Vero Beach to Beaufort, SC

We spent a week in Vero Beach reintegrating into the American way of life.  Vero Beach is very convenient for this as we could take the public bus to the shopping centers. The amount of people combined with traffic and the sheer volume of stuff in the stores is overwhelming after a winter in the Bahamas.  Remembering which side of the street to walk on and which way to look before crossing the street requires effort.

We walked to an antique car show in the park under the live oaks one day.  In case my mother is looking for a new car Bill thinks she and Bailey would look cute driving around in this one:

We left Vero Beach on a Friday and headed for Cocoa for the night.  Saturday we left Cocoa a little before sunrise and spent a day on the ICW in Florida on a sunny weekend day.  The boat traffic was incredible; every possible kind of boat was on the water, most of them travelling at a high rate of speed.  The wakes were constant from every direction.  When this happens the turbulence in the water confuses our depthsounder so in most of the narrow shallow places we had no idea how much water we had under us. A bright part of the day was going through the Haulover Canal just above Titusville which is a surpisingly pretty canal with a very friendly bridge tender.  As we were going through the canal we saw a manatee.  The water here is very murky and the manatees like to swim very slowly just under the surface where they are virtually invisible.  It is a miracle that any of them survive.

We spent the night anchored in Daytona Beach.  Sunday we had another high traffic day on the way to St. Augustine although not all the boats were fast and noisy.

We decided to skip the ICW from St. Augustine to Fernandina because both towns are next to inlets that are easy in settled weather.  We left around sunrise and motorsailed most of the day in light winds until the afternoon when we had plenty of wind.  We sailed through the inlet under a reefed jib in 20 -25 knots of wind with 4 - 5 foot following seas.   Corning and Tita from BLESSED SPIRIT had arrived well before us and kindly reserved a mooring for us which happend to be next to CONSORT.  The next morning we woke up to a crashing thunderstorm.  The winds gusted over 50 mph and the rain brought the visibility to  near zero.  We were very happy to be on a big mooring!  We ended up spending the day on the boat relaxing then spent the evening visiting with Russ and Pat on CONSORT.

Wednesday we spent the morning walking about 3 miles to the Winn Dixie to stock up on groceries (we took a cab back to the marina). In the afternoon we went to Cumberland Island and walked around enjoying the beauty of the island and watching the wild horses.

Thursay and Friday were traveling days where we got up before sunrise and were underway for over 10 hours per day migrating north.  Georgia is very beautiful, but tricky to navigate particularly at low tide.  We ended up going through the Little Mud River two hours before low tide with 1 - 2 feet of water under the boat in many places.  This is somewhat nerve wracking, especially after the alligator slithered off the bank into the water as we were going by.

Saturday was a short day as we left St. Augustine Creek (about a mile south of the Savannah River) at 6:50 in the morning and reached Beaufort, SC at 1:00.  We went for a short walk ashore then went back to the boat because it was 90 degrees and humid.  Sunday morning we had a nice leisurely stroll through the peaceful streets with beautiful buildings surrounded by life oaks and palm trees.  We found a little park to rest in with a fountain where we could watch the cardinals, blue birds, and purple finches.