Moving on

Moving on

Saturday 2nd January 2021

Today was our last day at Vero Beach City Marina and tomorrow morning we are moving. It’s always lovely to arrive at your destination. Whether it’s been a short day sail or a much longer passage, the uncertainties of the voyage can be set aside and it feels great to relax. In contrast, as we prepare to move on we start to think about the weather, navigation, tides, water depths and where the next anchorage will be. I really enjoy the planning, but there’s also an element of nervousness that creeps into things. It’s particularly hard to move on when you have been in one place for two weeks and it has been such fun. We can’t believe our stay here has gone by so quickly and yet at the same time, we feel out of practice with the day-to-day activities of cruising. 

We finished up a few final boat jobs – refilling the third propane tank, re-launching the dinghy, re-fitting the depth sounder / knot meter, washing down the deck and cockpit and topping up our fresh water tanks. We think we are as ready as we can be and we have a general plan of how we are going to get from Vero Beach to Key West. We have four weeks to make the journey and it’s only about 250 miles. We want to make use of good weather windows and be positioned to arrive a couple of days before Tasha and her friend MacKenzie fly in but not necessarily much earlier as we’ll have all of February in the area. Once we sail south West Palm Beach we will be in new territory for us, so it will be exciting.

Before we leave Vero Beach we wanted to makes sure that we had a chance to see Paul and Fran. Paul was discharged from hospital this afternoon and we spent an hour around at their house and it was great to see that he is doing very well, just a little tired from the ordeal. 

Tonight we’re going to cook salmon with pasta in a lemon cream sauce, then tomorrow morning we have the excitement of getting Cotinga off the dock and out of the narrow entrance to this row of slips. Hopefully not too exciting!

Mike

27 39.482 N, 80 22.215 W

Gloria's brother Paul - as you can see he is looking well after his surgery.

Fran - sitting out in the Lanai (screened porch) we all take off our masks

Cotinga on the dock in Vero Beach City Marina - our home for the past two weeks. We need to back Cotinga straight out (to clear the poles) and then back to port to get out into the channel. It's actually quite tight!

Three full propane tanks in the propane locker. (It's actually "illegal" to have other things stored in this locker but the bucket contains bottles of lantern fuel). Why do I want to show you this .... ???