Glad To Be Inside

Vero Beach
27.39.56 N 080 22.27 W

It was old home week as we arrived here at Vero yesterday.   We got to say hello to very many cruising friends, plus permanent resident friends.   It was a bit amazing.  It is not so amazing why we feel at home in places like Vero and Marathon -- we have so many wonderful friends there.  Home is where the heart is.   Libby and I carry our home with us, but it stops in places where our heartstrings have other attachments.

Not everyone was here.  Charles and his dog Snoopy are missing.  We thought they would be here forever, but I was told that they moved on to the Chesapeake Bay.  Contragulations Charles for escaping.

Two of the friends are Andrew and Vanessa from the good ship Tally Ho.   We were surprised to see them.  Usually, they stop in Vero only briefly before hopping over the Gulf Stream to The Bahamas.  Right now they are very frustrated because there has been no window in two weeks, and the forecast calls for at least one more week of northerly winds and mountainous seas.   Yesterday, the seas offshore were 11-14 feet and that is before reaching the Gulf Stream.  High seas and strong northerly winds would make the Gulf Stream a very bad place to be this week.  Its frustrating for those who want to cross but comforting for those of us just glad to be here in a sheltered harbor.

Just to illustrate the winter weather in the North Atlantic Ocean right now, I included the three pictures below from passageweather.com   They show atmospheric pressure, wind speed and direction, wave height in meters, and Gulf Stream flow.  Florida is just on the western fringe of the bad weather out there.  However if you combine that with the Gulf Stream flow (the 4th picture) it makes for a very nasty combination -- hardly Perfect Storm stuff but nasty nevertheless.