North Star on the Great Loop Journey: Anchored in Vero Beach

Preparing for the trip

Captain Jerry has been making the final preparations to North Star, our 32 foot Cape Island down east trawler. We are anxious to leave our landlubber lives behind and begin our long awaited journey around the Great Circle. Join us as we travel 10, 000 kilometers: through the historic Trent Severn Waterway; the pristine waters of Georgian Bay; the North Channel of lake Huron; and hop from beach to beach on lake Michigan. We will visit Chicago and begin our trek along the rivers: Illinois; upper Mississippi; Ohio; Cumberland: Tennessee; Tenn-Tom Waterway and the Black Warrior. We will have transited through 68 locks at this juncture. We have chosen the inner route from Mobile Alabama to Tarpon Springs Florida and the shorter Ocheechobee Waterway to reach the East coast of Florida. We will skip over to the Bahamas to wait out the winter before heading North on the Atlantic Inter Coastal Waterway.
The 10 years of researching and planning are finally at an end and we invite you to come along on our adventure.

Friday, February 24, 2012

Anchored in Vero Beach

We are still at anchor behind the mooring field at Vero Beach Municipal Marina. (N27 39.9 and W80 22.4)
We went to reprovision yesterday and took advantage of the free bus that comes to the marina and drops you off at the plaza where one can find a West Marine and a Publix grocery store.
Some boaters who are in the mooring field invited us to join them at a gazebo at the marina for happy hour. There was a guitar player and a mandolin player. I managed to sing a song with them. We met folks who completed the loop last year. There all kinds of food.
We went to check out a restaurant across the way, by dinghy and had a happy hour drink there as well as gator tails. They love their fried food in Florida. It was a calm and hot night, perfect for outdoor eating and floating around. There are no bugs here.
The harbour master came by this morning to tell us that we are not permitted to use the dinghy dock. Apparently someone turned us in.
We went to a nice park today which leads to the Atlantic Ocean and Vero Beach. There is a nice long boardwalk for strolling. It was a windy hot beach day.
Jerry took me out for lunch at the Riverside restaurant for my birthday. We had the usual fish sandwich, it was flounder this time. We are having a quiet evening on the boat since we are banned from happy hour.
We are heading out tomorrow and should be in Jacksonville in 4 days unless we see something worthwhile stopping for. The prices for marinas is higher on the east coast than the west coast. There is a lot more boat traffic on this side as well. It pretty much looks the same with mansions and docks with boats on various canals. The sand on the beach is a different colour and the sand is not as hard packed. The colour of the water is much more topaz.