West Palm, Boca Raton and Ft. Lauderdale

Wow, wow and wow!  Too many gorgeous homes, yachts and resorts to make pictures of and they all seem to get bigger with each move southward!

We spent a wonderful Thanksgiving with previous next door neighbors in their home in Wellington, which is just west of West Palm Beach.  It was really nice to be off of the boat for a couple of days enjoying a warm Florida Thanksgiving week-end.  Of course we had the traditional "turkey with all the fixings" meal followed by fishing in the lake behind their house and then later decorating the Christmas tree in their living room!  It was certainly the next best thing to being back home with our families.

On Friday we drove out to the beach and the girls went fishing on the pier, which turned out to be a lot of fun because the fish were really biting that day.  They caught a dozen fish in less than two hours!  Very exciting! With a cooler half full of fish we decided that a fish fry was definitely in order for dinner that night!

On Saturday they drove us around West Palm Beach and we all had lunch at a Tiki Bar on the waterfront before heading back to the marina to show them our boat and say our goodbyes.  It was a really good holiday week-end but time to move on!

Fishing on the Lake Worth pier!

More beautiful water here!

West Palm Beach waterfront

From West Palm we went on to Boca Raton where we anchored in beautiful Boca Raton Lake for several nights.  We also met back up with friends from our yacht club and marina back in Hampton who are on their sailboat for the winter and will eventually be going to the Bahamas.  The four of us really enjoyed spending a few days together in Boca.  We went to the beach which was really close by and on our last night we walked into town for dinner and then attended the Boca Raton Christmas parade, which was pretty awesome!
Scenes around Boca lake.

 This yacht was parked really close to where we were anchored and someone started decorating it for the Christmas boat parade while we were there!

Boca Christmas parade

Next stop before the holidays was Ft. Lauderdale - "yachting capital of the world"!

Christmas lights in Ft. Lauderdale

Cocoa, Vero Beach and Stuart

Hello again.  I know some of you have been wondering if or when I would write another post.  I'm sorry for the lapse.

We've been having a great time as we've continued to travel further south down through central (east coast) Florida, which is also called the Treasure Coast.

We went to Cocoa on my birthday and enjoyed a two day stay there in a beautiful anchorage just in front of this beautiful marina and the quaint little town of Cocoa.

 From Cocoa we traveled on down to Vero Beach, which has been nick-named Velcro Beach because all the cruising boaters love it so much that once there you do not want to leave - and it is true!  We ended up staying there almost two weeks!  The marina is great, so is the beach and really great shopping!  They have a free bus system that stops right at the marina office twice each hour - once for a trip to the beach and once for the route that takes you right to all the good shopping.  It was the easiest place to get around that we have visited and that is so nice when you have no car!

Finally, all the snowbirds started catching up to us while at Vero and we met so many nice people from all over the northeast who make this trip south every year!  Many of them will stay in Vero until after Thanksgiving and then wait for a nice weather window to make the crossing of the Gulf Stream and on to the Bahamas for the winter.  Others will go the Keys for the winter and then there are also some who will go through the St. Lucie River, across Lake Okeechobee and on to Fort Myers on the gulf coast.  It's been really interesting to talk to different people who have many years of experience doing this trip and we are learning a lot!

The mooring field at Vero Beach.

Vero Beach

I forgot to write about the manatees that we saw at Titusville.  We have been traveling in Manatee Zones, which basically just restricts power boaters from traveling at high speeds because their propellers are dangerous to the manatee for several weeks now.  We have not really encountered any near our boat while motoring but we sure got a good closeup look at several who hang out around that marina!  They love to drink fresh water - as opposed to saltwater and when we washed our boat one afternoon we had several - I believe we counted five one time coming up around the bottom of our boat to drink the water running off when we rinsed it!  We snapped several pictures but honestly it was difficult to get a really good shot but here are a couple.  They are really ugly creatures!

 Here they are between two boats on our dock.

Once we finally left Vero Beach we made our way on down to Stuart and just before arriving there on Rick's birthday we saw the most beautiful emerald green water!  We were at the St. Lucie inlet and it is the most beautiful water we have seen so far!  It should just keep getting prettier and prettier as we continue going south!

Stuart is a great little town and there was lots going on over the week-end with a reggae concert on the waterfront as well as a farmer's/craft market.  They have revitalized the downtown waterfront section and it is filled with wonderful shops, art galleries, restaurants and bars.  Very nice place to visit!

I may not write much of anything until after Christmas and New Years but I will pick back up after the busyness of the holidays is over.  We will be spending our Thanksgiving with ex-next door neighbors in Youngsville who now live in West Palm Beach!  We are really looking forward to seeing them!

Happy Thanksgiving everyone!

Moving On

As I said - we really enjoyed exploring St. Augustine but after nine days a change of scenery and pace was really instore.  We traveled not too far south to Marineland, which turned out to be not only the dolphin water park but also a very nice marina - both of which are located in the town of Marineland, FL!  Because it was such a nice place we ended up staying there for a week and thoroughly enjoyed it! 

The water park originally opened in 1937 and used to feature performances with the dolphins very much like you now see at Sea World.  Now, it's primarily a place where you can view the dophins through glassed tanks - or oceanariums - or you can pay to interact with them such as feeding or swimming with them.  We didn't actually do any of that but we did spend some time one afternoon observing them in the huge tanks.  They are very entertaining to watch because they like to show off!

One of the things we liked best about this marina was that you can walk right across the street and you're at the beach!  We had fantastic weather the entire week and we spent a lot of time walking and sitting on the beach!  We even found a few pieces of sea glass!

They have great bike paths in this area so we took advantage and rode every morning.  Some it even goes right along the top of the dunes so you can see the ocean as you ride!

They also had a farmer's market every Tuesday morning where we bought some delicious homemade breads and pastries along with fruits and vegetables.

It was a great week and of course some more beautiful sunsets that I cannot resist but then it was time to move on again!

Daytona Beach was our next stop but we only spent one night there because we have been there many times in the past.  I did snap a few pictures as we passed through.

From Daytona we went south through the Merritt Island National Wildlife Refuge on our way to Titusville.  The refuge is very large and we were in it almost all day!  We saw dolphins the entire way as well as many, many birds.  We also spotted our first mannatee and our first alligator!  I wasn't quick enough to get a picture of either of them but I did make one of these pelicans.

Many of you have visited Kennedy Space Center so you know how huge the building there is - well, we spotted it on the horizon long before we realized what we were actually seeing!  We were looking at it for hours and hours that afternoon and then we anchored and could still see it across the water!

This anchorage was just north of Titusville where we ended up staying in a marina several days due to very high winds.  It was a good place to visit with a beautiful astronaut memorial park and a great space museum!  Here are a few pictures from the park.

Me and President Kennedy!

 John Glenn's handprints.

   



St. Augustine

Our nation's oldest city - founded by Pedro Menendez de Aviles in 1565 and of course home of the famous Fountain of Youth discovered by Ponce de Leon.  I believe the history here is some of the most interesting of any place I've ever visited!  So many of our nation's firsts are here - the oldest wooden school house, the site of the first Catholic mass ever said in America as well as the first Jail!

Upon entering the harbor via the St. Augustine inlet one of the first landmarks that you see is The Great Cross, which was a gift to the city.  It is believed to be the tallest in the country and it weighs 70 tons.  The cross marks the sight of the first mass.

The next piece of history you see is the fort named Castillo de San Marcos, which we were told has "never, ever been taken".

We thoroughly enjoyed our stay here.  We bought an Old Town trolley pass that was good for a week and we certainly got our money's worth.  We were able to get off and on as many times as we wanted and it also included unlimited trips aboard the trolley that goes out (hourly) to St. Augustine Beach, which is on Anastasia Island.  The island is connected to the mainland by the beautiful Bridge of Lions.

You can see one of the white marble lions in the last two pictures.  There is an identical one on the other side at the foot of the bridge.  These lions were a gift from Spain to the city on one of it's significant birthdays (can't remember which one!).

Henry Flagler, a man who had to leave home at the age of 14 to find work because his mother was so poor she could no longer afford to feed him became an extremely wealthy man and built most of the old churches and hotels in St. Augustine.  He, with one of the Rockafellas founded Standard Oil Co.  He also built the Florida East Coast Railway, which runs all the way to Key West.  One of his most beautiful hotels here was named the Ponce de Leon.  It is now the home of Flagler College.

Statue of Ponce de Leon, which is on the main plaza (middle of this picture).

Old Ponce de Leon hotel - now Flagler College.

Another hotel built by Flagler, which is now home of the Lightner Museum.

The oldest Jail.

Full moon rising over St. Augustine.

St. Augustine waterfront restaurants, shops, etc.

St. Augustine has numerous boats for taking tourists out on the water.  Here is a beautiful tall masted clipper ship.

We had a ring side seat (from our boat) for watching all of the boats and it was quite obvious that the most popular one was this pirate ship named the Black Raven!  Very entertaining to listen to all the singing of pirate songs, the aaarg's and all the saber rattling!  This smaller pirate ship would sneak up on the large one and to the surprise of the passengers aboard the large ship would start firing cannons at them!  It was quite a show and a lot of loud cannon fire echoing across the harbor every afternoon!