked us up at our boat and drove us down there. It was a bit chilly this morning but the water was 75 degrees and crystal clear. It was like swimming in your tropical fish tank. There were fish of all colors of the rainbow. We did see some rays swimming by before we got in the water and Joe saw a large barracuda swimming around. There were big schools of fish just swimming around you.    After lunch we tooled around in their boat heading out the inlet into the ocean. This area used to be a fresh water lake until they cut a couple of inlets. This was mostly done to let some of the pollution out. Anyway the water is beautiful now and we skipped over some gorgeous deep blue water. We even saw some flying fish hopping ahead of whatever was chasing them.     We went over to their condo for showers and dinner. It’s always good to have fr...

 1/29- Jensen Beach to North Palm Beach (Lake Worth)    We took off in the morning after a nice stay in Jensen Beach into a fairly brisk breeze. Thankfully it was a north wind and while it was chilly (50 degrees) it was behind us. Again the color changes of the water is amazing. As we went by the Port Lucie inlet the water turned emerald green before gradually turning turquoise. The farther away we got from the inlet the greener and then browner the water got. Once we hit the Jupiter inlet same thing, we pushed through some of the most beautifully colored water.     Speaking of Jupiter inlet we had a bit of trouble there this afternoon. We made a turn after the Route 707 bridge expecting to find the Jupiter Federal bridge as it appeared on our chart plotter. Lo and behold it had been torn down and there was construction work on building a new bridge. The Bob423 track we had been following would have taken us right into a barge. We figured it out but it was ...

 1/28-  Jensen Beach    Yesterday turned out to be quite the day. When we got up it was very calm and the water was flat so we decided to head in and do some chores. We walked into the town and into an arts and crafts fair. This is a cute little town though the traffic just never seems to stop. The sirens and loud mufflers are sounds that never seem to stop. Anyway after checking out the craft fair and the grocery store we headed back to the boat only to discover that the wind had piped up. It had piped up enough that it had swamped the dinghy on the beach. I managed to drag it up enough to get it out of the waves and let it drain a bit but there was no going back to the boat now. In a level of foresight I didn’t know I possessed we had brought laundry. At least that would give us something to do while I watched our boat juke and jive around on the mooring. It was still blowing hard after the laundry was done so we went back to town to have lunch. Finally it looked l...

 1/26- Vero Beach to Jensen Beach(Port St Luchie)     Well the no see ums finally drove us out of Vero Beach. The wind had died at night and by morning the little buggers were everywhere. After itching and scratching for 20 minutes we said the heck with it and untied our lines and took off. We headed down the Indian River which is a big wide shallow river. I did see a bunch of Portuguese Man-o-Wars. These jelly fish had blown up a bladder and it looked just like a sail.     It was interesting once we got to Fort Pierce that the water color changed dramatically. It went from a muddy brown to a beautiful turquoise. It was actually like someone had drawn a line in the water it was that abrupt. This water changed to a deeper blue heading down the river eventually changing to green and then to a muddy green.     We tied up to a mooring at Jensen Beach. This is a mooring field that is totally unprotected from the south which of course was the wind ...

 1/24-Vero Beach    We’ve had a couple of busy days. Yesterday we met up with our friend Deb who had rented a car and went to the McKee Botanical Gardens. Talk about amazing plants! This place was great. There were all kinds of exotic plants. This was an old tourist trap that has since been modernized and taken over by a botanical group. What was once a 80 acre park with monkeys and animals is now a well groomed 18 acre place where they can do research on plants. The best thing though was the world’s largest board. This is a piece of old growth mahogany that is 35’ long 5’ wide and 5” thick.     Today we went in and played pickleball. A guy here has a portable net and in the parking lot next door they have a court marked out. We had about 6 people interested in playing so we set it up and had some fun. This was our first time playing pickleball. I had thought it was a game that geezers could play without getting too worked up. I was wrong. Some of these fol...

 1/21- Vero Beach    Not much exciting going on here as we are waiting for some decent weather. Yesterday we did exciting things like laundry. I did get down to the farmers market to pick up some fresh vegetables. We went over to the Riverside Cafe for happy hour and dinner and then walked over to the free concert at the theater. There is free music every Friday and Saturday nights. This was not well attended as it was pretty cold by Florida standards but it was a good show.      Watching on the TV at the bar they had a weather alert warning people that with the wind chill it would be dangerously cold and there was a threat of hypothermia and death. It seemed a bit over done considering it was 50 degrees and they were playing football in -30 (with wind chill) up in Buffalo. We saw lots of winter clothes this morning. Apparently this is due to an El Niño forming off Peru and causing moisture to stream across the Gulf and southern Florida.     ...

 1/19- Vero Beach     I took the bus to look for a hardware store and all I could find was a Tractor Supply. There are so many stores within 5 miles of here except no hardware stores. The bus system here is great and it is all free. You just have to learn the ins and outs and where everything is. Tractor Supply didn’t quite cut it and I am still collecting parts for the next boat project.     In the afternoon we headed over to the weekly pot luck meet and greet. It was nice and we met a bunch more people. It seems we are an outlier as most of these couples have sold all their land possessions and live full time on their boats. I never realized the sheer number of the people doing this. Anyway we had a great time and we made plans for the next morning with one couple.      The plans for this morning called for taking the bus over to a local blood draw clinic and donating blood. Alayne has become a regular donor and I give blood when the m...

 1/17- Vero Beach     We didn’t do much yesterday as it rained most of the day. So we hung out on the boat and did boat things.     Today was a bit brighter although it was very windy all day and much cooler. We saw lots of ski jackets and parkas out today. We did walk over to the Vero Beach Art museum as they were between exhibits so admission was free which is my middle name. It’s a good thing as they only had a couple of galleries open. We did walk into town for lunch and watched people kite surfing on the beach. It’s interesting that this is what they call their busy season and there may have been 3 people on the beach.     We may be stuck here for a while. The forecast calls for some strong winds for next week and they will come from just about every direction. The next several stops are fairly exposed anchorages so we figure to stay here until the weather starts to behave. It’s cheap, there’s lots to do, and it’s a nice community. ...

 1/13- Vero Beach  It may be hard to leave here ! We met up with an old childhood friend of Alayne’s today. They hadn’t seen each other in almost 50 years. They took us around town and to the beach. They had a good time reminiscing about Saranac Lake and catching each other up on what’s been happening in their lives.     We went to a free concert tonight by a Pink Floyd tribute band. It was interesting in that you sat at tables and waiters served you food and beer outdoors. Also I’m pretty sure there was no one under sixty there.     There is still a lot of things I’d like to do while we are here and the weather is going to be crappy until at least Wednesday. So we will probably just hang out until then. The guy in the boat we are tied to has left and won’t be back for a while so we have no neighbor. We’ll see what happens when we get up tomorrow. 

 1/12- Melbourne to Vero Beach     It took a while to get the anchor up this morning as it was covered in mud and shells. We had spun around in the night and the chain just dragged through the mud. It took nearly a half hour to get it all cleaned up.      The first part of the trip was the same. The Indian River is big and wide and very shallow. The wind was right on our nose and it kept threatening to rain. Further down it got a little more interesting as there were little islands that we went around. Also there was fog. It was the first time I had turned on the radar since Maine. It didn’t last long and soon we were in a channel of mangroves and mansions. One side of the channel was mangroves and the other monster mansions.    We finally turned the corner into Vero Beach and pulled up to the fuel dock. You have to pay first here and they tell you where to pick up your mooring. We would be rafting up to another boat. Again we were placed in ...

 1/11- Titusville to Melbourne  I have to go back a couple of days here as we were plenty busy with Saryn here. After the Merritt Island excursion we drove down to Cocoa Beach. We walked around the cute downtown for a while and visited Travis Hardware. This is a hardware store that has been in continuous operation since the 1800’s. It’s a truly unique experience. They have alcoves after alcoves just filled with stuff. I’d wager they have stuff they don’t even know they have.      The next morning we were up early as we had tickets to the Kennedy Space Center. This was another amazing place. We saw the original Atlantis shuttle, a full sized Saturn Rocket and much more. We spent all day there until they kicked us out. It had been very windy all day and as we arrived back at the marina our phones blew up with tornado warnings. The wind howled through the marina and it was raining so we decided to hang out in the boaters lounge. It was music night in the lounge an...

 1/7- Titusville     We had a very busy day today. We headed over to the Merritt Island wildlife refuge. We walked a ways down the beach talking to some of the fishermen. I must be a jinx because everywhere I go I ask the people fishing what they are catching and the answer is universally nothing. Nobody seemed to be catching anything today either. We drove down to the end of the road driving past high sand dunes with no vegetation. This was a narrow stretch of beach between the ocean and Mosquito Lagoon.  Nobody was catching anything here either although one guy told me he catches sharks and then tags them and releases them.     From there we drove down to the Haulout Canal. This is a narrow canal connecting Mosquito Lagoon with the Indian River. They have a manatee viewing station here and we did see a couple of manatees hanging out. For some reason no one can explain they seem to like hanging out at this spot. We had sailed through here several...

 1/6- Titusville    As I was leaving the shower last night a woman burst through the door and pushed me up against the wall. Be quiet she said and go into the toilet stall there and sit down. I was like, what!!?? Just do it now and she shoved me that way. Ok I guess, so I did that. She meanwhile crouched down and crawled over and got in the stall with me. Ok this is getting weird now I thought.     I thought she was a black woman at first but up close I could see that she had camo all over her face. What’s going on I asked. She said she thought someone was following her. She said she was a federal agent and that there was someone at the marina that was trying to sabotage a rocket launch. By now I am incredulous. Ha ha was all I could think to say but then she pulled out her ID and it did say something about a federal agent.     So what do you want with me I asked. She said she thought that someone in one of the boats had some sort of devise t...

 1/4- Titusville    We woke this morning to rain but it ended fairly quickly. Then the wind picked up. It went from flat calm to blowing 20 and also switched directions. It is now blowing from the north which is causing the anchorage to be quite lumpy. I noticed several boats that were anchored leaving already as they probably weren’t going to get any sleep. We were scheduled to move into a slip in the marina but it would be dicey trying it. The marina had told us yesterday to come in around 11:00 but the forecast was for wind to increase all day. Well around 9:00 the wind let up a bit and as I was debating calling the marina they called me and said to come in now while there was a break. That’s some nice customer service there. We moved in uneventfully and tied up in a slip. These are fixed docks as there is no tide here. Fixed docks always take more time to tie up to and as now the wind was blowing it made settling the boat more time tedious.     Anyway we are...

 1/3 - Titusville     We went into town for a bit today and to see where we will be staying at the marina. There was not a lot to see right here. This town is not quite as fancy as the last couple we’ve been at. More our style I think.     We were having a debate with the boat next door. Alayne said she saw a couple of pink birds yesterday and the woman next door said she saw flamingoes in the same area. So the debate is whether they are flamingoes or roseate spoonbills. I guess we’ll have to see some more to figure it out.     There was another rocket launch tonight as they sent up a Starlink satellite. We have a really good view from here as the launch pad is not that far away. This was a relatively small rocket but it was still impressive. The whole sky lit up like it was sunrise and then you could follow it up through the clouds. The clouds were lit up and stayed lit up after the rocket was well past. The rumbling sound came much lat...

 1/2 -Daytona Beach to Titusville     Leaving the dock was easy peasy this morning thanks to the spin we put on the boat yesterday. The only issue we had was we were in 4 feet of water. It was low tide but thankfully there was two feet of muck that we just powered through.      This is the land of mangroves and we have started to see a lot of them. These are called walking trees because their roots are exposed above the water and they look like they are walking. They are also very salt tolerant. A lot of the islands we are going by now are covered with mangroves. That may be the reason that some of these islands still exist.      We had dolphins playing around with the boat again today. They seem to like to ride just under the cockpit and because of that they are bumping into the rudder. I don’t know why they do this unless it has something to do with the prop. Someone told me that the boat riled up the nutrients in the water and that br...

 1/1 Daytona Beach Today was a gorgeous day. This is the kind of weather we have been waiting for. It was in the 70’s with partly cloudy skies and the sun was warm. Even into the evening it’s still nice out.       The slip we had been assigned is the first one on the dock so there is no boat to one side of us. Instead there is a concrete pavilion of sorts. Anyway the locals here called this the slip from hell. I did like the fact that everyone on the dock has to walk by you and we met a lot of nice folks that way but trying to get out of here is a nightmare. So after talking with the guys on the dock we decided to just spin the boat around by hand. This involves using longer lines and just pulling. We dinghied one line over to the other dock on the far side. This line we attached to the bow and we had another line on the stern. We pushed the boat out and one guy pulled it out of the slip while I kept it from wandering. Once out of the slip we both pulled which t...