19 February, 2020 Real skinny water to tonight's anchorage

A couple of real nice Captains.  47 SM; 7 engine hours

Great sleeping night as wakes and wind came to halt.  Sunrise glassy smooth, pods of dolphin throughout anchorage.  Beautiful morning.  Coffee and light breakfast, this looping does not get done sitting around.

Smooth as glass in the anchorage. 

We had  planned a route just north of Vero beach to an anchorage that had favorable comments.  Chart study, check.  Weather study, check.  Tides, check. Underway checklist reviewed, check.  Fired up the diesel, energized the electronics and weighted anchor at 0800.  Re-traced our bread crumbs back to the AICW and turned north.  Glassy smooth with excellent visibility.  Tropical looking day as off to the east were thunderstorms brewing over the Gulf Stream, low angle sun light filtering through.  Haze gray and underway--kind of, but a beautiful morning.

There were two large motor yachts that actually hailed us on channel 16 requesting to pass and would we slow and they would slow.   Absolutely.  going to idle the yachts slowly over took us with nary a ripple.  What courteous captains.  Later on we were hailed by a very large sailboat requesting to pass.  Doing almost 10mph, two faster than serenity, we acknowledge, slowed and the sailboat eased along the port side and pulled away.  Switching to a working frequency, we chatted.  Vessel flying large Canadian flag with a USA signal flag.  We chatted about the loop and we asked about weather and our thoughts on when to be in Canada later this year.  The captain keeps his sailboat and lives on the Trent-Severn waterway.  We intend to travel this waterway later this summer.  Bidding farewell, the larger and faster sailboat continued northbound.

We revised our anchorage plan later this afternoon based on current weather and approaching forecast weather.  Continuing a bit further north we selected an unnamed and certainly not on any of the charts or active captain an anchorage up the Sebastian river.  This river is west of the Sebastian inlet web cam and bisects the AICW.  There were private markers but depth into was questionable.  I saw a pontoon boat exit the waterway heading into the river.  I followed but much slower, hawking the depth on the sounder.  It was slack low tide, not the best time to try this but.  Lowest reading was 4’6”.  Our draft 2’6” but I don’t like pressing 3’.  Plenty of water and tomorrow early morning at departure time is high tide.  Next challenge was highway 1 bridge with chart indicating plenty of clearance.  We eased under with plenty to spare and 5 feet under the keel.  Natural river depth improved as we went west, improving to 10 feet.  Proceeding to a cove, pointing into the se wind we dropped anchor at 1445. (map) Water temp 80 degrees.  Rain showers all around, dry at 1600.  Nice homes in this cove.

Nice homes

 No waves, no wakes.  A passing heavy rain shower came and went around sunset.

Beautiful end of the day

1416.9 Hobbs; 2081 Sm