Day 19 - Indian Harbour Beach, FL to Fort Pierce, FL

Today is our final day. We have less than 50 miles to go! There is a light at the end of the tunnel or a port which we call the end. Although the ICW continues on, our final destination is Fort Pierce. Our goal was to leave the boat here until February. We will return then for a wedding and will stay on the boat and hopefully make it to the Bahamas. I am hoping the boat returns to New England in April. Doug would like to leave the boat in the Bahamas for the summer. We’ll see who wins that battle! LOL

We didn’t leave until 9:30 this morning. The marina at Fort Pierce had a 3 PM check-in. We were trying to kill some time before check-in. I made breakfast and we got ready to hit the ICW for the final day. It was a fairly quick run with very few no wake zones. The coolest part of the trip has been the nature and wildlife that we have seen. We have seen so many dolphins along this trip. Today we finally got them to surf our wake. We were going along through a slow area and I kept hearing this splash. I turned around and we had two dolphin riding our wake. I went to video tape them and they disappeared. They moved to the other side of the boat. They followed us for about 20-30 minutes. I videotaped them. The one closest to the boat kept swimming on his/her side and looking at me. It was awesome!

We were headed to Safe Harbor Harbortown in Fort Pierce. We got a message that they didn’t have their fuel pumps working so we had to stop at another marina. It had a very hairy channel to get in. We made it, but it was hairy. There was a nasty current and it was right near the bridge with a rock breakwater. We got our slip at the Safe Harbor and then went to talk to the marina about hauling out here until February. Nope. They are full and couldn’t pull us to December. Doug would also need to be here to move the boat to be pulled. They recommended Cracker Boy which is just across the lagoon. They can’t pull us until November 17th and Doug would need to be here to move it. We booked the 17th and will figure out the rest. Doug will either have to fly down to move the boat or see if we can hire a captain to move it. Then we need to hire someone to paint the bottom and put on new zincs. We have a few other smaller things that need to be done too. Luckily we can keep the boat here at the Safe Harbor until we need to be pulled. We need to figure out February and where we will keep the boat once it goes back in the water. At least we have time for that.

We are flying home on Saturday. We need to get the boat ready to be here for the winter. We need to clean all our food off the boat and stow things away. Today we decided to relax. We took a nice swim in the pool at the marina. Tomorrow we will rent a car and hopefully get off the boat for a little bit. We are supposed to get a nasty storm on Thursday so we need to enjoy the good weather while we can.

This has truly been the trip of a lifetime. I think we realized that we are a good team. We didn’t kill each other as many predicted. We planned for two years to take this trip and Covid caused us to postpone it last fall. We learned that when you make plans sometimes you need to alter those plans. We hit many roadblocks along the way but we had to shift plans as all boaters have to do from time to time. In hindsight I wish we had had more time. We gave ourselves three weeks. We got delayed in New Jersey for three days so we cut some things short. Doug had wanted to see Fort McHenry but it was just a big enough detour we cut it out. I had hoped to see the Statue of Liberty but we were trying to beat the gale winds so we skipped that. We wanted to stop in Coinjock but we passed it early in the day and wanted to make more miles. I love Charleston and could have spent more time there. St. Augustine was beautiful and we wished we could have stayed there longer. This trip was on Doug’s bucket list and he can now say he did it. We still hope to get to the Bahamas while the boat is here in Florida. All in all the trip was great and we met the challenges as they arose. Tomorrow we are doing a FB live event. Doug wants to do a wrap up of the trip and share some things we learned and answer questions. It should be interesting. I am the tech guru behind the scene but tomorrow I have to step in front of the camera. My last challenge of this trip!