Trip back to Beaufort

I decided to start a new post for our trip home.  It seems when a post get too large it takes a long time to transfer pictures.

On Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, January 13, 14, 15 we are at Legacy Harbour Marina in Fort Myers for the 2015 Golden Looper Reunion.  It was great to see so many Loopers we have meet since 2007 when we started our Loop trip.

Friday we moved back to Fort Myers Beach to be part of the Wannabe Looper Boat Crawl at the end of day following an AGLCA presentation to those thinking about doing the Great Loop.  We were one of three boats, all a little different, to show these attendees what kind of boats have done the Loop.

On Saturday we moved over to Cape Coral and are at the Marina at Cape Harbour for the next four to five days.  On the way we found a sand bar in lower Pine Island Sound to get into some shallow water where I could clean up the bottom of the boat.  It's easy to stand on the bottom and clean the bottom.  On Wednesday we took 9 guests out to Cabbage Key for lunch. 

It was a gorgeous day and things at Cabbage Key were busy.    

The dock master did a great job getting the boats in and out, and found a perfect spot to dock ODYSSEE. 

On the way back to Cape Coral, our guests were hanging over the bow.  Was lunch that bad!


No, we had dolphins in the bow wake, lots of them!

It's Friday night, January 23, the bikes are loaded, the kayaks are loaded, and we will shove off in the morning and get a ways up the Okeechobee Waterway, with a weather window to cross Lake Okeechobee on Sunday afternoon. 

We had made arrangements to stop at River Bend, a high end RV resort in LaBelle that has a model railroad layout on the ground with 1200 feet of track and several trains that runs on Saturday. See video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dCauErsj-sc.  Well the wind was blowing up the river at 25-30, and their docks were short, so docking was going to difficult.  After looking the situation over we decided it wasn't worth the docking risk, so we continued up the river to the city dock on the wall at Moore Haven.

Sunday morning we cast off from the dock at 8:50, went through the Moore Haven Lock and turned south along the rim route towards Clewiston.  We saw lots of birds along the rim route.   At about 11:00 we turned east at Clewiston and went out onto the open Lake in predicted "light chop going to smooth" Lake conditions.  Well, I guess "light  chop" must be 1-2' waves with white caps and "smooth" must be 1' waves, that's what we ran in. 

Out on the lake gulls flew over our wake, apparently our prop wash kicks up small fish which makes fishing easy for the gulls.  We got to the St. Lucie Lock at about 5:00 and decided to spend the night above the lock and lock through in the morning.  Here is the sunset looking back up the river.

Monday, January 26 was cool with a drizzle coming down.  We pulled the anchor at 8:30 and went through the lock with another boat.  Our intention was go back into Frazer Creek and tie up to the wall like we did on out trip down.  No problem getting into the little creek, but it was low tide of negative 0.1', and we couldn't get the boat into the wall, it was too shallow.  We must have just barely been floating when we were here last!  O well, we proceeded eastwardly towards the ICW, turned south, and went down to Peck Lake and an anchorage that gave us access to the Atlantic beach.  Hobe Sound park is a National Wildlife Refuge.









Once on the beach the birds marched in formation for us!

     

 Day is done, another nice sunset. 

Tuesday we motored north to Vero Beach, 42 miles.  We spent Wednesday and will leave for parts further north Thursday morning.  Spent Thursday afternoon/night at our favorite anchorages berthing a dredging spoil island at MM946.  When we in there were two older 58' Hatteras's rafted up.  We went for a kayak paddle and stopped to have an "old Hat" meeting with the other boats.  In late afternoon a Canadian sail boat came in to join us, so it wasn't an exclusive Hatteras gathering for the rest of the night.

Friday we went further north to the free dock at Cocoa.  Made a stop at Travis Hardware, established in 1885, and still going strong.  If you can't get it a Travis Hardware, it doesn't exist!  I needed a small check valve for the master head toilet, and they had it, so I got two, now I have a spare.  This place does not have a computer, and when you come in a salesman takes you by the hand to find what you need.  The store occupies five building and half a city block, you'd never find what you need if you tried to find it your self!

Today is Saturday, we are moving over to Cocoa Beach and will be anchored in a bay near a launch ramp where we can dingy and walk to the beach.  Weather should be nice the next couple of days with highs in the low 70's.

To get into this area you go into Banana River, east of the ICW, either from the south, south of Cocoa or from the north through the Canaveral Barge Canal, just north of the Hwy 520 bridge that comes over from Cocoa.  The water looks a little skinny on the charts, about 6', but it's a muddy bottom, and we only draw 3.5', so as longs as we don't try to go too fast there was plenty of water, actually didn't see less than 7' except on the entrance channel into the anchorage where we saw 6' once.  There is no tide in this area, they have built a lock where the Canaveral Barge Canal enters Port Canaveral and the entrance to the Atlantic.  I expect this was done to hold the water level behind Cape Canaveral high enough to get large loads by barge to the VAB on the cape.  The Barge Canal and a Saturn Canal channel up to the VAB is charted at 8'.

WOW! What a delightful place we found in Cocoa Beach.  We stayed 3 nights!  We are now in New Smyrna Beach for 9 days, lots of people are going to see us here.

The anchorage was man made when they dredged the low areas to make some usable land, they dug this basin which is probably about one square mile and averages 20' deep.  Add to that the dredging they did to make the channel into this basin and the residentially canals, they ended up with a large peninsula of land on which they built a golf course, high school complex, a public works site with a sewage treatment plant, and a large city park with an acaqudic center, tennis complex with lights, and a kayak launch site.  A well planned community complex.  This anchorage was posted on active captain with only one review.  It will have a second rave review when I'm done posting this blog update.

The launch ramp we were able to access was part of another public park that was about three blocks from the ocean, and about a mile dingy ride up a well marked channel.  Along the channel they have established a conservation area to preserve the native plant life.

  The path that winds through the conservation area.












Butterflies














The Thousand Islands area is full of small mangrove islands, many with "tunnels" through them.  Most people kayak through them, we took our dingy.

  

 When we arrived at New Smyrna, our neighbors on SWEET SEASONS were already here.  They are south bound and we planned to meet somewhere as we crossed paths, and this became the place!

We've been in New Smyrna for over a week.  SWEET SEASONS left Friday morning.

Friday afternoon fellow Hatteras owners who live just north of Orlando came over for a late lunch and a chance to catch up.

Saturday, Canadian friends from Richibucto, New Brunswick joined us for lunch.  They spend the winters in an RV park in Port Orange.  We first met Jeanne and Alyre when we were on the Down East Loop in 2009.  If you've been following this blog you'll remember my post when we first met these fine folks.

Sunday was suppose to be a day to relax.  I decided to take a bike ride south along Riverside Dr.  I rode on the sidewalk most of the way, but when I got off the sidewalk and onto blacktop I noticed the bike was still thumping as it did on the sidewalk.  I discovered the rear tire had a bulge indicating the tire was about ready to blow.  I turned the bike back north in hopes that I could get back to the boat before it did.  I made it!  I called a bike shop and asked if they could fix it on Sunday and told them it was a 20" tire.  They said get it here and we'll take care of you.  I had a quick lunch, and while eating there was a loud "bang", we all thought somebody had shot off a gun.  Lunch done, I got the tools I needed to take the wheel off the bike, and when I got to the bike I found the rear tire had blown, aha, that's what the loud "bang" was.  With wheel off I headed out on Claria's bike to the shop, about 1.5 miles away.  When I got there they said they didn't have a 20" tire in stock, and therefore they couldn't get the tire fixed until Wednesday.  I stated that wouldn't work, I would go to Wal Mart and get a tire, and I asked where the local Wal Mart was.  About half a mile further out on Canal Street was the answer.  So off I went, well, the half mile was there miles.  Bought the only 20" tire they had and came back to the shop.  Their next excuse was it was now too late to get it done today, so it would be ready Monday afternoon and they would call when it was ready.  The weather was deteriorating on Monday and it was suppose to rain in the afternoon.  I called the shop at about 11:00, the tire was fixed and had been since about 9:00, but of course no body had called.  Took Claria's bike back to the shop and returned with the tire, put it back on my bike, and we headed out to Publix to get some groceries before the rain started.  Well, we didn't quite make it back to the boat before the rain started.

On Tuesday, another Canadian couple came and took us back to their trailer in the same RV park where Jeanne and Alyre have their trailer.  Marcel and Genevieve are from Rimouski, Quebec, and we first met them when we were rebuilding our Starboard engine in 2008/2009.  So again if you have been following this blog, you'll remember these fine folks.  After a wonderful noon dinner they took us to Dunlawton Sugar Mill Gardens where Marcel volunteers a couple of days a week.  At one time this park was going to be a tourist attraction in 1940 with cast concrete dinosaurs, a train ride, and a baboon named Bongo.  The park was bequeathed to Volusia County in 1963 and turned into a botanical garden.



Today, Wednesday my sister and brother in law stopped for lunch on their way south to the Miami Boat Show.  They will stop to visit us in Beaufort on their way back north later in the month.  We topped off the evening with a view of a Falcon 9 rocket blasting off from Cape Canaveral.

Thursday, February 12 we heading north to Marineland to visit with some more boating friends.  Friday we moved North to the free dock in Jacksonville. 

Saturday, Valentines Day, we stopped at Fernandina Beach for a visit to the needle point shop.  Before getting to the city Marina dock a juvenile pelican landed on the boat for a ride.  Two other stitches drove down from Bluffton to meet Claria at the shop and join us for lunch.  As we approached St. Andrews Sound just south of Jekyll Island the   wind was blowing hard from the NE and was predicted to continue to do so  through the night and tomorrow.  St. Andrews Sound is one of the roughest to cross when the wind is blowing, at one side or the other the tidal current and the wind will be apposing each other and it will be rough.  There is an inside alternate route called the Floyd Cut that bypasses the Sound, but is slightly longer.  We elected to take the bypass, and anchored under the shelter of a high bank that night.  The weather prediction was for night time temperatures near freezing.  They were wrong, it only got down to 52 degrees.

Sunday morning we finished  the bypass and stopped at St. Simons for fuel, at $2.69 a gallon.  That night we anchored in Crescent River.  Again the forecast was for a cool evening, but again it only got down to 49 degrees.

Monday we ended up at Delegal Creek Marina, at the south end of Skidaway Island where we meet some more looper friends for dinner.  The wind is blowing hard from the SW, and rain is predicted before morning.

It's 60 miles from here to home.  We will make that run on Tuesday, rain, wind or shine!

The "Old Hat" has again performed flawlessly.  Yes, we had some breakdown of equipment along the way, but the original equipment, now 44 years old, ran flawlessly.