Fish

I went for a walk today and found fish!

This is the time of season for the mackerel to be running and 500 feet away from where we are anchored is this small dock where the fishing boats deliver their catch. It’s nothing special to look at, just a small dock with Christmas lights.

As I got closer I saw fish being unloaded and huge hoppers of ice so, I walk over to see what was going on.


Then they started up a conveyor and fish went flying through the air, landing in large plastic tubs. Every once in a while, they would shovel another scoop of ice over the fish.


I asked the man where the fish were going and he told me that these fish were heading to New Jersey. He also told me that in the next few months they would be processing about ½ to 1 million pounds of fish through his little dock. An impressive operating for its size. It just goes to show that you never know what you might find during a walk on shore.

Velcro Beach

Velcro Beach is the nick name that people give to this place for once you get here you get stuck and you don’t want to leave. The real name is Vero Beach, Fl. It’s a nice place to stop and stay for awhile. Here's an aerial view of the anchorage. Were the whit dot near the center of the anchorage.

You can’t anchor in the anchorage it’s a bit small so, the city has put in moorings. This is great since you can drag your anchor in a storm but there isn’t enough moorings to accommodate everyone so you have to double or triple up on each mooring.

The distance to shore isn’t too far and there is a nice clubhouse, great showers, laundry, a park right next door for you dogs and a bus that takes you everywhere for free! (well, they do ask for donations). These are some friends of ours from Canada...hope that Anna doesn't see this picture.


All of the buses come together at the city parking lot and you find the next bus that you need to transfer to. A simple system that will take you all over the city for nothing but a donation.

The marina is about ½ mile from the ocean with a nice beach to walk on. The city of Vero Beach is a good sized town that has just about everything that you might need. Were provisioning here before we jump over to the Bahamas. There's about another 1/2 dozen boats that are also waiting to make the jump over to the Bahamas so, we just might be part of a flotila when the weather finally clears.

Small boats

We passed this old guy sailing down the Indian River.

As you can see it is a homemade outrigger style sail boat with a lateen sail. Now it was very light wind but he was doing about 2 kts.

He has everything that he needs from a small outboard, a homemade wind steering vane and a ladder right on his boat, (why he needed a ladder I have no idea). This boat really illustrates that you don’t need a big boat to go south in you just need a desire to go.

A day on the Indian River

Today was just an ideal day. We had a wind on the aft quarter so I got to fly 3 sails. The Main and the genoa poled out wing and wing and then I unrolled the staysail to catch the bit of wind that was being funneled between the two sails. All together about 950 square feet of sail was flying as we ran downwind from 5 to 6.5 kts all during a sunny but cool day. Great sailing!

On the way we passed the NASA assembly building. This is where NASA puts the space shuttle together. It looks small but it is a huge place, about 525 feet tall. This picture is from about 4 mile away!

Here's a better picture that I took from the top of the mast.

A coffee table

A boat is an ever evolving object. As you can see from this blog the Snow Goose isn’t ever going to be finished, there will always be just “one more thing” to do to her before she is completely done. This little project is something that I’ve been thinking about for the last 2 years. It’s a simple addition to the boat but working with nothing but hand tools while anchored out made it a bit of a challenge. When we are motoring along the “ditch” it’s nice to have a cup of tea now and then but the Goose has nowhere to put a cup down that is both level and within reach of the driver’s seat. I've taken to setting it on the panel but it's an invitation for disaster.

I decided to building a little swing up table for my cup of tea or a sandwich. I had some left over wood from a previous project so I cut off a small piece.

Then I took a bit of trim that was laying around and cut a rabbit joint in it (hard to do holding it in your hand and sawing while holding the wood over the side to keep the mess outside of the boat).
You can see the results.

Here’s the new table with its fiddle held in place. Now, all I have to do is buy some hinges and attach it. Not the best quality but it should work!

Long days on the intercoastal

The way south is either off shore or in the “ditch” as cruisers call it. Offshore is an option but it helps if you have a good weather window or be a “hairy chested seaman” which I’m not. When we got to the Atlantic Ocean at Morehead city, the winds were from the SW, right on the nose, so we opted to go down the ditch. Here’s the chart of Morehead to give you an idea of what we have to deal with.

There is both good and bad things about the ditch. It is very protected and does run pretty much in the right direction and there is plenty to see as you go by at your leisurely pace (6 MPH). The negative is bridges. Some open on the hour some on the half hour and you inevitably get there just as they are closing the bridge so you wait and wait. Here we had to wait more than 15 minutes so we have dropped an anchor and shut the engine off while we waited.

Another item is the tides. You folks up is the great Lakes are blessed with both fresh water and no tides! The tides can be a blessing or a curse. While sitting at anchor in front of a bridge we had 1 ½ knots of tide going in our favor. One mile later we passed the inlet to the ocean and on the other side of the inlet the tide was going 1 ½ knots against us. We went from 7+ over the ground down to 4+ over the ground. It was like slamming on the breaks. Sometimes, it can be so boring that you just can’t stand it but most of the time there is something interesting to see waiting just around the next bend such as a junk boat or a container ship!


Also there’s the multimillion dollar houses that line the waterway. Anna decided that this is the one that she is going to buy.

The area that we are in now is cut through cypress forest and swamps and is very beautiful.


The weather is going to stay against us until Friday then we might get a chance to go offshore and with a little luck we could skip the marshes of Georgia and jump right to Florida.

Mast rebuild 10

The last day. Up early to install the last little bits of stuff and the roller furlers to the mast. Then it was time to roll the mast out to the boat and pick it up with the crane.


We had a bit of a hard time getting it to line up properly and we had to stop to put a bit of vaseline in the hole but after a few tries it went in nice and straight (sounds kind of kinky) and then we had a mast again!


The rest of the day was spent getting the rigging hooked up and the mast tuned. We should be leaving for the coast tomorrow and it looks like we’ll sail down the coast for the next few days. Thanks for reading this I hope that you enjoyed it.