Day 31

We spent the night anchored near Wabasso Florida.  The anchorage was calm and quiet and sleep was plentiful. Unfortunately I forgot to turn my alarm off, so, at 6:30 it went off.  Since we had only a short distance to go, I turned it off and went back to sleep.  I did eventually get up a little after 7:00 anyway.  Rousby cooked some sausage and fried apples for breakfast, good stuff.  Somewhere after 9:00 we eventually got around to picking up the hook and motoring toward Vero Beach.  We cruised at a stately 6.5 knots, not in any particular hurry.  The homes along that stretch of ICW are just spectacular. There were several that would qualify as mansions. As we were cruising there were lots of dolphins playing in the wake of the boat.  You could see them approach the boat and then dive through the wake off the bow and under the bow of the boat. They were in groups of 3 to 5 at a time.  Really neat to watch.  We also saw a woman filling up her watering jugs on her patio wearing a full blown parka, with the hood up and fur.  I was 62 degrees, and warmer in the sun!  We were in shorts and tee shirts.  As someone said the other day, "you're not from around here are you".

We finally arrived at the Vero Beach Municipal Marina and pulled up to the fuel dock where we took on 225 gallons of fuel, off loaded about 40 gallons of pooh, and filled up the fresh water tank. We paid the bill, got critical information like the Wi-Fi passwords, schedule and routes for the free buses, and codes for the bathrooms.  We then moseyed out to our assigned mooring ball #22, and tied off.  So far so good.  After we got settled it was time to put the dinghy in the water.  That too came off without a hitch.  When we were pulling away from the fuel dock and heading to the mooring ball, a woman on another boat tied up there yelled “Hey, I’m from Chestertown” after seeing the hailing port on our stern.  After we got the dinghy in the water we motored over and said hello.  Turns out the woman went to school with Rousby’s sister, knew his other sister, and Rousby knew her father.  Sometimes it is a small world, and Chestertown isn’t that big that there are that many people from there, so, again, it is a small world sometimes.

After our visit we motored over to the dinghy dock, tied up, and waited for the free bus.  We took the bus into the old town and business district of Vero Beach and walked around a bit.  Boy, there sure are a lot of banks here in Vero, must mean there is a lot of money here too. Vero is a very pretty town with lots of motels and hotels tucked away along the main road along the beach.  Also, plenty of eateries.  You won’t go hungry here, and there must be five or six womens shops, spas, you name it on every block. Not hard to see who spends the money. The men just have big toys. LOL!!

As we were walking along I checked my phone and realized I had text messages and e-mail messages from my credit card company.  Turns out someone somewhere had cloned my card and withdrew $800 on my cash advance.  They flagged it as fraud and wanted to know if I had done the transaction. I spent the next half hour on the phone with the card company going through the drill to cancel my card and file a fraud report. I am very glad they are on their toes and caught this right away. Good job Capital One.  They wanted to send me a new card and asked me where they could send it.  Unless you have carrier pigeon service, I’m not sure what to tell you.  I have friends in Ft. Myers which is where we are headed, so I called Craig and told him the story.  He said send it here and pick it up when you get here.  So I called the card company back, gave them the address and hopefully in a few day I’ll be back in business.

Tomorrow we are going to try to tour the Piper Aircraft factory here in Vero, which should be interesting, if you are interested in planes.  I am, so looking forward to that.

Today we motored a respectable 8.9 miles for a total of approximately 1192 miles.  That long distance trek to about 2 hrs., including the stop at the fuel dock.  Long day! Ha!

So, Until tomorrow…..

How about a little beach porn for those of you wanting it to be summer