Sunday, March 7 - Docked in North Palm Beach

Since our last post was from Titusville, I will pick up our route from there.  We left Titusville Friday morning and intended to travel about 50 miles.  Upon realizing one of Gay's friends, Beth Gitlin, now lived in the Eau Gallie/Melbourne area, we made plans to stop there, so pulled into the Telemar Marina in Eau Gallie in the early afternoon.  It was nice to stop midday and fuel up, pump out and shower before dark.  Beth and her fiance, Scott Hoffman, were extremely helpful in recommending the marina.  They lived a short distance away and walked over to pick us up and take us to their home for drinks before taking us to dinner.  What a treat to get to see Beth, meet Scott and spend time with them.  They were extremely gracious offering us a place to stay and help with anything we needed.  Ken and Scott had great times talking all things sailing (Scott was a Naval Academy Grad), military and science (as Beth and I caught up on them upcoming wedding and our lives since we last met).  We had a great seafood dinner at a nearby restaurant.  What a treat  for us to find that they were available on short notice.

The next day we made our way to Fort Pierce and opted to stay in the city marina.  At least with a sailboat our size, it was a mistake.  Even though we told them our size when we called to see if they had room, they hailed us on in and shoehorned us into a slip that was too short (which was not as much a problem as the fact that it was too narrow!). The slip was wedgeshaped and our side rails were jammed up against the pilings far ahead of the beamiest part of the boat.  The rear pilings allowed us just about 3 inches of space on each side of the boat.  There was a lovely restored Morgan next to us and both of us spent a great deal of time making sure we were tied very securely to prevent bumps in the night.  The marina (and their help) were obviously geared to power boaters.  We would definitely not stay there again.  The only bright spot was that the showers/restrooms were some of the cleanest/nicest we had seen on this trip.  Of course, nothing compares to our River Dunes!

After getting out of the shoehorn slip, we made our way the last fifty miles of our trip to the North Palm Beach Marina.  We passed under numerous bridges.  In just the last few miles we had to wait for 5 different bridge openings and spent a great deal of time trying to hang in the current.  The power boaters in this last 50 mile stretch were some of the rudest we have encountered--sending huge wakes our way, darting this way and that.  We were not surprised to hear that there was a collision in the Jupiter inlet area shortly after we passed through.   As we were waiting for the next to last bridge to open, our bow thruster failed.  Of course, we are lucky to have one as most boats our size do not, but we missed it when we docked.  Actually, docking was easier than Fort Pierce because we had a decently sized slip and the dock hand was a sailor.

We will stay here for a few days to rest up (4 straight days on the ICW was actually tiring), get the bow thruster fixed and plan the next leg of our trip.