Day 275 – 288; 2/18 – 3/2
WOW it’s been a long time since we updated the Blog… all is well here!
Sunday, 2/18 we spent our second day in Jupiter tied up to the outdoor bar….alas the weather did not give us a ‘margarita or pina colada day’. It poured all day, so we took the opportunity to clean the boat inside, top to bottom. People ask us what we miss while doing the loop. We surely miss our family and friends, but I miss our cleaning lady! Oh….. and my own sink in the bathroom….. and my hairstylist….. ok, enough of that!
Monday, 2/19 we left Jupiter headed toward Stuart – a 3 hour run. This was all on the Intra Coastal Waterway (ICW) so we had lots of no wake zones and passed under many bridges, some of them needing to be opened for us. We turned off of the ICW into the St. Lucie River as we looked for the Fleming dealership where we would leave Legacy for a week of routine maintenance. We were a bit taken aback by the dark, dirty water of the St. Lucie River and would later learn it was due to discharge from the Lake Okeechobee Canal – a real point of contention with the locals. Mike and Sue Pitchford (Cruise Committee Chairs from AYC) graciously took us out for a pre-dinner cocktail (they winter in Stuart) and we later enjoyed dinner downtown at the Boathouse – the only seats were at the bar, so we enjoyed their Happy Hour sliders and called it a night a bit early – the car was coming for us at 6:30 am the next morning!
Tuesday, 2/20 we were off to Scottsdale, AZ where Carol had a BOD meeting and Gary decided to tag along and get in a few rounds of golf. BOD meetings made for long days and nights, but it was nice to be in the warm weather. Friday, 2/23 we boarded the silver bird again headed for Maryland, arriving at AYC around 6:00 pm to meet friends for dinner there. What a nice time we had with Todd, June, Chris and Trish. Saturday, 2/24 was a day of catching up on local tasks and some planning on our return in June. We went to the car dealership, since we sold Carol’s car when we left, and took advantage of our time at home by getting haircuts and pedicures…. Well at least Carol got one!
Sunday 2/25 was a big milestone – for those who know the saga of buying the condo in Annapolis, we closed on 1/31 after a 14 month delay. On Sunday, 2/25 we met with the architect and builder to turn what we affectionately call ‘the dump’ into what we hope will be something amazing. It is currently 2 units deeded as 1 so there is a 2 bedroom/1 bath unit adjoined with a 1 bedroom/1 bath unit….yup… 2 kitchens….both horrible! It’s not been updated since the late 70’s/early 80’s and needs everything! The good news is we have an amazing location and view with an amazing team to transform it. Stay tuned!
Monday, 2/26 we were up and out early again (left Todd and June’s house at 6:30 am) headed to the airport to get back to Stuart. Special thanks to them for hosting us! We arrived back at the boat around 1:00, thrilled to find Legacy looking great! Our entire list (and it was long) was completed and she is ready to take on our final leg of this journey – engines and other mechanicals maintained, carpets cleaned, canvas repaired, drains cleared, faucet fixed and more…. Let’s just say her ‘hair and nails’ were looking great!
We needed to turn around quite a bit of laundry so decided to leverage our own washer and dryer as well as the marina’s – Burr has some wonderful amenities for the Fleming owners including showers, laundry, courtesy cars and covered outdoor gathering areas. Carol had been in and out of the laundry room a couple times – you have to access it by going through the employees break room. When Gary went to retrieve the last load, he somehow got locked inside…. Without his phone…. After 5:30 pm. Yikes! He hoped Carol would eventually miss him, since we were going out to dinner with some new Fleming owners at 6:00 pm and figure out he didn’t come back and go looking for him. After pounding on the door for a while, someone finally heard him and let him out. The things that happen on the loop!
We enjoyed an amazing dinner with Ed and Jacqui who will be starting their loop on their ‘new to them’ Fleming 55 in about a month. It was so fun to get to know them and share our 9 months of wisdom! We initially thought we’d head out of Stuart on Tuesday, 2/27 but decided to take an extra day (being locked in the laundry room was traumatic….just kidding) and enjoy the downtown Stuart shops, re-provision Legacy and enjoy docktails and tall stories with 4 other couples who are Fleming owners that evening. A great time was had by all!
Our original plan was to head back south to Jupiter and Palm Beach to cross over to the Bahamas on 2/29 but the weather, wind and waves had given us enough pause to question the wisdom of that decision. First we would need to wait for a good weather window to do the crossing, then we would need to get Carol to Nassau to fly to Boston for a meeting on 3/5 and then get back on 3/7, then we would need to enjoy our time there and find a weather window to cross back to the US. It felt more and more like the weather, wind, waves and calendar were not in our favor and we needed to wait and do the Bahamas another time. This was to be a real highlight of our trip, but the more research we did the more we learned that the best time to go is April/May, not Feb/March. Thus, we will wait and go another time. Remember the movie Appollo 13 when Tom Hanks says “we just lost the moon?” That’s what it felt like. But as Arnold Schwarzenegger famously said “We’ll be back!”
When Wednesday, 2/28 came, we put smiles on our faces, bid our friends at Stuart goodbye and headed north to Fort Pierce, FL instead of south to the Bahamas. It was about a 4 hour run to the Safe Harbor Marina, arriving around 2:45. Carol had another meeting around 3:00 (this meeting schedule is getting exhausting) but we did manage to have some pool time around 4:00….. YES WE FOUND THE SUN! We decided on dinner on the boat and looper midnight arrived as usual (8:30/9:00 pm)!
Thursday, 2/29 we finally had a morning free of meetings so jumped in the tender and headed to the manatee center to see if we could see some manatees. The guide there said there were some earlier in the morning, but all we saw was a cement manatee statue! Hrumph!
After touring the Manatee Center (that took about 15 minutes), we headed back to to the boat for lunch, and afternoon by the pool and more meeting and phone calls for Carol (are you seeing a pattern here?) BOD work sounds great until something goes wrong! Enough complaining – we got this! We enjoyed dinner and live music at Skipper’s Cove right at the marina, also chatting with others who snowbird there.
Friday, March 1st we headed back to the Manatee center and were lucky enough to see 2 manatees for about a half hour before they disappeared. It was very cool!
Manatees are large, aquatic mammals that are native to Florida. Adult manatees are typically 9-10 feet long from snout to tail and weigh around 1,000 pounds; however, they may grow to over 13 feet long and weigh more than 3,500 pounds. Manatees have two fore limb flippers that they use for steering movements and to hold vegetation while eating. A large, round, flattened paddle-shaped tail is used for swimming.
Manatees have finely-wrinkled, leathery looking thick skin that continuously flakes off. Algae often grows on the backs and tails of manatees, which makes their skin color appear green or brown. Barnacles (found mostly on coastal dwelling manatees) often leave round scars from attachment sites; movement from saltwater to freshwater habitats clears the animals of these saltwater hitchhikers. The manatee’s flaky skin adaptation also helps keep the algae and barnacles from building up on the animals. These unique aquatic creatures definitely have some highly specialized features.
Manatees are aquatic herbivores (plant-eaters). Also known as “sea cows,” these herbivores usually spend up to eight hours a day grazing on seagrasses and other aquatic plants. A manatee can consume from 4 to 9 percent of its body weight in aquatic vegetation daily.
Manatees use their tails in an up and down motion to propel themselves forward. Strong swimmers, they are capable of reaching speeds of 15 miles per hour in short bursts. Manatees rest from 2 to 12 hours a day either suspended near the water’s surface or lying on the bottom, usually for several hours at a time.
While most people tend to see many manatees gathered together at winter warm-water sites, during the rest of the year these animals are semi-social as they travel around the state’s waterways in search of food, mates or places to rest. Except for cow/calf pairs and small mating herds, manatees do not need to travel together although they do socialize when other manatees are encountered.
Manatees reach sexual maturity in 3-5 years (females) and 5-7 years (males) and may live over 65 years in captivity. Gestation is approximately 13 months and usually one calf is born. The calf may stay with its mother (cow) for up to 2 years. Male manatees (bulls) are not part of the family unit. Bulls will leave a cow alone after her breeding period is over. Of the wild manatees that reach adulthood, only about half are expected to survive into their early 20s.
We returned to the marina for an afternoon by the pool, followed by a bit of a rainy day in the afternoon and dinner on the boat. One cool thing we saw, but didn’t know what it was, is this stark difference in the color of the water as we headed back to the marina…. An actual dividing line – can you see it below:
We wondered if it was a demarcation where there are sea grasses under the dark side and no sea grasses under the lighter side? It wasn’t a shadow. It wasn’t pollution. Turns out this is where the salt water from the ICW and the fresh water flowing from the creek meet. Very cool!
Saturday, 3/2 was our day to pull up stakes and head to Vero Beach (about a 12 mile, 2 hour run) to the Vero Beach City Marina, adjacent to the Vero Beach Yacht Club. We left around 11:15 and had lunch along the way, arriving at the marina around 12:45. More on Vero Beach later. We’ve covered a lot of ground (or should I say water) in February…. 12 trips and almost 500 miles at an average of 8 knots.
Good news is…. We finally found the sun and some warm weather!
chashurley
Glad you are headed home! Chuck and Ginnie