Day 30 - Nov 25, 2013
It was a long night of listening to the wind howl and waves slapping against the stern of the boat. Donna and I were awake when the alarm clock went off at 0530. I made coffee and began looking at all the weather forecasts on the web. Mostly they agreed and the consensus wasn’t good. Winds were blowing from the east at 18 with gusts to 28 and were forecast to increase as the day progressed. The outlook for the next three days also looked like repeats.
After finishing two cups of coffee, I went topside and surveyed the situation, trying to see if there was a way we could safely get out of the slip. The boat was bow-in in a very large fixed pier slip. The wind was channeled down between two buildings and was hitting the boat almost dead on the stern. The channeled wind was almost constant at 25+ miles per hour. There was no way we were backing out of the slip without damaging the boat or the dinghy.
After about an hour of theorizing how it could be done, I replaced several dock lines about the boat with longer lines and ran the starboard aft spring line to the starboard winch. Back inside the boat, Donna and I discussed the possibility of leaving and the forecast weather for the next week. We decided that leaving today looked like the best option so we started making preparations.
It took about half and hour to extricate the boat from the slip. Working slowly and methodically, we winched the boat out to the outboard pilings, removed the lines and were able to back out without damaging the dinghy/davits or the boat. By 0945 we were headed back to the ICW.
After entering the ICW, we moved along past Vero Beach and headed toward Fort Pierce. I rolled the jib out to about 90% and our motoring speed increased. As we moved along it became a rough, wet and dreary day. Very low gray clouds and rain squalls kept rolling in from the east. Winds in the squalls increased to as high as 32. We did see sunshine twice for a few seconds and a rainbow. After passing Fort Pierce, the squalls became a little stronger and more frequent which forced us to reduce sail.
We reached the intersection of the ICW and the St Lucie River around 1500 hrs. We turned up river and found the usually shallow channel had evidently been dredged recently. A couple more rain showers occurred during the slow motoring cruise up the river to the last opening bridge of this trip. The bridge tender was very timely and we passed through and were adjacent to the mooring field that is to be our home for a while.
We picked up mooring ball #19 here at Sunset Bay Marina and ended this leg of our journey at 1625 hrs. Tired, safe and securely tied to the mooring ball, we breathed a great sigh of relief and declared it time for Happy Hour.
Location: Sunset Bay Mooring Field, Stuart, FL. MM 996
Distance traveled: 47 miles
Avg speed: 6.5 mph
Max speed: 8.8 mph
Total distance traveled since 10/27/13: 1049.2 statute miles.
