Ft. Pierce, Wednesday January 29-31, 2014

We have now been in Ft. Pierce a couple of days.  Several reasons for this: (i) the trip is not intended to be a marathon; (ii) maintenance - yes, it was time to do an oil change and fuel filter change, and this was a good location since there is a West Marine a block away; and (iii) I need to do some work and make a site visit, and this was a good spot to rent a car.  So the oil got changed yesterday.  It has been very windy and wet.  .........Updating this draft prior to posting....It is now Friday, January 31.  I made a work-related trip while here and we are now planning to move farther south in the morning.  If we get an early enough start we will head for Jupiter or that general area.

We have enjoyed our time here in Ft. Pierce.  Found some nice little restaurants, and the marina bar/restaurant (Harbor Cove) is very good and reasonable.........they even let Salty be on the patio!

But wait......just realized why the prices are reasonable - we are getting old and participating in the "early bird specials"!!

Cocoa to Vero, January 26, 2014

Really enjoyed visiting Cocoa Beach - one of those "gems" of a place you would normally not think of visiting.  The downtown area was very nice and we found a terrific Sangria Bar, that had 2 great jazz musicians playing sax and trumpet!  The Sax player was Tony Wynn and we bought his CD.  The marina at Cocoa Village was excellent.

Today - we sailed........actually motored (wind on our nose most of the way, but very light) almost to Vero Beach.  We pulled off the ICW into a marina named Loggerhead Marina.  Very nice and quiet - one drawback is the closest restaurant is a mile and a half walk, and when we got there it was a Chinese takeaway with a couple of tables.  Still, the food was good!

Saw some excellent scenery today on the ICW......temperatures are warming a bit as we move south.  We had a light rain shower just before docking, but nothing that bothered us.

Indian River Queen - Cocoa Village

 

 

 

 

Oh, I almost forgot!  There was a near mutiny on board today, when Salty decided to take over as Captain....well at least he occupied the Captain's seat and refused to move!

 

Salty's Mutiny Attempt

 

 

Salty also saw his first Dolphin today and has learned a new word "Dolphin"......we have seen literally hundreds so far, but he saw his first when one breached by the side of the boat.  He went nuts and was ready to jump in after it!  Now if you saw "where's the dolphin", he runs laps around the deck looking in the water.  He is doing great and I think he is really enjoying the trip too.

By the way - if you are reading this, we would love to hear from you - leave a comment or contact through our website at www.midnightsunii.com.

If you are interested in our current position, go to www.vesselfinder.com and search for Midnight Sun II to find our last reported AIS position.  Soon we will have Satellite tracking - but have electronic problems at the moment.  Hope to have that fixed in the next couple of days

 



Kennedy Point Marina, January 24

We made it in to Kennedy Point Marina and yacht club- which loosely translates to old marina that has seen better days!  But it's the cheapest we have stayed at and has water and electricity. It's going to be a cold blowy so we decided that another marina was worth it to be secure and warm.

We made it down from Daytona today. It was windy but it was generally on our tail. We made 8 knots  at one point with  just the jib. Getting in to the marina was hairy. 20 knot wind on our beam, and only 6 ft of water at best. Then a steep 90 turn into a slip - very thankful for the bow thruster, and the muddy bottom worked as a brake!  Yes, we saw 4.8 ft at the slip. But we are secure and warm, and I don't need to think about the depth until we leave tomorrow. Not quite sure how we will get out, unless there is a bit more water.

We will head south tomorrow but expecting a short day as we need to wait for a package to be delivered

More later!

St. Augustine - January 20

Well I have been delinquent already on the blog!  Tempus is really fugit-ing already.  The boat is currently in St. Augustine.  We came via the following route:
 - Darien to St. Simons, spent 2 nights in St. Simons
 - St. Simons to Fernandina Beach - we caught up with friends there and had a wonderful dinner when we crashed Rick's birthday party!.....thank you for making us feel so welcome!
 - Fernandina to Mayport - we sailed outside into the mouth of the St. John's river at Mayport.  We spent the night at Mayport, but it was rough, high winds, and a lot of "heavy" cargo vessels passing us just a boat length away during the night.

- Mayport to Jacksonville Beach - wonderful little marina, Beach Marine.  We caught up with our "Geo-family" and spent time with Nandra and Rick, and Dave and Rachel.  We spent 2 nights here and had a great brunch together at Billy's.  Thank you to Maggie for being our taxi service!

 

Sunset at Nandra's



 - and today we arrived at St.Augustine.  What a wonderful city this is!  We had a great dinner at the Floridian, and plan to do more exploring here tomorrow before moving on.

Tuesday, January 14

Today, I guess we officially set sail......well not really sail since we motored.  We left Two-Way Marina in Darien, GA and motored to St. Simon's Island.  We are currently at Morningstar Marina - really nice with some really large boats, and a nice restaurant.  Food was good, but I could give the oyster shucker a lesson.

Why did we motor?  The weather this morning was not good - cold (50 deg F) and rain with a 25 knot wind on our nose all of the way.  We were very glad we put the remaining canvas on the boat at 9pm last night - we were tempted to go with just the bimini and dodger.....but the full enclosure was much appreciated today!   We got out of the Altamaha River into the ICW which was quite narrow at times.  it took about 3 hours to motor.  We felt the effects of tides making 7.5 knot easily with the flow, but laboring at 4.5 knot when we turned upstream.

We passed under our first fixed bridge - 64 ft clearance.......60'-6" mast with antennas and other stuff up on the top..........How do you do it?  Grit your teeth, hope you read the clearance right, look ahead, and let someone else take video!

 

And St. Simon's Marina is nice!   Many nice boats!

 

January 12, 2014 - Darien GA

Midnight Sun got new bottom paint for Christmas and we re-launched in Darien at the Two-Way Boatyard on Thursday, January 9.  Friday and Saturday was spent doing projects to re-commission the boat.  This was hampered by bad weather both days.  However, all the electronics worked after being re-connected.  This was quite amazing!

Over Christmas, I re-built the refrigeration unit for the freezer - I had replaced the fridge unit in the summer, and while the freezer worked, it was temperamental cooling erratically.  Rather than replace, this time I bought a new compressor and simply replaced that and the control module - it seems to be working great and is using half the power of the old unit.

Today (Sunday), the weather was great - sunny and about 70 degrees.  We made good progress on the remaining outside projects - solar panels re-installed, sails and stack pack, etc.Thank goodness for YouTube as we needed a refresher on some knots!

Tomorrow, (Monday) we will put on the remaining canvas and check everything over.  I am amazed how things that should take an hour somehow take 3!.

Here are some photos of today, and sunset in Darien.

Salty likes the sun set

Happy New Year!

Well it is now 2014 and we have been preparing for the trip.  Boat re-commissioning is getting close.  The boat is in Brunswick and should now have new bottom paint.  We will see her later this week and hopefully get her back into the water where she belongs.  More to follow soon!  Happy New Year everyone.  I hope 2014 will be a happy and successsul one for everyone.