East Coast Home

Today we completed our brief venture (or perhaps I might say "adventure") from Longboat Key to Cocoa. We departed Stuart this morning at 8 am and proceeded down the St. Lucie River to the intersection of the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW) were we turned north for the next 96 miles.

Sunset Bay Marina - Stuart 

It was a beautiful morning, sun filled sky and a light breeze out of the NE. All in all, it should have been a perfect day -- with one problem. It was Saturday and every weekend boater, fisherman, jet skier, kayaker, pontoon boater, cruiser was also on the water. Since I go out of my way to be courteous (and avoid any potential liability) I always slow down for any vessel smaller than Endless Summer. Today was a day that I rarely got to run more a mile or two before having to drop back to minimum wake speed. Very frustrating but that's life on the water some days.

As we approached Melbourne, we noticed about 150 boats all at anchor just off the main ICW channel. Just as we were wondering what they were all doing, we soon saw 6 high speed jets fly at a low altitude overhead trailing a red, white and blue smoke plume. It seems the US Air Force Thunderbirds were putting on an air show today and we happened to be traveling right under them! Now, I actually wanted to go slow in order to watch these amazing airman fly in formation just feet apart from each other. Very cool!

We made it!

Before stopping at our final (but temporary) destination at Cocoa Village Marina, we picked up a few hundred gallons of diesel fuel in order to be ready for our departure later in April. We spent the afternoon giving Endless Summer a much need wash-down, and after cocktails and dinner on board, it's time to watch The Final Four.

Tomorrow we will go home to Orlando (by car!) for a few weeks before we start out once again heading north to New England for the summer.

The view from our stern at Cocoa Village Marina