We departed early before sunrise at 0645 hours this morning... leaving Cocoa, FL bound for Stuart, FL... it would be another long day of cruising.

As we departed another large sailboat was leaving the anchorage just south of where we were docked... they eased into the ICW just ahead of us but we were moving a little faster and passed them quickly. Could hear several other boats on the VHF this morning early... normally the VHF is pretty quiet at this time of the morning and I was surprised to hear the radio traffic. It was from a couple of boats that from what I could tell were behind us... ended up they were beside us in the Banana River... they evidently had anchored there and were heading out. They were soon behind us in the ICW... a trawler named "Refuge" was one of the boats... the name seemed familiar to me and I looked it up in the MTOA online roster and found two boats with that name... a Marine Trader from Maryland and a Monk from Maine... they were catching us and soon they hailed on the VHF.. I assumed they were going to pass but instead informed me that they had slowed down to stay behind me and were not passing... I acknowledged and took a quick peek at what type of boat they were... it was a Monk... I was now curious if this was the MTOA members from Maine ??? I did not see an MTOA burgee flying.

The trip south continued a few other boats passed us... a SeaRay type cruiser and a large power cat... the cruiser had passed us the day before and we exchanged some chit-chat on the radio about seeing each other yesterday and they continued on their way "waking" everyone they passed... :) We had also crossed paths with the power cat a couple of times as we traveled south this year. In the Stuart area we of course got "waked" by several giant sport fish boats... typical of this area every time we have passed through.

The current boost today was not tremendous but it was consistent keeping us above 7 knots most of the time... the only time we dropped below our mean speed of 6.5-6.6 knots was when we turned out of the ICW into the St. Lucie River in Stuart... hitting 5.5-6 knots at the mouth of the river but as the waterway widened we got back to 6.2-6.3 knots.

We docked at the Stuart City docks at approximately 1829 hours. We traveled for 11 hours and 44 minutes covering 84.08 nautical miles and averaging 7.17 knots.

The pizza from Ryan's was great cold for breakfast and hot for lunch... but Susan said no pizza for dinner... we still have some left... looking forward to it for tomorrow!

Trip totals to date:

Distance: 1472.53 nautical miles
Hours: 227 hours 45 minutes
Avg Spd: 6.47 knots
Days not moving: 12