12-11-05 Left Stuart and headed for the St Lucie Lock

1)Adios to our friend Jean Marc (aka JM) whos gonna have an awesome trip, say Ello to Maude
2)Wishing Patrice fair weather and a safe trip-he left Fri-immeasurable help to JM
3)Julie and Brittany (Brittany is driving) on the tender to Francis Marion
4)Evie waving bye from the Eldridge C-Sat leaving Vero
5)The Francis Marion bow and stern shots, Skipper Julie

Good Morning everyone!! We are underway after a long and disrupted nights sleep. Was it the cat you ask? Weather? It was the thingamajig that the boat was moored to ,when at 1 in the morning, it started to chaffe against the bow, then every two hours the train roared through town , then the fog horn ooooooooooooooooooooooo every for seconds, every hour, not to mention the no seeum bug bites I have everywhere....and of course Misty who has become so comfortable on the boat the she takes the stairs up to the fly bridge... and of course (what goes up .........) has to jump down. But when I got up about 7:30 Gary had started the generator and I made Eggs,fried corned beef n hash in the electric skillet(thanks Diane ;-), with a slab of cheese on it. MMMM
I no longer "do" coffee so I had a nice cup of Postum . Postum is an "instant hot beverage" "Naturally caffeine free with a rich, full-bodied taste. Made from a blend of roasted grains " it tastes pretty good. I just like something hot. Then we clean up and "de wake" the cabin. That means get the cabin ready so that when we get waked there won't be a big mess to clean.

It's overcast today, and chilly to. 60's probably! ! !

be right back, gotta help in the lock it's 9:45

Okay.........its 10 :36 now and that was pretty stressfull, at first. The Lock tender was great,
very calm, and knowledgeable...which helped tremendously. They throw a line down to you in
this lock, they don't all work that way. lock pics to come. I wrote our names and the date on the Lock wall. We go down in infamy...............

There are alot of boats thrown up on the rocks some have just sunk and are left where
they came to thier demise. We didn't have time to get across today so we are tied up between the dolphins. Dolphins is a term used to describe 8 telephone looking pilons(sp) that are tied
together with Huge hardware and rope. They also have a "cleat" that you can wrap your ties
around. While relaxing on the Victoria around 4:30 a work boat pulled up to the Dolphin behind us. We greeted the two guys and found out the story behind the other boats that are tied up at the other dolphins. These boats are all hurricane damaged. Some more than others. The boat the DOLPHIN, was the only boat out of 8, that survived well, however he has no marina to go home to. See the next post with pics. Oh, Jean Marc is in Fort Lauderdale and he is not alone. He is tied up next to Rouma. A very frenchy boat that when asked for a boat card handed me a
sea shell with the name on it. Too funny. So JM can talk French all night long.

I gotta say the water here is brown and disgusting. When we were at the dock in Stuart, Brittany went to pull the dinghy in , and the rope hit the water and disappeared inches below the water line. ACK

Eddie is reinfested with fleas and we'll wait till a sunny day and in the short term, bath him on the boat. He'll have to be dipped again when we get to our destination. Then the cat has to be done and the boat bombed. Oh, goody. and Our destination in case I haven't mentioned it lately is Palmetto on the west coast near Bradenton.


Your in our prayers, keep us in yours
XXOO
Victoria's Perspective

PS : still have no idea what we are gonna do with Misty and Eddie while we travel
any ideas? email me