On Saturday, December 23rd, we sailed down the ICW to Vero Beach. That's right, sailed. The wind was from the east, we were heading south, and although the navigable channel of the Indian River is relatively narrow, the river itself is wide enough that we got enough wind to keep us going at 6.5 knots. It was a joy to be underway without the motor, particularly in the ICW, where motoring is the usual mode of propulsion.
Actually, it seems that motoring is the usual mode of propulsion for most cruisers, even us rag-baggers. We had talked a bit with some friends of Severn Star, who had visited them down in the Bahamas, and they said how surprised they were that everyone seemed to be motoring all the time. That observation surprised us -- weren't we sailing everywhere in the Bahamas? That is, except when we needed to make hot water. Or if we needed to charge the batteries, and figured it made more sense and was better for the engine if we motored to our next anchorage, rather than sailed there and then ran the engine at anchor. And of course we motor into and out of each anchorage.
We were having drinks with some other cruisers in Vero Beach, and one couple on a Gulfstar admitted to motoring all the time. (From his magazine articles, it sounds like Tom Neale, who also has a Gulfstar, motors everywhere too.) We gave them a little gentle ribbing, but later, while talking about fuel prices, we mentioned that we'd used about 200 gallons of diesel during our 5 months in the Bahamas. "How could you use so much fuel?" one person asked. "You told me the wind was so perfect in the Bahamas that you sailed everywhere, and had lots of windpower to charge your batteries, so you never ran your engine!"
We pointed out, a bit defensively, that we'd had to motor there and most of the way back, and that we'd covered a lot of miles in the Bahamas. And we listed our exceptions, getting into anchorages and so on. We did sail most of the time -- didn't we?
When we got back to the boat, I pulled out our logbook. My first look at the mileage we covered made me feel vindicated, as we'd covered nearly 2000 miles en route to and from, and in, the Bahamas. Then I pulled out the calculator. I figured we move at around 6.5 knots under either power or sail, we take around 20 minutes to drop and to haul anchor, had around 60 anchorages, and ran the motor at anchor about 15 hours. Put all together, it works out that while in the Bahamas we motored or motorsailed about 60% of the time. So much for our perceptions!
The wind just won't stop blowing from the north, keeping the temperature on the chilly side for south Florida, but we still feel like we're in the Promised Land. We're rafted up on a mooring ball to Rhapsody, who we haven't seen since Maine; Ariel, who we last saw in Annapolis in the spring, is not far away. There are lots of cruising boats here, and we met a whole bunch of nice folks at a big Christmas potluck. To our astonishment (as we are in Florida), the town not only tolerates but actually welcomes cruisers. Although anchoring is not allowed, the mooring charge is a reasonable $8/night. The municipal marina, which runs the moorings, has a big dinghy dock, lots of dumpsters, showers, a laundry room, and even a boater's lounge, and when we went to check in the staff was incredibly nice and helpful. The bar down the street (which has a dinghy dock, too) has 2-for-1 drinks during happy hour, ensuring an ample supply of cruisers there to socialize with. The beach isn't far. And there's a free bus on weekdays to the shopping centers -- the grocery, the mall, the Wal-Mart, the dive shop, and the marine store. We haven't gotten the chance to check any of it out yet, but we sure plan to. Rumor is there's even a movie theater at the mall.
What a contrast with the rude reception we got just 40 miles to the north, in the Melbourne area! We should have left the boat here for our Disney trek. Maybe we'll stay here to do the last bits of boat work, rather than going on to Lake Worth. Heck, maybe we'll just stay here, period.
A lot of boats are "just staying here", at least for a week or so. Cold front after cold front has swept Florida, churning the Gulf Stream into a wet sierra of steep peaks and rolling valleys, and nobody's been able to cross over to the Bahamas. We heard one report from a boat in the Bahamas, en route to Nassau, of 12-15 foot seas and 25-30 knot winds. Yucko.
Though Vero Beach isn't really one of the Bahamas crossing staging areas, Lake Worth just one inlet south of us is packed full of waiting boats -- a hundred and fifty, according to one report we heard -- and there's no point in pushing on if there's no room at the inn. There are a lot of unhappy boaters out there, people with schedules and plans, waiting on the Gulf Stream.
The good thing about the ceaseless wind is that our wind generator has been cranking out amps. We haven't had to run our engine yet since we've gotten here. We haven't yet turned the heater system completely over to hot-water-only, so it still circulates hot water around the cabin even if the fans are off, but it still heats the water enough for showers in less than ten minutes. When we are convinced we won't need the heater any more for a while, we'll throw the "summer valve" shutting the room-heating system off completely, so we should get hot water even faster.
I passed the General class ham radio exam last week, so we've started trying to hook up our new Pactor IIe HF modem. The radio talks to the computer now, and vice versa, but we haven't actually connected successfully to the ham-radio mailbox gateways. We hope to get it going before we leave the US, as it will be a lot more convenient to send email from the boat (as we do now, with the cell phone) than to lug the computer in to town (and pay $$$).
Speaking of radios, Santa dropped by Windom and brought me a nifty portable AM/FM CD player. It's been really frustrating being on watch and unable to listen to the radio or a disc because it would bother the off-watch person trying to snooze. We'd occasionally listened to shortwave on our SSB, which we have set up with headphones -- Britt tunes in football games or news, while I prefer radical right-wing survivalist militia talk shows (purely for their amusement value). Britt has a little shortwave/FM radio, but that's his. I'm looking forward to rockin' across the Gulf Stream in a few weeks.