April 7 - Overall this has been a very productive week however boring for those interested in our adventures. We have been able to wash the boat, rework our Polyglow which has made the hulls look like new again and Deb used Cetol to re-stain the main bulkhead. Like I say, we have had a good maintenance week and that doesn't count the fact I rebuilt the head. This morning we awoke to 60 degrees and for us this was pretty cold. We warmed up the boat with our little propane heater and then went to Walmart with some people a few boat down who had a car. In addition, they showed us their new double wide they just closed on this week. It is a very nice place in a nice 55+ community with their own 70 slip marina. We stocked up the heavy things for our boat for the next week and are ready to depart on Monday. On Saturday afternoon we did laundry and now we are waiting for it to dry. Next Happy Hour and we will post pictures tomorrow as long as the internet connection works again.

I just had to make sure you could see some places in Stuart, Florida. To the right is the picture of the sign that greats you as you are around Florida.

 Not only does the town have a sign, they also have a statue of a Sailfish and it seems to be their claim to fame. I'm not sure if they are actually the sailfish capitol of the world or not but they sure do promote themselves as such.

I think we have already said it but we really enjoyed Stuart as a stop. We found a great bird shop that can take care of Jimmy Buffett next year so we will definitely be going to the Bahamas for two months. We may find out in Washington DC that we don't have to board him that long but who knows. (Just in case you just joined us, Jimmy Buffett is our parrot.)

Below you can see the anchorage from the bridge and then to the right you can see the marina office and dinghy dock. They have great showers here along with good washing machines. Just in case you decide to stay for a while, you have to go to Duffy's and get their MVP card. With the card, between 2 and 4 pm you can get 40 percent off all their food items. This was exactly what we would do every other day. Stop in at 3:30 and get an early dinner and then their happy hour started at 4 pm with 2 for one drinks. Everything seemed to work out for us.

 I realize this is a picture of a very white sail locker but I am pretty proud of it. I mentioned all of the maintenance we had done this week and this is one of the projects. After cleaning the entire locker with lots of bleach, I then drying the entire locker and painting it with a VERY high quality white paint for exterior use. I have found that this makes it very easy to clean up after you get some dirt or mold into the locker. Yes, it takes some time to prep and then paint it but it really does make the boat look good in places everyone doesn't see but you..

We are leaving in the morning, Monday, for Titusville. We will take it nice and slow making Ft. Pierce Monday afternoon, Melbourne on Tuesday and then anchor out in Titusville on Wednesday when we finally go into the marina we booked a month ago on Thursday. We should see Steve and Linda Bennett on Friday and then I may actually get to see Sun n Fun, the big airshow, on Tuesday by renting a car. I hope I will get to see a few of my old KR friends when I am there. We plan on having a great reunion with Steve and Linda during the week.

 April 13 - Here it is Friday the 13th and we have made it to Titusville. We left Monday as mentioned above to make the trip up to Ft Pierce. We went in to the Dock at Stuart so we could pump out the holding tank, fill our water tanks and wash off the dinghy. The only thing negative I found about Stuart is that the water must be mineral rich because the grass and other things grow quickly on your bottom. It was great, however, that they had a dock you can pull up to and then I hoisted the dinghy up on the dock, turned it upside down and gave it a good cleaning before putting it back in the water. We decided to tow the dinghy up to Titusville because we may want to use it each day.

We paid our bill and got underway at 9:50 and motored up to Fort Pierce setting anchor by 2:30. I threw in those times but for most of them you can go to our Cruising Time and Distance Page to see the details of how long and how many miles we covered. In addition, don't forget that you can also see where we anchored each night on our Where is Freedom page. While I'm covering other web pages, I also had a request of what Deb does to take care of the interior wood. We got quite a few complements on our boat and she is as proud of her part as I am. She wrote us her method of taking care of the teak and I have posted that on our Maintenance page.

When we left Ft. Pierce the next day we saw another place we will stop next time through. This is a picture of the anchorage at Cocoa, Florida. The picture to the right is one of the city provided dock for boats to tie up to during the day for access to shore. This is at a public park which means you can dispose of your trash and get water there if there are spigots. Since one of our goals is to also find places to visit when we return south, this one is on our list. I will say that one of the frustrations with cruising is where to land our dinghy. We have found that a few, not as many as I had thought, towns just don't have a way for us to get to shore without going into a marina. Now we have learned that as long as there is a bridge and a tree we can lock the dinghy to, then we can get to shore because that is our property - public. We may be making more use of that or we may just go to the majority of the places that do want us as we find them.

We left the next morning and arrived in Melbourne, FL. It was interesting because I am on a list serve which is for Live Aboard's. Although we live on our boat we are actually considered cruisers since we move all of the time. I won't digress too much but I had emailed one of the people on the list serve about where to anchor in Melbourne and got the email after we had anchored. All he did is complain about the town and anchoring. He did this on the list serve which created a complete set of other emails of people who love Melbourne. Who knows, it started raining 15 min after we set anchor and continued until dark. Nobody came to visit us and tell us to move so I don't have a problem with them. However, I'm glad nobody sent me any forwarded attachment jokes (THANK YOU) because I was using the cell phone to get all these emails and that takes time. It ends up that there are a number of towns that have restrictions on anchoring. So many the State of Florida has now passed a law which prohibits towns from creating such restrictive restrictions. We will see where that goes over the next year with what will definitely be court cases.

After we left Melbourne just before we got to Titusville we passed the NASA building for housing the Space Shuttle. We went to Cape Kennedy about 10 years ago while on a vacation and it is very impressive.

We also passed a visitors center that is just west of the Addison Point bridge at mile 885 on the intercoastal waterway. There is water deep enough to anchor on the north side of the bridge and since, again, it is public land we plan on anchoring there on our way back down and going over to the visitors center. I doubt we go out to the launch facility again but who knows.

As we approached Titusville, they opened the swing bridge for us. This makes the millionth bridge I think we have been under or through since leaving Miami. Normally, we would have gone off shore more and skipped many of the bridges, however, the winds were against us and my friend Gary told me you just have to do the inside route at least once.

We anchored off of Titusville and found the City Marina provides a free dinghy dock. Like I said, it is nice when towns want you. We dinghy 'd in, looked around, walked to the West Marine and then to have an early dinner out then back. I will get Deb to write her encounter with a Manatee which you will enjoy.

Speaking of Manatee's, they are all over the place here in Titusville. We have counted 7 of them that we could see from our boat yesterday. I think they are pretty cool creatures so I am posting a number of pictures only to the right and below. One of the sequences is a mother and her baby which looks like it is at least a year old. The larger Manatees are more than 6 feet long and weigh about 300 pounds to give you an idea of the size of the ones you are looking at.

Some of the pictures get up up pretty close such as the one below. In almost all of them, you can make out the scaring of the propeller marks on their backs. This is the reason there are such restrictions on speeds in and outside of the intercoastal waterway.

Now wasn't that cute.

We have met up with Steve and Linda who are at a campground about 8 miles away. We forgot to take pictures but they will be forthcoming. To the right you can see the picture of me in their camper preparing avocados for an appetizer. We are having a great visit and eating way too much.

We are planning on going sailing today so hopefully there will be wind from a direction we can use but regardless it will be a good day on the water that should generate a few more pictures.

And ask and you will receive. We just got back from sailing and are sitting at Steve and Linda's campground again so the below is the Friday the 13th evening update.

 We left the marina on time, imagine that, we planned to leave at 10 and we left just after that. Steve is a boater too, so we took off and I gave Steve the wheel and served as 1st Mate. What a great sail south.

We went through the swing bridge and then headed down past Cape Kennedy. Since we would be between two bridges, we decided to just use the main and go at 4 knots instead of setting speed records.

I was able to catch this picture of Linda (left) and Deb as we passed the Space Shuttle facility at Cape Kennedy. You can just make out the facility between them but I'll bet most of you don't really care about NASA with regards to the picture.

We were all having a great relaxing day.

We were just about to stop and drop anchor for lunch and guess who showed up. Yep, the Dolphins. They were everywhere and everytime I put the camera down I saw the picture that I should have taken.

So it goes, we were having a great time and after a great sail we also were seeing lots of dolphins in sight of the space shuttle visitors center. What a day for sailors and pilots.

When we got back to the marina, we moved to a different slip. They were there to help us and it was a good thing. Since it was Friday the 13th something had to go wrong. My reverse wouldn't always stay engaged. They guys helped us out although the reverse stayed in place during the docking. (Later I found I need to clean and grease the parts.)

When we got back, there were lots of Manatees hanging around I think they liked the shade of our boat. These two were having way too much fun and I got a unique shot of both sides of a Manatee head.

These guys are too cool and we are having way too much fun. I think I could live my life this way, oops, I am.

More in the next update and we have a car rented to go to Sun n Fun on Tuesday so we should get a few airplane shots too.