We successfully maneuvered our way out of Favor Cove at high tide so no issues. 6 feet of water was the lowest we encountered. on the way we passed by the Ft. Pierce Marina renovations which I suspect will make this marina a superb stop later this year for those coming south.
The ICW here is calm, pretty straight with a few bridges and eye catching homes on either side of the housing spectrum. We encountered our first bascule bridge moving north. It's been a decade since I've been on the VHF radio. It all comes back in a hurry ... like riding a bike. I couldn't recall the correct channel to call the bridge on though. Turns out channel 9 is usually the one that bridges monitor although I have had to call on channel 16 twice.
Passing through an area north of Ft. Pierce, this is on example of some of the palatial estates. Certainly not ever going to be one of my summer homes. But they are an interesting sight. How one would use so much space is beyond me. I wont mention cleaning since I'm pretty sure these places are outside the bounds of a the typical owner cleaned home.
We had a first dolphin sightings. I suspect they will become common place as we journey north. They usually run in pods numbering 2-7 and although I only captured this one image, there were several instances of dolphins whizzing by us. We aren't the speediest of vessels. As my wife would comment, "...like being on the freeway when you're driving".
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| Approaching the Melbourne north causeway anchorage |
We had selected two possible anchorages on either side of the Eau Gallie Causeway. The northern anchorage is larger and deeper, the southern anchorage is better for northerly winds. The weather indicated we'd be experiencing a wind shift from SE to NW in the early morning hours, about the time we'd be getting underway. Or so NOAA thought. We anchored around 5pm (without the snubber!) easily in the gentle southerly breezes. So guess which anchorage we used?
Yeah, yeah I made a bad choice. And even though Mary said anchor on the south side of the causeway, I still consider it a good learning experience .... a dark night with a howling north wind near a bridge and an anchor which actually dragged about 74 feet. I know this because the anchor alarm was set for 75 feet and we were most assuredly we not in the same spot we were when I went to bed.
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| Basin behind the launch ramp in Melbourne |
But early in the evening we got the dinghy down and ran the dog over to the shore. Since it was so nice we took the dinghy for a little run and found this almost hidden marina and basin near the launch ramp on the southern side of the Causeway. Very nice! Had a nice grilled dinner aboard and a beautiful evening with calm winds and very little wave action. Delightful. Like anything lasts forever ...
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| Mary walking the dog in Melbourne area park |
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| Anchored in Melbourne |
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| Coffee motivation. Lots of coffee motivation ... |
Around 3am (why is it always 3am?) the winds switched and we started getting bounced around. I was up every so often trying to determine if we were dragging which we did a little. And it so so idyllic in the evening!
We ran the dog into shore for a walk and we're underway before 8:30. With only one glitch. We couldn't manhandle the dinghy into it's cradle. The boat was rocking and the wind was too strong. I'd add lack of experience, but we are old salts aren't we? So thankfully we had a towing line (polypropylene so it floats) which I rigged up. We raised the anchor and carefully maneuvered out to the ICW and headed to points north.
Our planned anchorage was near Palm Bay. Plans, luckily, aren't bound by the hard-and-fast. And in our case that was a good thing!
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