Vero Scenes

Vero Beach
No LL

Last night we had a special treat. Dave Hackett and his wife Jonnie came to have dinner on board Tarwathie. We had a great time and it was nice to see them again. Alas, I forgot to get out the camera and take pictures.

That reminds me, I have some pictures to be posted.
















Libby and I walked on the beach and we saw some spectacularly beautiful plants and landscaping in the yards of the neighborhood behind the marina. Above you can see some shots of two palm trees in one of the nicer places. There is also a shot of our mooring buddies, Peter and Don talking with Libby at the Christmas pot luck dinner.
















Above are a few shots of Christmas Eve when we spent the day in Melborn with my brother Ed and Family. The inside shot shows the scene as they opened presents.

Heron, the W32 sharing the mooring ball with us is captained by Don, and 2nd mate is his cat Tiller. Tiller comes over to visit us regularly. We find him on deck and down below sleeping on our bunks. One day, Tiller fell overboard. Don fished him out. In the picture, you can see Tiller trying to salvage his dignity.

Oh, We'll Never Eat Again

Vero Beach
No LL

It was like a Swedish Christmas. Monday, Christmas Eve, my brother Ed picked us up and we went to his house. My sister in law, Sally, made a great big breakfast feast. I overindulged with two helpings. Then, in the afternoon, she served a full Christmas feast with ham and turkey and everything. Ed drove us back to the boat in time for Libby to cook for the guests we had invited for a Christmas Eve dinner. On Christmas day, we went to the sailor's pot luck dinner. Everyone vied to make their best dishes, and of course we had to try everything.

Ugh. I feel that I won't need to eat again for a month.

Just kidding of course. It wasn't an ordeal, it was great fun and we had a wonderful time.

Wishing You Happy Holidays

Vero Beach (wikimap)
27 39.646N 080 22.224

Dearest Friends,

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, Feliz Navidad, Glad Jul och Gott Nytt Ar, from Dick and Libby Mills aboard SV Tarwathie. If we could have a Christmas wish, we would wish that we could be able to visit you over the holidays. We miss you!!!


Like last year and the year before that, Christmas day will find us in Vero Beach Florida. This is a very nice place to stay while doing projects, maintenance, celebrating holidays, taking trips, or waiting to cross the Gulf Stream to the Bahamas.

Unlike last year, we are determined to actually get to the Bahamas this year. If you remember, last year we got stuck replacing the engine and that project took the whole winter season. Almost all the other cruisers here in Vero are also headed for the Bahamas, so we’ll have lots of company.

So what about next year? We don’t pretend to make plans any more, but here’s a hint. We’re tired of traveling north every summer. We haven’t sailed the Caribbean yet. Friends of ours on Moon Song sailed to Trinidad to wait out the hurricane season and they said it was great fun.

We have a lot to be grateful for this year. Our family is fine. John is serving 6 months at Manas Air Base, Kyrgyzstan Republic. (Check your world atlas.) John’s family is doing fine at home waiting out the winter for John to return. Jennifer and Christian are doing remodeling on Jenny’s house and appear to be enjoying life. David just returned to Fairbanks Alaska from a year’s duty in Kuwait. Libby and I just returned from a Thanksgiving week trip to Fairbanks to visit David.

In addition, we’ve enjoyed an especially fun year cruising in Tarwathie. This summer we went north to the Erie Canal. We visited many friends and family in upstate New York, making it kind of a reunion year for us. We intended to decide between the Great Loop Trip and the Little Loop Trip when we reached Lake Ontario. The Great Loop takes one through the Great Lakes to Chicago, on the Illinois River to the Mississippi River to the Ohio River to the Tennessee River, to the Gulf of Mexico. The Little Loop takes one up the Saint Lawrence River to Nova Scotia, then down to Maine. We chose the Little Loop after realizing that the Great Loop would have made us travel another 3,000 miles motoring with the mast down.

However, midway through the Little Loop trip, just north of Montreal, we came to a junction of rivers where one could continue to Nova Scotia, or turn right and go to Lake Champlain and Vermont. We were overcome by homesickness, and turned right. I’m sure that we missed many lovely sights on the Little Loop, but we enjoyed sailing our “home” waters on Lake Champlain even more.

All in all, it has been yet another lovely year living the cruising life. What’s more, neither one of us are getting tired of it. Aside from not seeing friends and family often enough, it is a truly wonderful life style. We also love to hear from you. You can follow what we do on this blog.

Mars Occultation

Vero Beach
No LL

The other night a spectacular full moon rose just after sunset. Right next to it was Mars. The light of the moon obscured all the other stars in that part of the sky, so that those two objects were the only thing visible.

As the night went on, we could see an interesting thing. Mars was catching up with the moon. We eventually went to bed and didn't actually see Mars disappear behind the moon, or to be occulted.



A careful observer could see this any night watching the moon occult stars. To a casual observer like myself though, the identity of individual stars near the moon is indistinct. The result is that I can see the moon move in it's orbit night to night, but within a single night it's motion relative to the stars is not apparent. This special occurrence of the occultation (boy what a tough word!) of Mars however made it easy because only Mars and the Moon were visible in that quarter of the sky.

What a delight it is to see more of the sky again, now that we live closer to nature and further away from bright lights. When I was a boy, I had great fun camping out with my friends. We would lay in our sleeping bags looking up at the sky and wondering at the things we could see. I'll never forget when we saw the Echo 1 Satellite. That was a spectacular sight.

Power Management

Vero Beach
No LL

Our friends Richard and Penny on Viking Rose like Christmas lights. Who doesn't. They had accumulated a good collection of string lights to hand along the Viking Rose's standing rigging. When the lit, they looked wonderful. (See below.)

According to Richard, he then went below and checked the battery draw. The lights were drawing 40 amps! Ay ay ay. When we are on shore and drawing power from the wall plug, we are mostly unaware of how much power we use. On a boat, it's a different story. Now, Viking Rose has a Honda portable generator that can be used for many things, including lighting the Christmas lights.

Just think of how much energy we could spare if everyone first drew their power from 12 volt batteries, then recharged the batteries later.