110 miles on the ICW when we'd really rather be crossing to the Bahamas

Woke up this morning to overcast skies, strong winds - and the loudest damned Detroit Diesels on the planet. Seems the ancient converted pilot boat/trawler docked behind us was planning to leave before dawn. Or not. He "warmed up" those loud, smoky diesels for about an hour before leaving! Oh well, we needed to get moving anyway.

We did our engine checks, booted the computer, warmed the Yanmars, untied the dock lines and left the dock at 6:45am to cloudy skies and wind.  Sea Glass headed south on the ICW and we all settled in for a long day.

It turned out rather nice though as we relaxed, talked and plotted how we were going to turn this big sucker eastward as soon as the weather allowed.  We cruised uneventfully down the length of the Mosquito Lagoon, through the Haulover, and into the Indian River. I did experience a first for the ICW though, as a flock of eight bright pink Roseate Spoonbills paced us for about ten minutes. Of course Fred and I were so busy watching them through binoculars that I never thought to drag out my camera.

We did have one glitch though as I had built a very extensive route on the nav computer from Haulover Cut (north of NASA) all the way down the Indian River to Ft. Pierce. Now, if you have ever gone that route, you know that the navigable channel is very narrow and makes a lot of turns. So this route has something like 83 waypoints! Anyway, I set my predictor to show what I thought was Ft. Pierce's waypoint as our endpoint. And all day long I was telling the guys that the computer was predicting arrival at Ft. Pierce in time for dinner. The punch line is that I had mistakenly hit waypoint 53 instead of waypoint 83. So we didn't make Ft. Pierce as that would have taken until 10:30pm and we did not feel like running two and half hours in the Intracoastal at night.  It's too bad we didn't make it to Ft. Pierce though, as Wink and Wilma Thornton, aboard their GH47, "John Henry", were docked there. Would have been quite a party...

At any rate, after the Spoonbills flew away, I proceeded to tell the guys about the huge flocks of white pelicans that we would see as soon as we got through the Haulover and into the Indian River. Of course, no white pelicans were to be found. Michael and Fred spent the rest of the day wondering aloud about what I might have been smoking or drinking during the times I claim to have seen white pelicans.

So, rain squalls later in the afternoon led to a calm evening as we pulled up to the very funky "Jones' Fruit Dock" just north of Vero Beach - and about 21 miles short of Ft. Pierce.

Life is good. After a great chicken dinner cooked by Mr. Jackson - and washed down with an excellent Chardonnay - here I sit typing my Blog. The plan is to get up tomorrow, make the 2 1/2 hour run down to Ft. Pierce, head out the inlet and see whether we can make the crossing - or not. If so, next stop, Spanish Cay. If not, we'll continue to Palm Beach and wait another interminable day for our weather window to open back up.

Wish us luck.