We have been traveling for 6 days and only stopping to anchor overnight and we're very glad to have reached Vero Beach. This is a good place to pick up a mooring at the city marina and get supplies, through out trash and refuel. Chico likes it because he gets to walk on solid earth! We are planning to stay here for a week. We'll rent a car and drive up to Viera, FL to visit my cousins Elaine and Alan for a couple days. Then we'll come back and finish our errands before setting out for Jacksonville.
Let me catch you up on our traveling excitement. We went off shore from Boot Key to Rodriquez Key which was a nice sailing day and about 45 miles. We anchored on the north side of the island and had a comfortable night at anchor. The next morning we dropped anchor at 07:00 and went off shore again we beat into the NE wind and it was slow going. We made 24 miles and anchored in Angelfish Creek. On the way south we had anchored here and knew the holding was good and it was a quiet anchorage. We are fortunate to have a shallow draft on our catamaran because the enterance is only 5 ft. in depth and larger, deeper draft boats can't get in without hitting bottom. Again we pulled anchor at 0:700and went into Biscayne Bay towards Miami. We just motored this day because again the winds were out of the NE and we were only going to the north end of Key Biscayne to pick up a mooring in Crandon Marina for the night. That was a 27 mile day and we stopped early because we were pretty tired of going long days.
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| Miami the morning of the storm |
Now comes the exciting part!!! We left again at 07:00 and went outside at Miami through Government Cut. It was a nice sunny morning and even though the wind was still out of the NE we motor sailed with the Jenny only. All was good and we could see some rain showers forming on land. We were 2and a half miles off shore and it was bright and sunny out there. We had planned to go in at Ft. Lauderdale, but it was only 11:00 and the going was great so we decided to go farther up to Boca Raton Inlet. We had gotten about 3 miles passed Ft. Lauderdale and I asked Billy what a water spout looked like when it was forming. He said it had to be thunder clouds and these were not high enough. I looked behind us and could see what looked like water being pulled up off the ocean and when I pointed it out he said, "that's a water spout forming"! It was back at Ft. Lauderdale Inlet, so we said let's keep pushing north away from it and rolled in the sail. We no sooner had the sail in than it started raining hard and within seconds the wind started blowing hard. When Billy looked at the gauges it was 73 knots! He didn't tell me that until it was over! I got us all (including Chico) in lifejackets while Bill pointed us into 4-6 ft. waves (some more like 8 foot) at a 45 degree angle. This pointed us toward land but we were being blown further off shore. I got on the weather radio and NOAA said a line of severe thunderstorms had been sighted to the north of us at Boca Raton and Deerfield Beach and the warning was until 12:45. It was 12:10 at this point so we rode the waves and held into a 45 degree angle for about a half hour with 60-68 knot winds deminishing to 50-60 knots in about 15minutes. By 12:45 the wind had settled to 35-40 knots and the waves were down to 3-4 feet. At this point things were getting back to normal and when we checked the chart plotter we had been blown a mile off shore and started getting back to our track. Bill says he didn't mind being blown that way because there was nothing to hit out there and if we had gone into Ft. Lauderdale we'd have been way to close to land and other boats and chances are we would have hit something since we wouldn't have had time to get tied up anywhere. We pretty pleased with how the boat handled the storm and didn't feel threatened with capsizing or any other dangers. By the time we got to Boca Raton Inlet it was back to being a nice sunny day, but the temperature had dropped a good 15 degrees. Boca Raton is another inlet that not all boets can get into because the depth goes down to 5.5 feet. We anchored to Boca Raton lake and, needless to say, had a cocktail as soon as we were anchored! That was a squall we will never forget, but looking back even now, it doesn't seem as bad as I thought when it was happening.
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| Pelican in Crandon Park, Key Biscayne |
From there we stayed in the ICW anchoring in Lakeworth and Ft. Pierce just for overnight. Now for a little rest and visiting family.
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