Friday - 6/12/2020 - Ft Pierce to Vero Beach City Marina

Made it three days in a row sleeping past 6am!  We mist be be getting used to this live aboard boat life just in time to be headed back to reality in a little over a week :-( do we have to?

Sunrise at Ft Pierce City Marina 

Before it got too hot we rode our bikes up to Publix and did some shopping for the next week.   We rode back past the marina and got the groceries in the fridge and freezer before heading back out the other direction to West Marine where we FINALLY pulled the trigger and purchased a new chart plotter 😝.  We had called and found that they had the model we wanted and were offering a $100 rebate.   We spent the next couple of hours getting it installed and hooked up properly.  While we were at that a couple of other minor fixes were addressed on other stuff like replacing the fly bridge blower motor switch which had broken off yesterday.

We have a lot of nice things! 
Thankful to have a nice new chart plotter that we can actually see while cruising and navigating :-)  

We got underway for our planned short cruise (18 miles) for Vero Beach.   While Erik drove and navigated on his phone Renee spent the entirety of the short trip playing with the plotter and starting to get things set up.  It appears we may have to go back to school for computer science to get ourselves educated on this thing!   It will come with time and use.  Renee will learn it first and then ATTEMPT to teach Erik.

Immediately after our arrival at Vero Beach we found that we could catch a free shuttle bus at the marina into downtown and closer to several things we thought we might like to see.   We found that the Naval museum was too far as was the Treasure Museum.  We chose to grab a second bus at the main station and headed to the Botanical Garden.   I was a very nice place with beautiful landscapes.  Our favorite was the rainbow eucalyptus tree...very cool 😎

The coolest tree was at the entrance to the garden was this 'Rainbow Eucalyptus'
We could only capture the colors from this close up angel in the light we were in but it is very large and has branches all that have this same crazy coloring

Just in case you want to now its scientific name

Absolutely Gorgeous Mahogany table in one of the original structures at the gardens
This table is the worlds longest single slab mahogany table in the world at 36' long and 5" thick

One of the first structure at the gardens which date back to 1922
This is dubbed "The Hall of Giants" and was constructed in 1940
very cool post and beam/board and batten construction 

First ever fully bamboo structure constructed with building permits in the US
Lot of different species of bamboo in the gardens
Always amazes me to hear that bamboo can grow 3 ft a day!  

Many interesting sculptures of various animals found in the area

This huge outdoor stone kitchen was outside of the 'Hall of Giants'
It could not be captured in one picture and more than one pic doesn't do it justice

Renee talking to Erik through the flower phone on one of the park benches 

Hundreds or thousands of various spectacular flora

From the botanical gardens we caught another bus and rode into downtown Vero and went to an early dinner at the Blue Agave, a mexican’ish restaurant.   Both our meals were delish; Renee had chicken fajitas and Erik had a muscle soup/appetizer.  After dinner we had a 3/4 mile walk that turned into a jog in order to catch the bus back across the bridge and to the marina.  The few minute jog paid off because we JUST got to the stop as the bus was arriving.  Had we missed it we would have had an hour wait for the next bus (which were all free by the way!) or called for an Uber.

Back at the marina Renee read directions and was busy downloading software and doing other magic things with the new chart plotter.   Erik laid down and  blogged for a bit.   We had seen on the AA central office website that there is a Friday evening beach meeting at 8:30pm Which was 1.3 miles away, so at about 7:45 We took off on our bikes.   We never found the meeting (likely not meeting currently because of Covid).  However, the beach and evening were fabulous; soft sand, perfect temps.   We took a nice stroll down the uncrowded beach at sunset.   This area seems to be much more residential and low key than any of the others that we have stopped through.

Beautiful Atlantic Ocean beach
This was at sunset but is actually looking East

Erik has seen an interesting looking boat on the next docks over earlier in the day that had a for sale sign in it...we must look!   It turns out it was a fellow Loopers boat (was flying the AGLCA flag on the bow).   It was a very nice 32’ Nordic Tug.   We found it in the AGLCA forums classified adds page.  Asking price is a mere $259K + 10K if you want the custom quad axle trailer.   We might have to skip the trailer to keep within our budget...lol....right.

Back to the boat for some more chart plotter set up and to finish up today’s blog with our usual coffee cup in one hand and spoon of ice cream in the other :-).   We are debating tomorrow’s plans.  We will either travel ~55 miles to Cocoa Beach or ~72 miles to Titusville.  We will see what our minds settle on on the morning.