After leaving Brunswick, Ga we pushed down the coast. The weather did not want to cooperate so we were forced to make use of the ICW. It is a love/hate relationship. We did visit some of our usual anchorages on the way: Fernandina, St. Augustine, Cocoa Beach.
We were on our way to Lake Worth, cruising past many good anchorages in the interest of covering ground, when we decided to stop at Vero Beach. We have avoided VB for years. There are multiple reasons for this. First, the City Marina Mooring Field requires guests to raft up. The idea of sharing a mooring does not appeal to us, but we suppressed those feelings and did anyway. In doing so, we met some wonderful cruisers and enjoyed a town that we would have otherwise bypassed
Vero Beach is just North of Ft. Pierce Inlet. It offers many benefits to the cruising sailor besides the City Marina. The city has easy water access to restaurants, walking trails and a dog park. We used all of them. Of great use to cruising sailors are the free buses that roam the area. Sure you have to know the schedule, but talk about making life easy; there is a stop at the Marina they come to about every half hour.
There are islands that form the protective harbor on the ICW. The dinghy ride through them is its own jungle cruise. Where you will see plenty of derelict boats, but also Manatee, Osprey and other creatures.
The dock space at the marina is limited and it really caters to boats 40 feet or less, but the face docks and the fuel dock can accommodate much larger, but in winter finding space will be close to impossible. That leaves the mooring field
During our stay, we made final preparations for going to the Bahamas. We had packages shipped. We drove to Ft. Lauderdale to get new solar panels from eMarine Inc. We had the pets examined by mobile vets for their Bahamas Health Certificate. Then we scheduled our own COVID NaaT tests, required by the Bahamas to enter.
Finally, the day came and we made way early afternoon to Ft Pierce inlet for a night passage to the Bahamas.
