And So The Journey Begins

We woke to a beautiful morning on our own. No alarms,for we wanted to ease into to day with no time schedules. Our first day was to be a short one as we had planned on only travelling about 20 miles today. No need to rush into things. Coffee was brewed and we walked the docks telling the friends we had not seen the night before good bye. At 9:30 we fired up the engine and slowly untied the lines that bound us to our docks for far too long. Dick came down to untie our final lines and give us our final push off. So long Harbortown Marina. We enjoy it here but its time to go. We have made so many wonderful friends here, some of which we consider family. Its always hard to say good bye but such is life when you cruise. You know though that somehow, someway you will run into each other again. Into the barge canal, through the bridge and turning south onto the ICW, Dirk hoisted the sails. Soon we shut the engine down and sailed along at a decent clip. What a decent way to start a new journey. We anchored just north of Melbourne Beach and celebrated the beginning of our journey with a shot of Sambuca. I made us a quick gumbo for dinner and by 6:30 we were climbing into bed to watch some TV before quickly falling off to sleep. Both of us woke up at 1:45 am and thought it was morning. Back to sleep and up for coffee before we joined 7 other sailboats heading south.

Winds were out of the east and we sailed along for just a short time before the winds shifted to the south east and basically came off the nose. Soon the rains and the squalls came making for a gray, non eventful day. We arrived in Vero Beach and managed to score one of the last moorings that was un occupied. This time of year they raft them 3 deep to a mooring but we lucked out. Not sure for how long but thats okay, just as long as we dont get a yappy dog nextdoor. We poked around the mooring field and found the boat Motu, we knew from the last time we were in the Bahamas. we stopped and chatted with them a bit before heading back to make dinner and relax. We will hang out here for a few days to let the weather patterns change a bit before heading down to West Palm Beach where we will stage for our crossing to the Abacos.