5/17/2009

We’ve been here at Vero Beach for a week now. It is a fairly quiet anchorage, but we have discovered another myth that has been told about catamarans is bunk. We read - or were told, I don’t recall - that catamarans will “burble” once as a wave or a wake comes by, not rolling for several minutes “as a monohull will.” That is a load of manatee poop. Every time a boat comes by we roll for several minutes, even if it is one of the rare power boats that is considerate enough to keep their speed below 5 or 10 knots. It may be because we are on a mooring in a narrow part of the harbor, where the wakes reflect off the other side and come back to us quickly, but we have experienced this before in other locations, as well. It just seems worse here. But I now believe it woud happen anywhere we are anchored or moored.

Vero Beach is nice. The marina has bathrooms that are fairly clean, and showers are only $1 (plus tax) if you are on a mooring (free to those on the docks.) The town (county?) provides free public transportation, a shuttle bus system that covers most of the town and a bit of the outlying area of the county. We can get to a Publix supermarket on one bus from the marina, but have to transfer if we want to go to the Indian River Mall, Home Depot, Target, or to Walmart/Sam’s Club. The town has quite a bit to offer, and if we were more willing to explore, I am sure we could keep entertained.

As it is, we are basically in a holding pattern until our boat broker and his Fort Lauderdale agent return from business they are dealing with out of the country. The owner/broker is in France, and the agent who will be handing our boat is heading to Cancun to bring back a boat. We are trying to relax, but at the same time, we are trying to get the boat cleaned up and “ship-shape”. The agent has found us a slip behind a private home in Pomano Beach where we will be able to leave our boat while he is trying to sell it(for $500 a month, which he assures us is a good deal.) We simply do not want to be living on it while it is being shown and, hopefully, sold. Besides, we have so much of our stuff aboard that it would look cramped and small as it is right now. Even though $500 is cheap for that area, we are praying that it sells quickly, so that it doesn’t eat too deeply into what we net from the boat.

We just got word from the agent that there is a fellow who would like to come look at the boat tomorrow afternoon. We’ll keep our fingers crossed.

After searching the Web for trailers, and reading about fifth wheels vs travel trailers, we have decided the extra stability and towing ease of the fifth wheel will work better for us. They tend to be heavier, though, so we have to look for an “ultralite” model that can be towed by our choice of truck, the Toyota Tundra. The double cab model with the long bed, four wheel drive, 5.7 liter V8 engine and the towing package with sway bar is supposed to be able to pull 10,000 pounds of trailer, so if we get an ultralight model of 6500 to 7000 pounds, we will be able to load our stuff in it and still stay below the 10,000 limit. I think.

I remember our last fifth wheel. It was a 33 foot Vacationeer, pulled by my one-ton crew-cab F350 4x4 with the 7.3 liter diesel engine. It pulled that trailer through the mountains like it wasn’t even there when it was empty, but I recall having to drop to third gear through the same mountain pass once I put everything in it that I thought we would need. I’ll try not to do that this time ;-) Shirley and I lived in that for almost six years, and now that we are retired, we should enjoy it even more than when we were still working as we traveled across the country. The only real blessing here is that we should be able to see more of you folks, and sooner, once we are back on terra firma. We are looking forward to that.

Since I haven't figured out how to label my photos, here's the story: a photo of a sunrise over the Gulf Stream as we crossed back to the States, a picture of Beasely truly enjoying some "personal" attention from Shirley, a photo of the bulging tubing on my "shade-tree" plumbing repair, a photo of the boardwalk in Ft Pierce, FL, and a sign indicating a "manatee zone" on the ICW (Intra-Coastal Waterway).