Mar-A-Lago Shenanigans and a Visit with Old Friends

West Palm Beach to Boca Raton – 28 nautical miles sailed, 13 bridges

It was still dark when we retrieved the anchor and left the anchorage at 6:15am to catch a bridge opening. The anchorage was beautiful at this time of day – quiet with twinkling lights from the surrounding buildings and stars overhead.

 

There would be a total of 13 bridges to pass today, nearly all of them below 65 feet so we would either need to wait for the scheduled opening times (usually on the hour and half hour or at the quarter and three-quarter) or call for a lift for the ones that open on request. The majority of boaters will skip this part of the ICW and take the ocean route to Fort Lauderdale or Miami, which is normally easy with the prevailing north winds at this time of year, but today the winds were from the south, at 20 knots, so not a good time to be on the big water.

 

Our third bridge of the day was Southern Boulevard, which leads across the ICW directly to Mar-A-Lago, home of a rather famous individual who had some recent good fortune in an American election. We radioed the bridge to report our arrival and ask for the next opening. The bridge operator said it should be opening at quarter past the hour, but there was a temporary hold in place. So we waited and watched as the opening time came and went with no announcements from the bridge. Two Coast Guard boats were circling the area, with automatic guns mounted at the bow. We heard the bridge operator hailing one of the patrol boats on VHF channel 9, which is the channel used for all bridge to boat communications. No answer. We also heard that there was a motorcade coming, which is why the bridge had remained closed. We floated around for quite a while, then the Coast Guard boat motored over to us and asked me, “What has the bridge operator said? Are they opening?”

 

“She said it was scheduled to open but was temporarily on hold. She’s been trying to hail you guys on the VHF.”

 

“Really? What channel?”

 

“09.”

 

“Well we haven’t heard what’s happening. No confirmation on the motorcade. Can you contact her on the radio?”

 

“Sure…and tell her to open the bridge??”

 

“Uhhhh,” he stuttered then paused. “Well, maybe not. Hold off on that. I’ll let you know.”

 

As the Coast Guard drove away, we heard them call the bridge and start discussing what was happening. The operator suggested he call her on the telephone. He didn’t have the number so asked her for it over the open channel. We kept floating around. A while later they rushed back over to us and told us to back away from the bridge. We turned and gunned it as a motorcade of ten black Escalades came roaring over the bridge. Then they were gone. But they still did not open the bridge for a long while, despite opening it for traffic.

We couldn’t believe what had happening. It seemed the Coast Guard and bridge were key partners in ensuring security for the motorcade. But they didn’t have each others’ contact number and the Coast Guard didn’t know what VHF channel to use! We have no idea if Donald Trump was in one of the vehicles, but it was obviously somebody worthy of a parade of Suburbans and protection. Whoever was supplying information on the whereabouts of the motorcade was clearly not passing this on equally to both parties.

 

It's not hard to see how so many of these security operations go wrong when communications for something as simple as a bridge crossing are handled like this.

 

We lost an hour at that bridge, which provided the required time for an obnoxious boater, whom we had suffered through during the trip yesterday, to catch up. He had come through the first bridge with us, and I had started cursing as soon as I heard him on the VHF, then hexed him and guiltily sent harmful thoughts his way. I didn’t realize my words had so much power – after he came through the second bridge with us, he abruptly turned out of the channel, as if my mental projections had blown his water pump. I was overjoyed at his misfortune as that meant we wouldn’t have to listen to him on the radio all day as he repeatedly announced his boat name, asked bridges for favours like opening early or closing later to wait for him, chattering unnecessarily, offering his operational advice to bridge staff, asked stupid questions, ignored questions from bridge operators, and so on. If you haven’t used a VHF radio before, you might not understand how maddeningly annoying this can be, because there is no filter – you have to be monitoring these channels for communications so you just can’t turn it off. But, with the motorcade, he caught up, and we were stuck with him.

 

We arrived in Boca Raton just after 1, squeezed ourselves into the perimeter of a tight, but good anchorage, then relaxed in the boat for a while to ensure the anchor was well set. Our friends Stillman, Ester and their two girls live very close to the anchorage so we arranged for them to come by for drinks. We had hoped to meet them on land somewhere, but we didn’t want to leave the boat as the 20 knot south winds were going swing to the north, which meant the boat anchor would have to reset itself and you can’t always be sure of that in an unfamiliar anchorage.

I used the gap in our schedule tp jump in the water to cool off, and with the scrubby brushes and scrapers gave the bottom of the boat a meagre cleaning. The water temperature was beautiful and had risen at least five degrees in the past few days.

 

I picked up our friends at the nearby dinghy dock, brought them back to the boat, and we spent a few hours together snacking, drinking, and catching up on news. They had just visited us in Canada this summer and it was great to see them again so soon as it had been many years since we’d seen them previously. We had an excellent visit.

After dropping them off, I returned to the boat, picked up Ana, and we went for a slow and leisurely cruise around the perimeter of Lake Boca Raton to see the fancy houses, lights, and enjoy the warm evening breeze.

Lola the Sailboat, Bridge Running, Chili Testing, and Boat Nachos

Vero Beach to West Palm Beach – 57 nautical miles sailed, 13 bridges

We were underway by 6:45am, stopping briefly at the fuel dock to fill up our water tanks and give the boat a quick washdown as she had been collecting dirt and was getting pretty yucky. I normally keep the boat’s exterior immaculate, spending hours on the summer weekends washing her, but I’ve found that to be less easy to do without easy access to fresh water. Yes, you can wash the boat decks with salt water, but it hardens the lines and makes everything sticky. So SeaLight has not kept up her usual beauty standards on this trip.

 

Waddington had left before us but we caught up to her at the first bridge and lucked out by arriving just as it was opening. Shortly after passing through we spotted a manatee surfacing just outside of the channel (Morning Manatee – check!) then a pod of dolphins just after that (Daily Dolphin – check!). We are getting spoiled.

 

We’d been told that the ICW from Vero to Miami was chock-a-block with bridges and they weren’t wrong. We passed under no fewer then 11 of them today, many which opened either on signal or on the hour or half hour, which really impacts your progress as you end up spending a lot of time circling, waiting for them to open.

As we passed Fort Pierce the water changed colour, transforming from muddy brown to Caribbean blue, and it all seemed to happen within a mile or two. Another transformation was the quantity of boats and level of development along the waterway. Mansion after mansion after mansion but strangely, we did not see a single person sitting on the patio of their mansion, or in the pool of their mansion, or on the dock of their mansion, or in the yacht floating outside of their mansion. I expect they were all busy making business deals to further expand their wealth. Dough for Show methinks.

 

We passed a sailboat named Lola and I heard his discussion with a bridge operator.

“Jupiter Island Bridge, this is sailing vessel Lola looking for a lift,” radio’d the captain

 

“Southbound sailboat, could you repeat that vessel name?” replied the bridge operator.

 

In a dark brown voice he said, “Lola. L-O-L-A Lola. La-la-la-la Lola.”

 

In fact he didn’t say that, but I couldn’t understand it. Why else would you name your boat Lola?

 

It was a very long day on the water, broken up only by my test lunch of Dollar Tree Chili. The texture of the substance was akin to wet dog food and the smell was chili-like, but with a suspect chemical undertone fragrance that made me think of the meal simulator machines they used on the starship Enterprise. It’s chili, but not really chili. All in all, once I paired it with fresh buttered bread and a chopped and peppered tomato, it wasn’t bad. But I couldn’t eat it every day.

 

We finally arrived at the Phil Foster Park anchorage around 5:30 as the sun was setting, capping off a full 10.5 hours on the water. Ana made us a spectacular plate of nachos with peppers, onions, beef, salsa, sour cream, and a blanket of melted cheese. I don’t think we’ve ever made nachos at home before. Amazing.

After doing some route planning for tomorrow, which was going to require even more bridges than today, I struggled through half an episode of a show with Ana and called it quits at 8:30.

The Morning Manatee, Snorkelling, Dinghy Washing, and Shopping

Vero Beach – 1 mile by dinghy, 2 miles by paddleboard, 4 kilometres walked, 50 metres snorkelled

For today’s Morning Manatee I sealed my phone in a Ziploc and shoved it in my shorts pocket. The frequent manatee sightings of the past days had increased my confidence level to the point where I thought it safe to bring along a recording device, with the expectation it would not jinx a sighting. And it did not. During my paddle, in nearly the same spot as yesterday, I was rewarded with a pair of manatee darlings. They did not get as close to me, so I couldn’t get a close-up photo, but I did take a short video of them swimming away, and got one image of their noses popping out of the water.

 

Today was our last in Velcro Beach, provided we could unstick ourselves to leave tomorrow, so we joined Ben and Kate on a public bus ride to the main commercial area to pick up provisions. While Ana was in TJ Maxx popping tags, I sauntered over to Panera Bread again and enjoyed an order of chili served in a thick, fragrant, sourdough bread bowl with a slab of baguette on the side as well as the thick bread bowl cap. I ate it all, every last chili-dipped crumb. It’s times like these when I feel so terrible for the glutards of the world. It’s just not fair. Not fair at all.

 

After stuffing myself with carbos like a goose in foie gras season, I staggered around, wheat-drunk, and semi-comatose for about an hour afterwards. If anybody told me anything important during that time, here’s fair warning that I wasn’t listening. When I finally shook off the gluten fog outside of Walmart, I struck up a conversation with a nice man at the bus stop. He was getting overheated in the sun so I grabbed a political yard sign from a nearby trash bin, knocked the ants and chicken nugget remnants from it, and held it up to shade him as we talked. He told me his whole life story, which was a classic tale of rags to riches to rags, starting with white hot American ambition which led to a successful business, a family and big house in the suburbs, and the rest of the dream, but a series of unfortunate events and sub-optimal decision making had landed him in a Vero Beach homeless shelter, which cost him the reasonable sum of two dollars per day which covered three meals and a bunk. And he was pretty damn happy with life. He rode the free public bus. He went to the beach. He wore nice clothes. He played checkers with friends. I really enjoyed our visit.

Once back at the boat we unloaded our provisions, which included 13 containers of UHT milk, salty snacks, and some meal-in-a-can test items from the Dollar Tree, in preparation for our upcoming weeks and months in Bahamas where fresh food can be scarce or expensive or usually both. I volunteered to sample some questionable, but highly affordable and infinitely non-perishable items so I will be monitoring my flatulence, urine quality, bowel movements, thirst levels, and general mood closely these next few days as I work my way through the buck-a-can chili, tamales, and beef stew. Wish me luck.

Ana got busy on the computer doing some yacht club business so I slipped, squeezed, and slithered into my new wetsuit, grabbed my snorkeling gear, and took off in the dinghy for the quiet end of the anchorage. My next level of manatee success was surely going to be encountering one of the big girls underwater, shaking paws, nuzzling into her luscious folds, and squeezing her cheeks before taking a ride on her back as she towed me around the anchorage and we could show off for all our underwater and above water friends. Sadly, the damn visibility was terrible and I could barely see my arms so it was a very short swim.

 

I returned to the boat, filled a bucket with fresh water, and swabbed out the dinghy to make myself feel useful while Ana was still pounding away on the computer, sending out delinquency notices, creating membership records, strategizing the presentation, without a single moan or grumble. She is a real trooper.

 

To slaughter the remaining hours of the day, Ben and Kate come over after dinner and we lounged in SeaLight’s cockpit well past Mariner's Midnight, chatting about everything and nothing, all at once.

A Happy Reunion and Swarms of Manatees

Vero Beach – 1 mile by dinghy, 2 miles by paddleboard, 5 kilometres walked

I began the day not knowing that I was about to have a profound and unforgettable encounter with nature.

 

The paddleboard slid gracefully and rapidly through the glassy water. It was early and there were many boats, but no other boaters in sight. I paddled to the quiet end of the anchorage, looking across the water for signs of manatee, enjoying the repetitive paddling motion, exercising my arms and core. There were many birds – cranes, pelicans, cormorants, others I didn’t recognize, and schools of small fish passing beneath my board. I continued around the end of the bay then paddled back through the mooring field and nearly to the bridge, where we had previously seen manatees, but no sign of any today. I took a short break then turned and began paddling back up the channel. After a few minutes I saw a series of circles on the water surface ahead of me, and I looked down into the water to see two full grown manatees and two babies as they slowly passed by. The manatees were so large it seemed unlikely they could even find enough water depth here to submerge themselves. Both the mothers surfaced right beside me and I could see the tips of their black noses and wiry whiskers as they exhaled plumes of sea breath. I watched their backs arc up and out of the water, followed by their giant mermaid tails. The babies did not surface but I could see them so clearly. It was an incredible moment.

 

With my triumphant manatee experience, I continued paddling and it was not long before I noticed another disturbance in the water ahead of me. No, not a disturbance, many disturbances – circles, bubbles, water breaking. I stopped paddling. They were heading right towards me. When they came into view I could not believe my eyes. An anxious lump formed in my throat as I balanced on my board and saw seven manatees approach, ever so slowly. The slight current was pushing my board in the same direction of the manatees, so as they reached me I was floating at nearly the same speed. Two of the largest ones swam directly beneath me. There were two more babies and three full grown ones, with hues of grey, and white, and black gleaming from their bodies and aligned to my right and left - I was surrounded. I feared the ones below me were going to surface and flip me into the water, but only the manatees beside my board came up. I am sure the ones below me knew I was there. As they surfaced, I could have reached down and touched their faces, then their backs, then their tails. I floated alongside them for what felt like an hour, at this slow pace, as if they were revealing themselves to me with purpose, deliberately. When they finally outpaced me I watched them depart until I could see only the surface disturbances and their noses popping out. I had to sit down as my heart was nearly bouncing out of my chest and my hands were shaking. This was one of the most intense experiences with nature I’ve ever experienced. I felt…changed.

 

I lingered on the experience and rolled it around in my mind as I paddled back to the boat. Again, I had no camera to capture the moment, but the memory of these incredible creatures would be mine forever. I told Ana about it, excitedly, but I was sad she hadn't been there with me to experience it.

We had breakfast together then our neighbours Brian and Penny on Wind Trippin invited us over to show us a few of their favourite places in the Abacos for anchoring, fishing, and diving. As we were reviewing those, our friends Kate and Ben in Waddington arrived! They had finally caught up to us, and what better day than on a 25 degree and sunny Sunday Fun Day!

 

We had a visit after getting them rafted onto the other side of our boat, and soon Wind Trippin pushed off on their way to Bahamas, leaving just our two boats. Ana packed up a bag of beach stuff and we all jumped in our dinghy for shore. Ben and I grabbed a couple of Modelos each from the marina office then we had a leisurely walk to the beach, where we spread out a blanket, then Ben and I raced into the ocean for a swim and some body surfing. The water was glorious and the hours clicked by quickly as we enjoyed the sunshine, the fine sand, a couple more beers, and the guilty pleasure of sitting on a Florida beach while most of our friends and family were digging themselves out of snowstorms in Canada.

 

Once the sun started its inevitable descent into the Vero horizon, we walked back to the marina, and had a nice chat with local dude named Peter, who does diving services, boat relocations, and general boat repair, and he kept us entertained with stories of marina hijinks, manatee encounters, hurricanes and tornados, and other Vero Beach stories.

 

Soon, we were back on the boats and Ana and I cooked an admittedly delicious dinner of grilled pork tenderloin, mushroom chicken, Caribbean rice, and broccoli and the four of us ate a long and slow dinner and caught up on at least a month’s worth of stories and adventures. It was great to see them again.

Farmers Market and Boat Projects

Vero Beach – 1 mile by dinghy, 5 kilometres walked

Today was both sluggish and productive. At 8am I met a local guy who had used dive equipment for sale and picked up two weight belts, 12 pounds of weight, and an XL shorty wetsuit which fit me perfectly. The weight belts are for two things – keeping myself underwater when I scrape the marine growth bottom of the boat (which I will start doing in the Bahamas once the water clears up) and for the same buoyancy purpose when spearfishing. In talking to boaters we’ve recently realized that we might be able to catch a lot of our food in the Bahamas – primarily lobster, hogfish, conch, snapper, and lionfish. This could help solve one of our problems, being the astronomical prices of food in that country. The other way we are addressing that was the focus of one of our boat projects today – converting half of our large top loading fridge into freezer space with the installation of an insulating panel. If that performs as expected we will be able to load up with a lot more frozen items in Florida before we leave, which should get us through the first month or so in the islands.

 

Saturday was the weekly Vero Beach farmers market near the main public beach, and after a slow morning on the boat we happened to reach the marina at the same time as the free public bus so scored ourselves a ride there. It was a vibrant affair with several produce vendors and many others selling food to go and specialty products like honey, guacamole, pies, baking, and crafts. Ana paid five bucks for a single croissant at a French bakery vendor and deemed it as good as the ones we enjoyed in France last year. I picked up a chili cheese dog, thick with melted American cheese and it was heavenly. We also found all the vegetables we needed, and after paying the vendor for our bag of greens, she said, “Free for you – one lime and one cucumber. Go get it!” It was sort of like a customer loyalty program, but you didn’t need to sign up for a card or membership; instant rewards instead. If we had spent another ten bucks I bet that would have earned us a free eggplant. One perplexing discovery has been the crazy high prices of oranges and grapefruit here. We’ve read that the area surrounding Vero Beach produces 70% of Florida’s grapefruit crop, yet grapefruit here are just as expensive than all the more northern places we’ve visited – two bucks each, and oranges are nearly a dollar apiece. Then again, we don’t get any deals on maple syrup in Canada.

 

After securing the bag of nutrition we abandoned our initial plan of heading back into the main commercial area today to provision. We also learned that Vero’s annual Christmas parade was happening today and would be shutting down all the busses and we weren’t up for walking another twelve kilometres round trip, so instead we walked back to the marina and returned to the boat. I was happy when Ana expressed zero interest in the parade as the whole idea of Christmas in sunny Florida just doesn’t make much sense to me. There’s no visions of sugar plums dancing in anybody’s heads here – just sugar doughnuts. No chestnuts roasting on open fires – the only open fires I’ve heard of are the occasional motorboat blowing up, and nobody’s sitting around roasting anything on those. As for the reindeer, nope – all shot and turned into jerky. Blankets of fluffy white snow? No siree Bob, just blankets of plasticky orange processed cheese on my chili dog.

 

Back at the boat, everything was calm and beautiful until it wasn’t. One minute I was sitting in the cockpit enjoying a triple-decker BLT, interrupted only by the sighting of another manatee, and the next thing I know our boat had exploded with tools and mess everywhere. A simple defrosting of our main fridge turned into the aforementioned fridge modification project. I had also started with installing snaps and straps on the panels of our cockpit enclosure so that we could easily roll them up instead of having to remove them all the time. This would provide better air circulation for the heat in Bahamas, but also much better visibility when underway. The fridge modification project kicked off in the middle of my strapping and the circular sawing of white Starboard layered everything in the cockpit with a fine coating of polyethylene dust creating a formidable mess of microscopic white quills sticking into everything. We finished the fridge project just as we lost daylight so I’d have to return to strap the final two panels tomorrow. The next hour was spent cleaning and in doing so, Ana noticed a chip out of the wood trim near the sink. Here comes the sandpaper and teak oil and she went to town sanding down wood and toweling in oil throughout the boat as I sat half awake and half asleep trying to catch up on a single episode of a series we’re trying to watch. This was my third attempt and just as fruitless as the last two so I went to bed and fell asleep with hallucinogenic teak oil vapours leeching into my nose, producing the strangest of dreams.

The Manatees Arrive…and How To Spot A Boater

Vero Beach – 5 miles by dinghy, 14 kilometres walked

I awoke to a cloud-less, wind-less, current-less, and warm morning – perfect conditions for a paddleboard ride. The last time I used it was way back in Waterford, at the termination of the Erie Canal, and since then I’m sure my paddling muscles have turned to jelly.

 

After removing the board from the deck and getting it in the water and ready to go, I glanced behind the boat to figure out which route I would take. Poof! I heard that noise we heard in Titusville a few days ago and I looked over to see a manatee nose disappearing beneath the water and a series of spiraling water whirlpools left by the motion of its tail.

 

“Ana!” I screamed. “A manatee! Get out here!”

 

Ana appeared in the cockpit half dressed and wearing her towel turban. “Where??” she asked.

 

“Just back there, watch.”

 

The manatee did not surface again but you could see the ripples on the water from its motion.

 

“I’m going to see if I can get close on the paddleboard,” I said as I eased myself onto the board and started paddling. The manatee was moving surprisingly fast and I could no longer see any trace of it so I paddled towards the nearby island of mangroves hoping it had gone in that direction instead of amongst all the moored boats. But I was keeping an eye on the mooring balls, as the folks we met last night – Brian and Penny – told us the manatees would often grab onto the balls and suck off all the accumulated marine growth from the undersides of them, giving you a spectacular view of their face if your mooring ball happened to be the hairiest. The manatee anus must be cast from concrete to be able to withstand the agonizingly painful ring sting that would result from eating a diet of razor-edged clam shells, crispy sea moss, sawgrass, and fossilized shrimp carcasses.

I got lucky. Just fifty feet away from my board I saw him surface again, but this time he came up for a while and I could see his nose then the top of his enormous body arc up and back down into the water, like a prehistoric beast. I paddled parallel to his path, keeping my distance, but staying close enough to have a good look at him. I could see a line of breath bubbles popping out on the surface, so I kept on his track and paddled slowly across the water. He appeared again, blowing out a big breath, then right beside him another hulking form appeared – two manatees! They were swimming side by side, and this time I clearly saw their tails as they plunged back below the surface to scour the bottom for vegetation. I couldn’t believe my eyes…and my luck. I hadn’t brought my camera along, but I wasn’t unhappy, as that allowed me to focus completely on the experience.

 

The juxtaposition was stark – on one side of me were dozens and dozens of boats, which regularly burn fuel, rip up the seabed with wake, pump shit, piss, and bilge oil into the water, invade marine territories we have no business disturbing, and brandish sharp propellors spinning at 2000 revolutions per minute pulverizing everything in their path. On my other side were two massive and gentle vegetarian sea cows, gliding through the water, eating sea grasses, and somehow surviving in this hostile environment we’d created. Manatees have no natural predators but are severely threatened by humans. Besides boats, whose propellors regularly strike manatees, evidenced by the deep scarring most of them have on their backs, while the unlucky ones die from infection, man-made structures such as docks, dams, fishing line and nets, weirs, locks, and bridges also cause many manatee deaths when they get caught up in these and drown or are squashed. Habitat loss from waterfront building and climate change that drives the loss of sea grass and causes large water temperature fluctuations puts additional pressure on manatees. These are the same curious and humble creatures that are known to approach humans, even allowing them to touch their faces, yearning contact. I felt exceptionally lucky to have seen them, but also sad that we have caused them so much pain and death.

I tailed the manatees for half an hour, then decided to paddle back to the boat as fast as I could, collect Ana, then come back in the dinghy so she could see them. We did just that and just when I thought we had lost their trail, we saw a disturbance on the water and there they were. Ana was so happy to see them, and tried to take a photograph but it was just not possible. We kept our distance and used the dinghy paddles instead of the motor, and spotted them a few more times, but they eventually gave us the slip, so we continued along and took a long and slow ride to explore some of the quieter areas of the bay, which were serene and beautiful.

 

A long walk was in order so we dinghy’d into shore with our mini-van carrier and a backpack to pick up a few things at the main commercial area of Vero Beach which was a few miles away. We walked up the main bridge crossing the waterway into the marina and bay area and the view was spectacular as the lack of wind provided a glassy water surface. We stopped at the top of the bridge to look for manatees or dolphins. Far away I could see something on the water, and as it approached I first thought it was an alligator, but soon realized it was another manatee! From this height we could see its whole body, its mermaid-like tail, and when it came up for air we could just barely make out its face. I couldn’t believe our luck.

We continued walking into the commercial area and while Ana was at the TJ Maxx, I found a dive shop and bought myself a spanky new lionfish spear and lobster gloves in preparation for the underwater hunting we are hoping to do in the Bahamas. I also looked at wetsuits and weight belts, but they were pricey so decided instead to look online to see if we could find used ones.

After a delicious and bread-heavy lunch at Panera, and a visit to a few more shops, we started the walk back to the boat and along the way snapped a photo of a typical boater, so we could diagram a guide to spotting them in the wild.

Velcro Beach?

Melbourne to Vero Beach – 33 nautical miles sailed, 4 bridges, 1 mile by dinghy, 5 kilometres walked

By 6am the wind had died and the river’s surface was glassy and calm. As we slid out of the anchorage, our dolphin friends appeared on both sides of the boat, wishing us farewell, hoping we enjoyed the show. We did.

 

The passage today ran in straight lines, through the wide Indian River, which is barely tidal and only partially salty, clearly an attractive habitat for dolphins as we saw them nearly every mile we traveled. Yet every time one surfaced, Ana would shriek and grab her phone to catch a video. She admitted to me yesterday that she’s never understood those people afflicted with that inexplicable infatuation with dolphins - attending overpriced marine parks to see them do tricks for fish, paying a fortune to Swim With The Dolphins at Caribbean not-exactly-all-inclusive resorts, inking their body with blue and grey dolphin tattoos, dolphin wallpaper in their bedrooms, watching reruns of Flipper on their VHS machines, and dolphin stuffies on, behind, and beneath their home furniture. But after our own recent dolphin experiences, she feels her life’s porpoise has been revealed, and is considering a dolphin neck tattoo at our next stop. She’s already been sculpting her morning toast in the shape of dolphins so there may be no stopping her.

 

We reached Vero Beach and after a short wait for two boats to leave the fuel dock (and yes, we saw dolphins while we waited), we tied up, filled the diesel and water, pumped the holding tank, and got registered for three nights on mooring ball #40. The staff were incredibly proficient and helpful and reminded us that this place is known by boaters as “Velcro Beach” as they have a terrible time peeling themselves away from here. The mooring field was packed, with two to three boats at each location, which we have not seen before. We found our spot and eased up to the boat that was already moored there. They gave us a hand getting rafted onto their boat, using a number of lines and fenders, then we also attached two bow lines to the mooring pendant. We had a chat with them – Brian and Penny from Michigan on their 40+ foot ketch-rigged Morgan called “Wind Trippin”, and they gave us a few tips on Vero Beach as they’d been here two years previous on their first pilgrimage to Bahamas.

 

After we were settled and I’d dropped the dinghy into the water, we went into shore, jammed ourselves into the packed dinghy dock, and started walking through the residential neighbourhoods towards the beach. I was fascinated with the trees that hung over the streets – their limbs reached out like octopus arms and had few leaves but a hairy toupee of fuzzy moss and some brandished green, spiny cactus tentacles, hanging from their limbs like weapons.

 

We found the public beach access, which had a commercial plaza with a oceanside restaurant/bar and a boutique that Ana beelined for, while I continued out towards the water. The beach was expansive and lovely, and there was more activity here than the one we visited yesterday at Melbourne – people walking, a few swimmers, two guys zipping through the water on powered eFoil surfboards, scavengers with metal detectors, and another who sped across the hard packed sand on a Onewheel. I spread out my low-tech blanket, changed into my swimsuit under the protective coverage of a towel, and ran down the beach, and dove into a big oncoming wave. It was cold and glorious. I licked the salt on my lips, relishing the taste, as I floated effortlessly on my back, looking up into the sky, but also listening to the underwater ocean melody. I was ready for more, much more of this.

Ana arrived and we sat on the beach for a long while and left only when the sun had dropped and it was beginning to cool off. During the return walk I noticed the businesses we passed were primarily financial and wealth management companies, lawyers, realtors, and fancy boutiques. And the many vehicles on the road were all high-end varieties. This was not a poor neighbourhood.

 

Like yesterday, we returned to the boat just as the sun was dipping down and had a sundowner. After a while our neighbours Penny and Brian returned to their boat, so we asked them to join us for a drink, and we sat together exchanging stories until nearly Mariner’s Midnight. We had a lot in common and so much to talk about.