Skip to main content

Jensen to Palm Bay



Yesterday we motored the 15 miles north to Ft. Pierce to say goodbye to our good friends Arthur,Kelley, Aiden, and Sachi. Besides being great company, they helped us out in so many ways while making our preparations on the way down. So, for the second time in a few weeks, we said goodbye and spent the night anchored near the entrance to Faber Cove. N 27 27.308 W 80 18.551 Last night we were the A-holes anchored in the middle of the channel. Not intentionally, we had dropped the hook out of the channel between two boats on moorings. Because the water was about 20' deep we put out a lot of chain, and with east winds predicted and east/west current we should have been fine. Oddly, when the west setting current flowed against the east wind it made us pull all our chain in a straight line to the North, as well as spinning 360's in both directions, putting us right in the channel we had tried to avoid. Oh well, there was still plenty of room for the small boats that were buzzing by and we set out our full array of lights. Sleep was ok until about 3:30 AM when the wind started kicking up to 15-20 against the tide. We got up early and were underway by 6:15 at first light.

The engine seems to be doing fine now. Still a little nervous about it, and I was doing hourly engine room and coolant(visual) checks today, but all seems well so we're confident to keep pushing on. We saw a couple of boats that we knew today, one was Lo Que Se A which I helped build at Mirage, and the other was Sea Trek which I immediately recognized from having read Chuck & Susan's blog. We made 45 more miles today to the southern end of the Melbourne area, just south of Palm Bay where these consistent East winds that we're having allow us to anchor out in the wide open by ourselves, yet still protected from the seas. I don't think there is another boat anchored within several miles of us.

The next stretch of ICW through Melbourne is nice and wide, so we're looking forward to finally being able to sail some of this and give the engine a break. And for those who know us well, we're going to take pictures to prove it!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Adventure always continues...

This is the Blog of the Sailing Vessel Felix. Felix has been sold, so I probably won't update the blog much more, just leave it here for posterity and start another one. This blog was primarily the record of our trip from North Lake Worth, Florida up to the Chesapeake Bay and our summer there before moving back to Florida. Because Blogger won't let me rearrange the posts into chronological order, it has to be this 'latest post first' format, here is the link to the beginning of the journey . You'll just have to select the posts by month and read in reverse order. I hope you enjoy, and I'll post up the new blog here whenever and wherever it begins. Thanks

I may be slow, but at least I'm honest

"My Karma ran over your dogma."- Anonymous This one goes in the "true, but hard to believe" file. We were at West Marine this morning picking up bottom paint and a few other items when we noticed a black pouch on the floor by the checkout counter. I picked it up and told the girl at the register "It looks like somebody dropped their pouch, if there's any money in there it's mine!" I flipped it open and there was a wad of $100's!!! About 150 of them!! No I.D, nothing else. My name's not Earl, but I know when Karma is testing me, and we gave the pouch over to the manager to put in the safe while we tried to track down who lost the pouch. The most likely customer was a German guy who had just bought a dinghy, but the store didn't have any contact info for him, just a vague idea that he was leaving soon on a boat he just bought, and he may be at a local marina. We drove over to the marina where they thought he may be, and sure enough two ...

Pine Island to Fernandina

Sunday was spent idling around the boat taking care of small projects, both of us moving a little slowly after a great time Saturday night with Fred and the acrobatic Rick from 'Freedom'. Pine Island has such a snug little anchorage it was a great place to hang out and avoid the Sunday boat traffic and we were able to scrape the waterline of 4 inch long grass and miniature barnacles that have accumulated already. Star made good on her promise of making my favorite dish after we crossed north of our starting point in St. Augustine. Lapin a la moutarde . For those like me who don't ' parlez vous ' very well, that's Rabbit in mustard sauce. Today we were underway at 7:15 heading north with a couple of stopping options available, but we were staying flexible and had no certain destination. We crossed the St. Johns River and transited the Sister's Creek area at low tide and were on a just barely rising tide for the notoriously shoaling Nassau Sound area. To say ...