While Blue Turtle was on a mooring in Jensen Beach, we spent some much needed family time in Fort Myers over the Christmas and New Years holidays. In early January, Randy took Blue Turtle from Jensen Beach to Cracker Boy Boat Works in Fort Pierce to be hauled out. It was time for Blue Turtle to get a bottom job and it was great timing since we could stay with family in Fort Myers.

Once Blue Turtle was ready to be splashed again, we said our goodbyes and headed to the yard in Fort Pierce and cruised north to Vero Beach where we planned to provision and get the boat ready for the Bahamas.

Vero Beach (a.k.a. “Velcro Beach”) is a great cruiser-friendly spot on the East coast of Florida. Many cruisers prep and stage for the Bahamas here, staying in the mooring field and using the facilities and free bus system that take you to Publix and West Marine. The odd thing about this mooring field is that they will raft you up to another boat once they are full. We’ve been fortunate to have great neighbors and have gotten to meet some pretty wonderful folks.

Once back on the boat, we discovered that our fridge wasn’t getting cold. Randy found that a damaged hose was leaking a small amount of freon. We knew this would end up delaying us in our trip since we already had so many things to do before leaving. Randy spent the good part of a week trying different ways to fix it and finally was able to get it up and running. Other items on our checklist were: unpickling the water maker (since we hadn’t used it yet), installing a new muffler on the Perkins engine, provisioning for the Bahamas and getting Sophie to the vet for her medical clearance.

While Randy worked on the boat projects, I took the rental truck shopping to provision for the Bahamas. It felt like such a daunting task to figure out what and how much of everything we would need while in the Bahamas. I downloaded a provisioning spreadsheet from The Boat Galley website and use that as a starting point. After a trip to Costco, Total Wine and several trips to Publix, we were loaded down with enough food for our trip (and then some!). The next task was figuring out where it all would get stored.

We ended up spending almost a month in Vero Beach prepping for the Bahamas and then waiting for a weather window. This winter we had quite a number of fronts come through that delayed us a lot longer than we expected. I can see why Vero Beach is nicknamed “Velco Beach”. People visit and just get stuck there.

Once we left Vero Beach, we headed south toward West Palm Beach (where we would leave from) stopping in Stuart for a couple nights. While there, we got to catch up with fellow CSY’ers Ocean Cowboy and friends Nickelby who were staying in the mooring field there.

After Stuart, we made our way to West Palm Beach where we anchored for 2 nights before leaving for the Bahamas.

Jensen Beach Mooring field to Fort Pierce = 14 nm
Fort Pierce to Vero Beach, FL = 12nm
Vero Beach to Stuart, FL = 41 nm
Stuart to West Palm Beach = 37.5 nm

TOTAL miles to date: = 4,916.5 nm