It was tough leaving all of my manatee friends in Titusville. They loved hanging out right by our boat but I’m excited about seeing New Smyrna Beach. Our Looper book said that Travel and Leisure Magazine named it in the top 10 of “World’s Coolest Beach Towns.” It is the only Atlantic city to make the top fifteen on that list. It was Henry Flagler’s original resort town before St. Augustine. When we arrived, we had an Uber driver take us to the beach and to our surprise, he drove right ONTO the beach!

There were lots of people with their cars parked in the sand so that they could tailgate and access chairs, blankets and food. It was crowded with bodies and different beats from an assortment of music, all the while little kids where running in between the passing cars to the shore. I could not have relaxed if Marko and Aaron were there! The Uber driver was quite wise in that he warned me that there is no beach like your beach! In other words, what one grows up enjoying becomes the ideal. He was so right. His wife was getting her Ph.D and his two sons were in the restaurant business in Smyrna; one a chef at Norwood’s Treehouse Restaurant and one a server at Garlic’s Restaurant. So, we decided to try both! We walked a mile through some well kept Florida homes with beautiful trees, vines and blooming flowers. We sat upstairs in the treehouse at Norwoods and had some smoked fish dip while listening to live music and dodging the occasional lizard on the tree.

We were pleasantly surprised from Maps that Garlic’s was only 800 feet away. When we got there the building looked like multiple sheds, lean-tos and pole barns. The line was headed out the door. It definitely had such a cool vibe as we watched a wood burning stove near the hostess station.

Our wait was only 2 minutes and we were seated at the table RIGHT to the front right side of the musician. He was probably the most proficient musician that I’ve seen in a restaurant. He was equally good at piano, guitar, trumpet and voice. What a treat! yes that is the sky you see and the walls were equally exposed to the outside with lots of stonework and ferns. It occurred to me, after the 🦎, that there could well be snakes crawling around…….

I don’t know what came over me! Those of you that know me well, know that I hardly eat bread and that I prefer vegetables over meat. After John and I ate 2 foot-long pieces of bread with 2 heads of roasted garlic, I ordered a 16 ounce meatball made of filet mignon. Now that’s a change! Notice that John’s chicken Parmesan is dwarfed by my giant meatball!

Maybe the travel magazine was correct. It is one of the coolest beach towns ever! Downtown had a canal street that was shaded by oaks and palms…..very charming.

The next day we headed to Palm Coast. We passed some very cool bridges. Traveling by boat gives one a different perspective on bridges!

This bridge is in Daytona FL. They were working on it as we passed under. I sure didn’t want to rock a construction guy and have him drop a wrench on my head!

Another cool Daytona bridge….

And another one that we had to really look at the side depth indicator. We are 18.5 ft high and it showed 19 feet clearance. However it had 3 more feet of clearance in the center.

This bridge had to open up for us!

There are many islands of birds!

We are almost to St. Augustine on 4-30-19. I’m excited to visit this great historical city. The Intracoastal is getting closer to the Atlantic Ocean as evidenced by the beach houses. I’ll conclude this chapter and let our next two days in St. Augustine be a stand alone!

Fort pierce to Melbourne to Titusville

In our last post I mentioned that John was working on our toilet…..he did this on Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday so we called to have a new bellows sent to Titusville Marina. It makes me appreciate the simple things in life!

We stayed at Fort Pierce Marina and enjoyed the view and the fish!

We appreciated the businesses near this Marina and the close walk to Ace Hardware. We stayed here two days to “fix” things but realized that as the toilet got worse we needed to order a part. Isn’t it such a relief that deliveries now take 2 days instead of 2 weeks? We had it sent to Titusville City Marina with a delivery date of Friday 4-26.

I love seeing the sheepshead so close in the Marina. They have teeth that look like baby human teeth. We used to catch them under the DESTIN bridge with oysters and fiddler crabs. It is really hard to keep an oyster on the hook but so exciting to see the sheepshead take the bait. Back then not many people ate these fish as they considered them trash fish but I loved to fry them with my special batter. These days you can find them in restaurants and they are delicious if you cut out the blood line.

I visited a Manatee museum close to the marina that was more of a marine education center for children. They do not keep any manatees but occasionally a manatee will visit the harbor water behind the museum. We took our family, for several years in February, to the Crystal River-Homosassa-Weeki Watchi area to swim with manatees. They are very inquisitive creatures and so friendly. One female that we named, Esther the Molester, loved to nuzzle and chew on Johns beard! It was a peak life experience to swim into Three Sister’s Spring at sunrise to see 70-80 manatees! Here is an old picture of my dad and a friendly manatee.

We decided to spend the night on the hook near a Melbourne bridge on our way to Titusville. It was a beautiful evening with a special sunset. I even tried some fishing but just lost my hook!

On our way to Titusville, I was intrigued by this island community. There were no bridges but it was full of houses. I believe that I would enjoy such a place since the traffic in Destin has been frustrating especially with the continual road construction. But what could be better than a boat? I haven’t been in a car for almost 3 weeks except an occasional Uber to get supplies.

One of my favorite sites are dolphins swimming in our wake. These guys really put on a show!

https://johnanddebcruise.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/img_0968.mov

We arrived at Titusville City Marina on Thursday and our toilet part arrived today (Friday) on time! John met a guitar player who lives aboard here and I was invited to join tonight for a jam up in the marina lodge. That should be great fun.

John yelled for me to come see the manatee by the boat. He had been washing something with the outside hose. I had heard that they like fresh water so I sprayed the boat hose onto the water and it was AMAZING! Four manatees surfaced and had a party with me. Little did I know that it was illegal and could result in a $500 fine. I’ll share the video cause it brought me such joy but I can’t do this again ever!

https://johnanddebcruise.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/img_0971.movhttps://johnanddebcruise.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/img_0972.mov

After we partied with water, several manatees cleaned the underside of our boat for us! Who needs real divers? What a marvelous day we had even with a broken toilet! Last night the music I got to play with the local guitarist was a Blast and then we were invited to share smoked and grilled hamburgers, hot dogs, pork loin, chicken, pineapples, jalapeño poppers and cheese sticks! They cook every Friday night. Such a friendly group of people live on boats at the Titusville marina.

First of all, I’d like to thank my beautiful daughter-in-law, Helene, for adding the title page Happy Ours picture and making this blog look so much better. I spent hours trying to remove those gray boxes and she did the makeover in less than 10 minutes!

We spent 3 nights at Sunset Bay Marina in Stuart. This is a large Marina where we have stayed twice before. The Marina furnished bikes and a Sunday night outside movie with pizza, which we left early….maybe because of mosquitoes or probably because we didn’t want to break down and have a few slices!

Sunday we found a church within walking distance and sitting in front of us was the pipe organist from Nashville that we met at Roland Martin’s fish camp! Hopefully we will meet again along the way so I can share some ukulele lessons!

We walked to downtown Sunday afternoon and found a farmer’s market and live music. The blues rock band had a guitarist who was simply amazing. He studied B.B. King and Hendrix and combined their styles. There is a lot of live music in Stuart. I love this little town. We carried some fresh vegetables back to the boat and I was able to make my fresh salsa recipe much earlier than usual because the tomatoes were actually sun ripened.

So….why not make guacamole too?

Upon leaving Stuart, we passed under a draw bridge and a railroad trestle. They opened just for us.

I bought a new dolphin shirt from Sunset Bay Marina and it worked like magic!

Did I say it worked like a dolphin magnet? One of my most favorite things about cruising is when the dolphins swim in our wake.

https://johnanddebcruise.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/img_0950-1.mov

Speaking of Intracoastal vs. Intercoastal, my dad just sent this informative article.

https://southwindsmagazine.com/intracoastal-waterway-intercoastal-waterway/

We arrived at City Marina in Fort Pierce and got a ‘pump-out” cause our toilet tank was full and wouldn’t flush.

But,

It still won’t flush and the pump is not working. So glad that John is talented in fixing things….think I’ll get my ukelele out now. He thinks I actually contributed to the problem 🤭

Entering City Marina at Fort Pierce

It looks like we are cruising across land. We are in the Okeechobee Waterway part of the Intracoastal. All my life I have called it the Intercoastal and today, I realize I’ve always pronounced it wrong. John admits that he has too so I asked him if he’d rather have intercourse or intracourse 😂🤭.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intracoastal_Waterway

We spent Tuesday night in Labelle and 4-17-19 we are headed to Roland Martin’s fish camp outside of Lake Okeechobee. For the first 20 or so miles of this waterway, we saw houses and boats. Today, we’ve seen mostly pastures and a couple of orange groves and lots of sugar cane. It’s cool up on the fly bridge but the sunshine is sometimes intense. We look like aliens!

There are 3 locks on the way to Lake Okeechobee and 2 locks to get to the east side of Florida. These either lift or lower your boat to the water on the other side of the lock gate. When you get the green light to enter, one parks the boat against the wall and hangs onto the lines of the side as the opposite gate opens either to let water rush in or rush out depending on if the boat needs to be raised or lowered. This requires about 20 straight minutes of muscle power to keep the boat next to the wall. Notice the watermarks on the wall. The boat will be that high when finished.

(This is a screenshot, not a video)

We spent the night at Roland Martin’s fish camp with the occasional alligator swimming by and a squawking bird that woke us up all through the night. What we should have realized is that the bird was telling us,

Beware, Beware…..

‘Cause the next morning we started across the black waters of Lake Okeechobee knowing it was only 4-5 feet for most of the crossing. The channel on this big lake is often narrow and it was windy so when John was setting the Autocruise we drifted out of the channel and over into water less than 3 foot and

BLAM!

our propellers hit limestone and we were wounded. We limped across the lake at about 5 knots because the boat was vibrating so hard. We made it to the American Boat yard and they let us spend the night in hopes that they would have time on Friday to haul us out. This is a great place as they hauled us out, changed the props and had us on our way for $800! John said that Shalimar marina charges $1800 just for the haul out!

One of my favorite marinas was only 5 miles away and we arrived at Sunset Bay Marina in Stuart FL about an hour before some torrential rains. It is indeed Good Friday. We were blessed and wishing you a Happy Easter.

We will leave on Monday to head north…..great adventures and unknown parts to Happy Ours.

We left Clearwater Marina for parts unknown. Two years ago when we went to the Bahamas, we went out into the Gulf to travel since it is calm that far south. Tampa Bay is huge and it was windy. We dodged some HUGE ships. Tampa Bay is highly used by commercial freighters. The Sunshine Skyway Bridge is beautiful and most unique.



We anchored out in Bradenton and had a good evening until the floating grass started clogging the generator. So all night long, every 30 minutes, John had to clear out filters or reset the generator when the battery levels started alarming.



I can tell you though that tomorrow’s entry more than makes up for it. Our trip to Venice Beach as I write, is very beautiful!

I’ve had extreme issues with connectivity today so I’ve cut out the short videos. One was a railroad track that was a swinging trestle. We also had to wait for a couple of draw bridges to pass under. The inter coastal here is narrow and loaded with beautiful homes and mobile home communities on the water. The color of the water is gorgeous but interestingly not as clear as Destin.

We traveled to Venice and the beach has so many tiny shells and shark teeth can be found that are petrified. The sand is a different color! I had a video of John sitting on the beach UNDER the tree shade but can’t send it. So neat to stay cool at the beach.

We stayed at a marina called the Crow’s Nest. The water passage to the left is a pass to the Gulf. It seems that the Gulf is much calmer down further south. There were lots of pontoon boats coming in from the Gulf. There were lots of tiny uninhabited islands with boaters enjoying the day. No big development here!



 

On a windy day, we crossed Charlotte Harbor and Pine Island Sound which was like Choctawhatchee Bay with greener water. Lots of big sports fishing boats have passed us causing everything to rock and roll. One had 4 engines of 400 HP….like 1600 horses running by causing us to choke on their dust 😂. It’s got to be much harder for all the sailboats as no one seems to show boat etiquette of slowing down before passing. It must the custom here in south FL. We did pass up an historical marker. Jimmy Buffett wrote Cheese Burger in Paradise on Cabbage Key in a food shack.

The entrance into into the marina was very shallow as the depth finder said 3 ft. We draw 3.5 so I’m guessing our props were in the sand!   

Sanibel Island is known for all the shells on the beach  the water is very cloudy with broken coral and shells.  

We walked around to the end of the beach and found the Sanibel Lighthouse.  Can you imagine climbing to the top with 5 gallons of kerosene every day? 

The island is covered in beautiful shady trees!  

Sanibel Island was a great place to visi