Susan, Heidi & Barb on SWAN, Christmas Eve
Dec. 19 Before we left Vero Beach we used the laundry at the marina, walked to the shops to do last-minute Christmas shopping, talked to the cruisers who were hanging around. It’s a fine place, and hard to leave as they offer all the amenities along with the affordable mooring system. They raft boats on the moorings and you definitely meet more people that way, side-by-side, tied together with bow lines and stern lines. Our mooring neighbors had two cats!
Our weather for the first three days of this period has been wonderful. We enjoyed two nights on anchor, and days of traveling the now-straight ICW. We have seen a few manatees, several new (to us) bird species, a sea-turtle, and the human waterskier (along with jet skis and MANY fishing boats on the Sunday before Christmas in mid-coast Florida).
Dec. 22 The weather, which rules our lives, is promising to go very windy and that means we need to hunker down and make sure we are in a secure place. But first, we had a visitor today and for the second time in the last 5 days someone asked “Is Heidi there?”. Today was Barry Perkins from Mattapoisett; his brother was in my high school class and he is friends with other high school classmates so he and his wife Susan knew we were cruising behind them. (The first visitor was the owner of one of the Tayana 37s we saw in Vero Beach Marina and I had been emailing him for a couple of weeks but had never met him.) But back to the weather……we anchored in the north end of Lake Worth in North Palm Beach on Dec 21. Seems protected but after 24 hours our anchor dragged and we had to try several times to get it to set properly, a little more to the west of where we had been. Then to make doubly sure, we added another anchor off our bow and off to an angle to the first one. The wind kept up until the day after Christmas, so we spent 6 days in the area. For Christmas Eve we were in a marina there, and had a great boat party with Barry, Susan, Rich and Barb.
On Friday we got back to traveling the ICW south, and ended up in Delray Beach for the night. As far as our future plans go, we have put our trip to the Bahamas on hold, at least for a week or two. We can leave from further south in Florida and we can check out Fort Lauderdale and Biscayne Bay.
We got to talk with our children, Tammy, Justin and Pete--the only one who is AT home--on Christmas, and our parents (and some other family and friends). It wasn’t as good as a Christmas at home, but we knew we would miss some holidays by taking this trip. Hopefully the accumulated travel and adventures will make up for some of the things we miss by being away.
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