Happy Birthday to Heather, the 11th was her day. It was windy, lusty (I had to leave this typeo, my brain got ahead of my fingers with blustery and, well...) and gusty. We were supposed to go visit friends on White Pelican for cake since they had a birthday on the 9th. Well, the day was inclement (as aptly described previously) and so over channel 18 on the VHF, White Pelican sang "Happy Birthday" to Heather. "That's about as good as it gets." Heather said
We made the two day uneventful trip form Titusville to Vero Beach (aka Velcro Beach) where the Atlantic Ocean/Beach are about 1 mile away and the city buses are free and range quite extensively. which is a good thing because we will be here a few days. The ICW channel most of the way down Florida is quite narrow and can be shallow in spots...well, we've had nary a problem so far and, so, in a celebratory mood, we were quite glad to get to Vero Beach. We were assigned Mooring #1, the first one past the red marker...cool. I ease off throttle and coast around the corner and in, just past the red mark and we're dead on to the mooring ball... Heather has the hook in hand, ready to grab the line and we stop. We're aground 15 feet from the mooring ball. What? C'mon. Talk about cruel... so a kindly guy in another boat (one of several watching what I now describe as a plight) came and took a line from us and tied it on to the mooring line so we were secure. A little mix of engine and windlass with the one foot tide and we pulled forward enough that we've been happily afloat for the 24 hours since. Good grief, Charlie Brown.
Remember that cheap fuel pump? We knew $5.99 was too good to be true... it was the diaphragm rebuild kit they ordered which is fine because it is what we needed...except they ordered the diaphragm kit for another Mercury outboard!! But we're relatively sure this is the problem as the fuel pump diaphragm looks like swiss cheese. You know, never in my life have I had to type the word diaphragm so many times consecutively...
But for now, the outboard works well enough to get us almost to the dink dock.... sometimes we actually get there... but we have the correct diaphragm (there it is again) on order here in Vero. It will be in Tuesday (Monday is a holiday) and she (goodness knows who she is, just the lady who took the order) said she would drop it off at the marina on her way home from work and give us a call when she did. Human kindness at its best...
This morning we decided to take a walk out to the beach. The last time we were at a beach was in Wrightsville Beach, NC and then it was a dreary day and we went nowhere near the water.... on the way in we saw Carolina Girl and White Pelican on moorings here in Vero. Well neat. Neither was onboard so we went in and figured we'd catch up later. In deciding which way to take into town we walked a little way down one road and there was no sidewalk so we turned back to take the last road back.... turning around we saw, guess who, CG & WP. They were on their way to mass. And speaking of religion...last weekend in Titusville neither boat went in to church because of weather (cold fronts have been blowing stink lately) so over VHF 18 we hear Dick giving the morning prayer followed by, no kidding, no less than 9 (NINE!) voices saying Amen. Interesting how many other boaters are listening "eavesdropping".... we do, it's good entertainment.
You just can't make this stuff up.
Forgive any errors, we have visitors and I need to go... | 
