We had a great time last night with 8 other MTOA friends… 6 old friends and 2 new friends… at Ryan’s Village Pizza in Cocoa… Peg and Jim Healy, Robert and Kay Creech, Stuart Schechter and Claudia Young and Paxton and Shay Watkins. Pizza, Pizza, and more Pizza and of course some beer.

Good nights sleep and up bright and early to depart for New Smyrna Beach... leaving shortly after this beautiful sunrise. Again today a parade of trawlers all heading north. The majority of them being MTOA members heading to Daytona Beach for our annual Southern Rendezvous. We will arrive there tomorrow and join about 50-60 other boats planning to attend.

We arrived to New Smyrna Beach at approximately 1405 and docked at the Riverside Park docks. Already on the dock were Jim and Peg Healy aboard Santcuary. Jim assisted us with our dock lines and at 1415 we were securely docked at position N29°01.466’, W080°55.137’. We traveled today for 6 hours and 25 minutes covering 45 nautical miles averaging 7.0 knots.

We were up just before sunrise… Susan had her coffee… Beecha had her breakfast… and I was off in the dinghy to land with Beecha for her morning walk. Back to the boat… dinghy raised and stored on the upper deck… dropped the mooring painter and we were underway at 0750.

When we entered the ICW it was like joining a parade… within a half mile range before and aft of us there were 6 other boats… 2 behind and 4 ahead of us. This is the way it stayed all day long… a lot of boats heading north today. It was very nice seeing all this traffic… ?

We are supposed to rendezvous with Jim and Peg Healy aboard SANCTUARY this evening in Cocoa, FL. Plans are to go for dinner at Ryan’s Village Pizza… Really good pizza… YUM! We never pass Cocoa without stopping for pizza.

We arrived to Coca, FL at approximately 1420 and docked at the city free docks. Already on the dock were Robert and Kay Creech aboard C-Life… they are some fellow MTOA members and very good friends. Robert assisted us with our dock lines and at 1430 we were securely docked at position N28°21.297’, W080°43.329’. We traveled today for 6 hours and 40 minutes covering 47.5 nautical miles averaging 7.13 knots.

We slept in today… we were both up quite bit during the night for Beecha… she was just not settling down and very restless… finally figured out it was just a little too warm for her. I broke out the fan and plugged it in and pointed it right at her and she settled right down and fell asleep in minutes… of course that was at 0430.

My alarm still went off at 0600… but no snooze button today… turned it off and rolled over and did not wake up until 0745... Susan and Beecha were both snoring away. I let them sleep until abut 0830 before waking them up. Beecha had her breakfast and we were off in the dinghy for her morning walk.

When we returned Susan had breakfast going and we sat and enjoyed it. Normally, while we are cruising north breakfast is in the pilothouse after we are underway… it was nice to sit at the table this morning.

0945 the engines were running and electronics ready to go… raise the anchor and we were underway at 1000 heading out of the Manatee Pocket towards the St. Lucie River.

Forecast for the day was for 10 knot winds out of the east and that’s what we had. It producing a 1 foot chop on the beam… could not even feel it move SAILS. Of course we had a ton of boats out and they provide enough wake to rock us every now and then.

One bridge today in Fort Pierce that we needed a lift to get through… he was very responsive to our hail and we zipped right through with only a slight slow down before the bridge.

We did have a good delay when we arrived to our destination for the day. We had called early in the morning to reserve a mooring ball at the Vero Beach City Marina. The can fill up and we wanted to be sure to get a mooring ball. We arrived at 1445… hailed the marina on the VHF. They acknowledged but had no idea what mooring ball to assign to us or what mooring balls were even available… we patiently waited for them to assign us a mooring ball… finally 45 minutes later at 1530 they assigned us a mooring ball. They also were very quick to inform us that if we return in the fall we would not be allowed to stay here… they were not going to allow larger boats in the future as they were damaging to their mooring balls…. Very Nice Welcome to Vero Beach Marina! NOT!!! As we headed toward our assigned mooring there were more than one mooring ball that had multiple boats attached to a single ball… not just 2 boats but 3 and 4 boats rafted together on a single mooring… I just have to think that this is a little hard on the mooring tackle… but this is acceptable.... ?

At 1545 and we were securely moored at position N27°39.706’, W080°22.356’. We traveled today for 5 covering 32.24 nautical miles averaging 6.7 knots.