April 24 - Vero Beach

Pictures to follow....

April 15 – Green Turtle Cay
We had a quiet day today. School in the morning as usual. In the afternoon, Dave took the girls in the dinghy to go into town. On the way a guy whose dingy motor had quit flagged them down. They ended up towing him back to his boat with our little dinghy. We went into shore and had a swim in the pool, and then Annie and Kristen and I took Lily, the dog off Hale Kai for a walk. In the evening, Dave and I went in to hear the band that was playing at the Green Turtle Club. They were really good! It was a neat evening sitting out under the stars, watching the band playing under this big tree that was all covered in little white lights.
April 16 – Green Turtle Cay to Crab Cay
We left Green Turtle around 10:00. We weren’t in a big hurry and we wanted to make sure there was enough tide to get out safely. We rolled out the jib and motor sailed about 18 miles to Crab Cay. We got there around 2:00. Hale Kai was there, and they came over to see if the girls wanted to go to shore with them to walk Lily. Dave and I tidied up the boat and then went in too. We had a great walk. The beach isn’t sand here, it is either stone or rocks. We walked across the cay, and then back around the end of the island. It ended up being quite a long walk! We found lots of milk conch shells that are smaller than queen conch, but still really pretty. There was a deserted camp there too, made up of old sails and tarps. It was kink of weird!
April 17 – Crab Cay to Great Sail Cay
We left fairly early, around 7:00. It was a great day for a sail and we put all the sails up. We had a glorious sail for the entire day, and covered about 38 miles, arriving at Great Sail around 2:00. As we turned to go south after we went around the top of great sail, about a dozen dolphins came up and started swimming with the boat. There was one little one that was having a great time zig-zagging in front of the boat and then dropping back and catching up again. They swam with us for 20 minutes or half and hour. When we got to Great Sail we dropped the girls off on Gotta Life and Dave and I went for a walk on the shore. After our walk we picked up the girls, and then went back to the boat for supper. After supper we went back over to Gotta Life for a visit.
April 18 – 19 – Great Sail to Vero Beach Florida
Our original plan was to stay in Great Sail today, and then leave in the morning to cross to Fort Pierce in Florida tomorrow. As we listened to the forecast, we decided that we would prefer to sail the 50 miles across the bank over-night and then cross the 60 miles over the Gulf Stream during the day tomorrow. Based on that, we planned to leave at 7:00 tonight. The girls did some school in the morning and then went over to Gotta Life to go swimming. I went up Hale Kai’s mast to free up their topping lift that had broken free and gotten tangled. Annie Erin Dave and I went for a walk on the beach. We found some pieces of silver honeycomb that was likely dropped off from the space shuttle. We also found a 50lb bail of raw rubber. It would have been pretty hard to figure out it was, but they had one on display at the museum that we visited in Hopetown. The bales of rubber were being transported from South America to Europe during the second world war, and the ship was sunk by an Italian U-Boat. The bales of rubber have been washing up on the bahamian beaches ever since.
We had supper and left Great Sail at 7:00 as planned. Several other boats left around the same time, and we kept in contact with them throughout the night. We had a very uneventful night. We sailed off the bank and out of the Bahamas around 4:00am. The seas in the gulf stream were predicted to be quite high, but in the end it was fine. The waves were big, but they were far apart so we just went up and down without being rolled about too much. We went in the cut to Fort Pierce around 2:00pm. We had planned to spend the night in Fort Pierce, but the marina was full, so we went the additional 15 miles to Vero Beach and picked up a mooring. Dave called into customs, and they told us that we would all have to show up at immigration within 24 hours, so we planned to rent a car tomorrow to go do that and get some groceries. We got settled in, had showers, went for a walk, had an early supper and went to bed.
April 21 – Vero Beach
We rented the car at noon and went to Fort Pierce to get registered at immigration. It was no problem at all. Then we went and had lunch at Subway! We went to Walmart to get groceries! All and all an uneventful day, but pretty fun when you haven’t seen any of these things for a couple of months.