Ft. Pierce, FL
27.28.139N
80.19.509W
Friday night we took the dingy in to join Fred & Geri and Gerry & Nicki for dinner at the A1A Alehouse in St. Augustine. I suppose you could say we couldn't quite let go to our long time friends with whom we had always shared our sailing adventures. After a healthy meal and too many desserts, they walked us back to our dingy and shoved us off.
Saturday, 11/06/2005, was a beautiful day. We rose early to secure our home for travel in the ocean and hoisted anchor at 10 am with our new friends, Heather and Scott on the s/v Scott Free. Most of Saturday was about as bland as you can get with regard to wave action. In fact at one point. Dale and I were describing the ocean as having an oil-like sheen appearance to it as it was so calm. (Geri, you would have bored to tears.) (Kenny, you would have gone nuts trying to capture the reflective colors. It reminded me of one of the Terminator movies where the one robot is made of a liquid metal. Blues, greys, whites undulating together - absolutely amazing.) Cats' paws could been seen coming for miles.
That was until we came closer to Cape Canaveral. Then, of course, it started rolling. Not violently or anything. Just enough to stir up the tanks and clog a fuel filter. I guess it had to happen sooner or later. However, the rolling action lasted all night and into Sunday. During the night we had some rain and danced with only one other vessel, a tug heading northeast while we were heading south. Thank heavens Heather on s/v Scott Free has more radar experience than I and was a good source of information when I didn't want to wake Dale during the night.
Sunday was calm but an eastern swell kept us rolling throughout the day. We had 5-10kts of a North wind dead astern and the wave action was still less than 3 feet. (Gerry, I know you would have urged us to use the spinnaker but remember, we were in the ocean and we had the dink up on the bow. If we'd known that it was going to last the entire day, it might have been worth the effort to pull it out. Then again, hind sight is always 20-20 so we motored the entire way.)
We arrived in Ft. Pierce around 2:30 pm and anchored outside of Harbortown Marina. They still have not dredged the entry and now the slips are silted in to the point where we cannot get our 5 1/2 ft draft inside to the marina itself.
We were able to contact Bob & Caron and plan on visiting with them after Dale has a mechanic look at the alternator. He's not comfortable with the the fan belt issue; it works beautifully at 2000 rmp but starts to heat at 2500 or if we try to run the refrigerator at the same time. He also want to tear apart the windless to see if there are any worn gears as it has started to slip periodically.
Right now, we figure we'll be in the Ft. Pierce area for a few days as the weather window appears to be closing at the end of the week. My telephone shuts down tomorrow but Dale's will still be active until we actually leave the country.
