A Day Sail

Stuart Florida
N 27 12.864 W 080 15.458

WEDNESDAY
The weather has turned very nice. Nice indeed, and very welcome after recent days. We had a short and pleasant sail from our anchorage down to Stuart.

When we got there, the city marina with their mooring field was full. We took second choice and anchored in the river just past the marina. What a lot of trouble we had setting the hook. We dropped anchor 3-4 times in a row, but the it refused to bite. It slide on the bottom as if it were the surface of a Teflon pan.

Finally I had to settle for dropping two anchors. They held us in place long engough for the anchors to sink down in to the mud. After a few hours of sinking, then they bit OK.

That was more trouble than we've ever had before anchoring. Worse, I wouldn't feel at all secure there if a strong blow came along.

Anyhow, after I was satisfied that the boat wouldn't drift away, we hopped in the dink and motored over to downtown Stuart. Stuart is a very upscale touristy kind of place. It is filled with little gift shops and art galleries, and the Lyric Theater. We enjoyed poking around in the stores for several hours. I think Jenny had a good time.

Today, we're in an entirely different situation. We met up with Jenny's dear friend Marianne from Vermont, and Marianne's brother Al. They came aboard for lunch and for a day sail. To make it easier for them to get on board, we moved down the river a bit to the brand new Harborage Marina and Yacht Club. We then left the marina and spent 2-3 hours merrily sailing up and down the Saint Lucie River.

The river is deep enough and wide enough to make sailing really fun. The winds started out at only 5 knots, but pretty soon along came a black cloud with one of those famous Florida sun showers. The cloud brought with it a nice breeze at about 12 knots, and soon we had Tarwathie beating upwind at 6.5 knots. Great fun.

Al especially enjoyed it. Al has a lot of sailing experience. He even told me a story of when he and another man ran their mast in to a 30,000 volt power line. Ay ay ay; what a nightmare. Fortunately (miraculously) nobody got hurt and Al is still here to tell about it. Al is also a fan of Westsail 32s; that makes him first class in my book.

What a coincidence; our dock at the marina is directly accross the street from the parking lot where we spent two days parking cars at the Stuart Boat show a couple of weeks ago. It's odd how very different threads seem to lead us to a few semi random geographical spots over and over again.

In the evening, Marianne and Al treated us to dinner at the Wahoo restaurant next to the yacht club. We had a great time. Thank you Marianne and Al.

Today (Thursday), we rented a car and drove Jenny to the Miami Airport to catch her flight home to Vermont. We had a nice trip, but it was hard to let her go. Jenny would make a very pleasant member of our cruising family. On the way back, we stopped at Bluewater Charts in Fort Lauderdale to buy a copy of the chartbook for the SE United States inlets. Our regular charts don't chart the inlets.

Then we continued on to Fort Pierce to stop at the Marine Liquidator place. There we bought a nice piece of canvas to sew up a new sail bag for our staysail. The liquidator place has a bin of miscellaneous canvas and dodger covers for only $10 each.

Then we went to Dino's Family Restaurant; a favorite place. I had liver and onions and sweet potato fries. It was absolutely delicious and it is a dish that Libby will never ever make for me. We recommend Dino's to all cruisers who stop in Fort Pierce.

Finally, we stopped at the market to replentish groceries, and made it back to the boat by 1930. We're plenty tired now.

I'll write more about the marina here at a later date.

p.s. Jenny complained that the blog only gives my point of view; hardly ever Libby's. I agree, but it's hard to convince her to write. Send an email if you want to hear more of Libby's writing.