A week aboard Messenger

A lot of non-boaters may think that life aboard is all romantic sunsets and beach parties. Well, we have seen some amazing sunsets and sunrises, we have walked some pretty fantastic beaches in Florida and the water is blue here, deep cold blue with a frothy salt spray.

We've also seen dolphins,pelicans, manatees and beautfiul birds soaring above us and the marshlands and mangroves that dot the landscape.

Darn good thing too, because life aboard is busy busy busy and an endless series of projects, big and small.
When life depends on the maintenance and upgrades to your vessel, priorities snap into place.

So we are on our way to Lake Worth today after spending a week in Vero Beach, Florida. We can't believe we spent a whole week there but here's a snapshot of life aboard Messenger:
Saturday, Nov. 24(?):
Arrive in Vero Beach at about 1700 hours after driving about 53 miles from Cocoa, a nice village on the ICW, not far from Cape Canaveral.

Got a mooring ball all by ourselves but expect to raft off with other boats soon as most of the mooring balls have at least two boats to one ball, some with three. This is a major stop to reprovision for sailing snowbirds. We checked in with the marina after launching the dinghy then headed back to the boat and made dinner and crashed by 9 p.m.

Sunday

No bus service today but we got up, made a decent breakfast and just after lunch walked a mile or so to the beach at Vero which was gorgeous with white sand and surprisingly warm water. We met a family from Quebec we've seenoff and on since New York who are headed for the Dominican Republic. We stopped for ice cream and walked back to the boat to make dinner. A game of Yahtzee finished off the night. We are trying to eat through the fridge so we can stock up on fresh provisions for our trip to the Bahamas.We also checked our email, did a quick skype with family and checked on our banking.

Monday

School is in from 9 to noon. Scott started evaluating the need for parts to mount the man overboard pole we bought last year and to switch the head over to an overboard pumpout. Our head, which I've already written about extensively, is a self-contained unit that requires marina pumpout service. But when we go to the Bahamas, pumpout service is not oftenavailable so most boats go three miles offshore and pump waste overboard via a thruhull. We had a thruhull but no Y-valve to switch to pump out the holding tank. We took the FREE bus from the marina up to a great little plaza with a West Marine on one side and a Publix supermarket on theother.We stopped at West Marine and discovered a great dive shop where we bought some gear and hose for the head and then we were ona mission to go up to the mall where there was a Macy's. It was a rushed trip because the bus service ended at 5 pm.

Tuesday

Scott caught an early bus to get parts for projects while Lisa and the kids did school. Then in the afternoon, Lisa did grocery shopping with three shopping bags anda dolly while Scott and crew did some work on the boat.

Wednesday

Provisioning day - all four of us left and caught the 10 a.m. bus to Wal-Mart where we proceeded to spend five hours shopping for food, engine oil, and miscellaneous items for the boat. Before taking a taxi home (we had three shopping carts full so couldn't ride the bus), we met a couple from Newfoundland who were taking all the cardboard boxes out of the bags and tossing themas they waited for the bus. I thought it was OK to take cardboard from the States onboard but the lady told us a horror story of bugs taking up residence from boxes of cereal onto their boat and it took them a long time to get rid of them. That motivated all four of us to rapidly ditch all the cardboard we had - boxes that held cereal, cookies, etc. Amazing how much packaging there was. Aidan was upset that no one seems to recycle in Florida, it seemed a crime to throw all that paper into the garbage.
Back at the dinghy dock, Scott and Aidan did three runs on the dinghy to get all of our stores aboard. Then Lisa spent two hours packing food away.Ugh. By 7 p.m. we were all ravenous so made dinner and fell into bed.

Thursday

To our collective dismay, the day before we had learned there was no pumpout service to the head. However Scott was even more upset as he had to go to the holding tank and fix the Y-valve on. Elizabeth wisely opted to do schoolwork and keep on top of the laundry ashore while Aidan did school aboard and Lisa caught an early bus to pick up a few more things from Publix, namely the frozen turkey breast she wanted for Christmas dinner, as well as a few Christmas presents. She ran back at 11:30 and caught a bus after dropping off the groceries and went to the hair salon!!!! Yay!!!! First trip in four months. Walked the mile back to the boat and jumped into the shower as did Elizabeth. Elizabeth finallly got to see one of her favourite TV shows in the lounge after all the adults left and then we walked to a great restaurant about half a mile away on the river where most of us had fish.

Friday

We were going to leave today but because Scott was all day working on the head yesterday, we decided to do school, then go at the boat with a clean up. Scott installed the man overboard pole and changed the chain over on the anchors and straightened them up. After school, Scott and Lisa ran into do a few errands to pick up oil filters, a few odds and ends at the grocery store and a fishing pole for Scott from West Marine and some Christmas presents at a huge book store we found behind the plaza. Back at the boat Elizabeth and Scott travelled back and forth from the water dock with  gerry cans to top up the water tanks and then Scott ran to get diesel and gas cans filled up and topped up the fuel tank. Lisa also installed all of the electronic charts for the Bahamas on the two PC laptops, sorted out the EPIRB registration, did some emails and online banking and checked weather websites. Then it was back to the lounge to do one more load of laundry (does it ever end???),showers, and met two cruising families from Quebec who might be crossing with us in a few days (fingers crossed). By the timewe got back to the boat, it was so late we just had eggs and bacon and pancakes for dinner while watching the Christmas boat parade on the canal.
We stowed the dinghy aboard again and got ready to head out Saturday morning.


We hope to cross from Lake Worth inlet (north of West Palm Beach) to West End, at the northwest tip of Grand Bahamas Island. It's only 55 miles point to point, not much further than our jaunts across the lake to Erie, PA but with the Gulf Stream and weather patterns, it's not so easy.

We don't think we can leave for at least five to six days.