Our First Post

O God, thy Sea is so great and my boat so small

February 28, 2022: Pirates Cove Resort, Port Salerno Florida:

 

 

 

 

Well, our time here in Stuart has been wonderful, exceeding our expectations in every way.

The marina could not have been in a better location with several restaurants and bars within a 5-minute walk. The resort staff was attentive and took great care of us. The restaurant, Tiki Bar and our fellow boaters at Pirates Cove Resort were all excellent. Port Salerno is in Manatee Pocket and is a very cool area located on the St Lucie River that has several shops and restaurants, a fun place to spend the day. We are located less than 3 miles from the ICW which is where we will turn North and head to Maine hopefully Thursday.

 

Cliff and Laura George were extremely generous and lent us a car for the month, so we were able to get around and experience all that Stuart has to offer. It allowed us to travel around visit with some friends and check out the local beaches, as well as being able to get to doctors’ appointments and shop, shop ,shop. What a huge advantage the car was, Thank You Larry, (Cliff’s dad whose car it was!). We were able to enjoy two concerts, (Jim Messina and Bruce Katz) in downtown Stuart with the George’s and played in a mixed Member Guest at their golf Club, Willoughby. We had several meals and stayed several nights at their home. That is always a treat to get off the boat from time to time and sleep in a bed that isn’t rocking even though we both were!   It was great to be able to catch up and see their winter lifestyle.

 

Meanwhile on board Her Idea, we had several projects undertaken during the month. The largest was a major service (1,000 hours) on the two diesel engines and a complete service on the generator. This project is still going on and with luck it will be completed today, and we will be done with having mechanics on board. We found a reliable Cummings mechanic which was recommended by a fellow looper Grand Wazoo, who we had traveled with down Lake Michigan, and lives here is Stuart.  Shearwater Marina Service has been very attentive and hopefully we will be completed and happy very soon…. like this afternoon. They encountered a problem with one of the parts Friday night at 4:30 PM and had to have the unit uninstalled and brought back to the company that rebuilt the heat exchanger yesterday, and the mechanic is scheduled to reinstall today, fingers crossed.  We have had our challenges with getting parts from the factory (a very common issue here) as the supply chain is still extremely disrupted, and I know the boating world in not unique in that regard.

 

Additionally, we are having a problem with our refrigerator. The freezer is working but the refrigerator is not cooling as well as it was. So, I spent the month trying to replace the unit. The problem we have is the same unit is 23” deep at its thinnest dimension, and the companionway door is on 20” wide. The refrigerator (as well as the washer/dryer) were installed before the cabin top was installed, UGH! To get the replacement refrigerator into the salon we must remove the sliding door to the companion way. That requires removing the bar area and the estimate for just that work was $3500. That is in addition to buying a new refrigerator ($2K), and having it installed is another $1k so overall we are talking $5,500 dollars for a replacement!

 

Bar area that had to be completely removed to get to 20"!

 

 

We began our search for a new unit and unfortunately found out the lead time was 6 weeks, which we didn’t have so we had to go to plan B. We then spent several days researching units that would fit through the existing openings and found one unit, however they are made in Australia and has a 12-week lead time, so that doesn’t work. Bottom line we will have to live with what we have, and we will order a new unit and have it shipped to Maine and have the fellow at Performance Marina (Dwight Raymond) replace the unit for us this June.

 I then spent the next few days tracking down NorCold refrigerator dealers / service centers in the area and found 12 of them here in Stuart (it is amazing how many boating resources are here in town). No one was interested in making a house call, but we were finally able to locate a fellow who has been helping us fix the unit. He is going to install a fan to help circulate the air, which hopefully improve the flow. He completed his work yesterday and the Freezer is working, and he installed two fans to push the cold air done into the refrigerator section and hopefully this will get is back to Maine. Time will tell, but we may well have to rely on a cooler.

 

So, our plan now is to have one last day to check and recheck all our systems tomorrow, final shopping day, final laundry and boat cleaning projects, then begin our northern journey on Thursday March 2^nd .

 

We have traveled 4122 miles to date, in 99 travel days over 265 calendar days (June 11^th to March 2^nd). We have approximately 2500 miles back to Maine, and that should take us about 50 travel days , 45 travel days to cross our wake in NYC, and 5 days to steam back to Maine. We would like to accomplish that in the next 100 calendar days and be back in Kennebunk the first week of June. Therefore, we can travel every other day and go 50 miles on average per day, which is very doable. The fact is we will travel 2-3 days at a time when we can, then we will have to hang out due to weather windows which can last 4-5 days at a time. The further north we go especially in April and May we are expecting longer waits to travel especially going up the The Chesapeake Bay and down Delaware Bays as well as cruising outside in the Atlantic on the New Jersey Coast It is still pretty harsh conditions in May in those waters.

 

I’d mentioned earlier that we were able to get to doctors appointments and since we are sharing most (heck no… not ALL!). Unfortunately, Meredith has been struggling with shoulder pain. She handles all the lines and has been the person holding onto the lines in the 100 locks we have gone through and so she has been struggling for two months before we got to Stuart. For those that know her (very much unlike me) she has an extremely high tolerance for pain, but this wasn’t pain just going away. So, off to the doctors we went. We were able to meet with not one but two Orthopedic Specialists here in Stuart and she had an X Ray and an MRI. The bottom line is she has high grade tear of her right Rotator Cuff (her holding and throwing shoulder). The first fellow all but said you must stop your trip and spend the next two months with PT, then if all improves begin your journey in May (wrong answer). We asked for a second opinion, and he sent us to his partner who is a surgeon, and he was more optimistic. He said we should try PT, which we will do, gave her a Cortisone shot which provided immediate relief, which was wonderful. The surgeon suggested she start throwing lefty and have her doctor in Maine address this in June (right answer). She is willing to stay the course and assuming all goes well for us tomorrow running our systems we head to North on the ICW to Vero Beach Thursday Morning, where we have three couples from Maine whom we would love to hook up with this weekend.

 

  

In closing I must say we have enjoyed the weather here in Stuart. We have had no rain to speak of, daily lows of 60-65 and highs of 80-90 and wall to wall sun. We have never spent this much time in Florida  but it’s easy to understand what the attraction is….the weather, (it sure isn’t the amount of cars on the road and people on the streets, one VERY busy and populated state).

 

Below are pictures of all our friends that came to visit us at Pirates Cove this month. We are blessed to have so many good friends and we appreciate you all going out of your way to stop by and say hello and have a Docktail with us!

Chris and Sarah Gurry

Dave & Wendy Thompson with Kevin Crowley

 Cliff and Laura George

Rob and Clair Ricco

Cal and Kim Scaponia

Dave and Kathy Bois Donna and Mark Cocorullo

Tom and Vicki Benenti

Our Buddy

Pelicans feeding at the fish cleaning station off our bow

Fair Winds