Ft Pierce FL (2013-12-14)

  N27° 27.987', W80° 17.741'

Tonight we are anchored in Faber Cove in Ft Pierce FL.  One more day of travel will bring us to Lake Worth, and the completion of the ICW leg of our journey!

We had a great nights sleep in Titusville on Thursday.  There was some noise from a few freight trains that were running on the train track on the west shore, but that didn't bother us at all.

Dawn behind the Vehicle Assembly Building

We raised the anchor and continued south on the ICW on Friday (the 13th! :-)) morning.  The winds had calmed down overnight, but not long after we had rejoined the ICW the winds picked back up and started clocking around to the south east.  This made for quite a chop on our port quarter that we had to put up with for the day.

We had orginally planned on anchoring south of Melbourne, near the spoil islands at ICW mile 925.  The south east winds nixed this idea though, so we decided to anchor in Melbourne, tucking in behind the Melbourne Bridge.  A closer look at the charts revealed a spot on the eastern shore of the Indian River near mile 925 that should provide us with sufficient shelter from the south east winds, so we went there instead.  While it was calmer than the night we spent in Daytona Beach, it was still pretty rocky, and the wind stayed strong throughout the night.

This morning the wind shifted to the south, so we'd have it on the nose for the day.  This also limited our choices for anchorages in Ft Pierce at the end of the day.

The wind stayed strong throughout the day, so we were beating into 1 foot or better waves straight on the bow.  With the wind up as high as it was we were taking wave spray over the bow, and a couple of the waves even made it up to the flybridge and me.

We also had scattered showers through the day.  Knowing that we wouldn't be getting a lot of rain I decided to still run from the flybridge, but I did have to scramble a couple times as sudden showers popped up.

When we got to Ft Pierce we decided that we'd push deep into a very sheltered anchorage in Faber Cove.  I figured it would be full, what with the winds of the last few days, but when we got there we were pleasantly surprised to find only two other boats anchored there.  We quickly found a spot we liked and dropped the hook, happy to finally be out of the winds.

Faber Cove is surrounded by houses, so there isn't any dinghy dock handy, but a quick scan around the cove revealed what looked like a vacant lot with a small boat ramp.  A quick check on the Active Captain entry for this anchorage found mention from a couple other boaters about this lot, and that they had used it to dinghy in to without incident.  We decided we'd give it a try as well and stretch our legs with a nice walk out to the beach.

M/V September Dream in Faber Cove

Ft Pierce beach

One look at the conditions out on the Atlantic quickly reminded us why we were using the ICW to make this trip.  The strong winds had the seas up to 3-5 feet according to NOAA, and looking out past the breakers it looked to be pretty accurate.

We decided to take a walk out on the jetty, and that was when something happened that has been in the works for months.  I have a ball cap that I've been wearing since we left that has been trying to escape.  It blew off my head while in the dinghy near Gananoque this summer, and has blown off my head many times on the flybridge and has only by luck managed to get hung up on something.  Even earlier today, while opening the front isenglass after one of the showers, the hat blew off and just barely stayed up in the flybridge.

Well, while walking out on the jetty, a gust of wind came up, and the hat took that opportunity to free itself from captivity and launched itself off of my head and into the water of the inlet.  Watching it sink I had to laugh a bit, and congratulate it for its perseverance, but I also had to wonder if it had really thought this through.  Regardless, it is now free and swimming with the fishes.

Hat: "Free, free at last! *glug-glug*"

 Back at the boat we had a nice supper and settled in to watch a bit of TV.  Around 8 pm we heard a boat approach, shining a spotlight around the cove.  This wasn't unusual, and we had seen this happen many times as boaters return home after dark.  This time however the spotlight seemed to stay on our boat for a long time.  Just as I was about to get our multi-million candle power spot out to 'help' this boater find his way we heard a voice calling our names.  Curious we stepped out into the cockpit only to find out that it was a couple from our home marina, Brenda and Richard of M/V Trading Places.  They vacation in this area for the winter in their RV, and had found out where we were after I had updated the coordinates and map on this blog.  They were in a friend's boat, who they were visiting.  We had a nice chat with them for about 15 minutes before they headed back to their friend's home.  Small world... :-)