Sticky South Florida

Now that we are in sunny southern Florida, time seems to stand still. After moving so fast to get here, we have finally slowed down. One motivation is the fantastic weather and beautiful beaches, the other is exhaustion: When we planned our trip, I don’t think either of us had anticipated the mental and physical toll of spending each night route planning, each day sailing or motoring through unforgiving waters for 10+ hours and then arriving in an unfamiliar port each night. Now, it is time to slow down and smell the bougainvillea.

Earlier this week, we stayed for several days at a mooring in Vero Beach, “Velcro Beach” to in-the-know boaters. Dave had a chance to perform some long-delayed boat maintenance and Amelia and I spent time kicking around the beach, local library and playground. Then, we took a short hop (including some ICW sailing!) to our present destination of Stuart, Florida. We are now on a mooring on the St. Lucie River and exploring Stuart’s many attractions including a jazz festival that starts this weekend.

Places like Vero and Stuart seem to be havens for some of the more hard-bitten cruising types. When we arrived on Wednesday we had a chance to experience the weekly “sunset celebration” at the marina here – a dockside cocktail hour/pot luck where many sea stories were traded. It made us feel pretty green, as many of the couples (and they were all couples, mostly retired), had made an ICW-Bahamas trip a yearly migration. In fact, one sailor was trading stories about his fourth world sailing circumnavigation. I don’t think either plan is in the future for us, but we certainly sponged up their advice.

It has been interesting meeting the many different characters who choose to take a little time out and live on a sailboat, either for an extended vacation or as part of a long-term plan. We were expecting to meet a lot more families. Our late departure, however, seems to have put us behind schedule to meet up with the family cruising culture that everyone told us we would find. We did have a chance to spend a couple of days in Saint Augustine with a terrific family from Wyoming whose daughter is a little older than Amelia. Like us, they were delayed by mechanical issues and rushing south. The girls had a great time together and we plan to connect with them again in West Palm Beach, our next stop.

In addition to human encounters, we’ve had a chance to experience a lot of wildlife. We mentioned the whales we saw earlier, and we continue to see a fantastic array of birds. We encounter dolphins almost daily. In Vero, I had a chance to spend time in close proximity to an entire pod during an early morning kayak ride. And, of course, there are the alligators…