Voyage 2002-2003: Chapter 4

Not bad! Life on a mooring ball is great! While kinda great. You don't have to worry about your anchor slipping; you have great neighbors; the views are spectacular; free buses will get us most places. We have been here for two and a half weeks. We have been busy most of the time. Our solar panels and wind generator have given us enough power to do what we want to do (electrically speaking).

Ahh, the 'kids'. They have been our mooring challenge. Levi knocked Gina out of the dinghy and Gina went swimming. That wouldn't be too bad except for the red tide we are experiencing here. We had to hose her down and give here a doggy bath. Sniff, sniff; hmmm, doggy odors. She is doing all right now but she doesn't trust Levi. I wouldn't either.

Then there where the intestinal problems and the late night dinghy trips to shore. We found that they were snacking out of the litter box. It took us a week to figure that out. Samantha Jane decided she didn't want the dogs on her boat; so she pee-ed on their food (and sometimes missed). We think we have broken her of that habit but sniff, sniff, hmmm. All in all the kids have been fun, but it is time to have some quality time without them.

Thanksgiving here was good. We had plenty of food and conversation. There were 130 cruisers at the annual Vero Beach Cruisers Thanksgiving. We shared a table with S/V Magic, S/V Ridge Runner all S/V Luna Azul. S/V Celena went to Fort Pierce Municipal Marina to install a water maker. They had a Thanksgiving feast at their marina.

5 Dec 2002, More Life at Vero Beach, 27 39.279 N/ 080 22.240 W

The boats are anxious to head South and cross the 'Stream' to the Bahamas. However, there has been no weather window for over three weeks. The wind has been blowing out of the North (bad) those three weeks except for 6 hours a couple of days ago. The temperature is pleasant, but the cruisers are getting impatient

We leave here in three days to store our boats for a couple of weeks so that we can head home for the Holidays. We have been conveying our farewells to the many folks that we met at the anchorage. We are renting a car to take the kids back home. Don't tell them, but only Samantha Jane is coming back (maybe). While at home we will have a bunch of work related meeting; visit the other (real) kids (and our grandbaby), and have Bob's mother over for Christmas. Then back to Vero to continue our voyage.

10 Dec 2002, On to Grand Harbor, 27 41.590 N/ 080 23.759 W

Last Friday we slipped our mooring, heading for our berth at Grand Harbor. We said our farewells to the folks on S/V Everden who have been our mooring mates for over three weeks. We could not have asked for better mooring partners. They taught us to play Farckle (dice game), showed Ann how to back bread in a pan, serenaded us with guitar music...genuinely nice people!

What a stinky day to go the 3 miles to Grand Harbor. The wind was blowing out of the North (of course we were going North) at 15-20 kts, raining (of course), and we were sad leaving Vero Beach. Grand Harbor is a well-protected marina (4,4,4 in Skipper Bob lingo) but has no services for their monthly customers. We rented a car and visited Vero Beach from time to time to say 'hi' to S/V Chatauqua and S/V Charbonneau (our Dry Tortugas buddies from Voyage 2000) who recently arrived at the mooring.