Still amped from our space week, we hoisted the anchor and headed south into the ICW again on Friday. Our new mission – reunite with our friends on SV Pokey again! We had two fairly uneventful, yet windy days on the ICW, arriving in Vero Beach on Sunday evening.
On our travels south, we heard a lot about Vero Beach. Many cruisers refer to it as “Velcro Beach” since it is such a great place that cruisers get “stuck” there. Vero Beach is a popular spot for sailors to wait for a weather window to cross to the Bahamas, and that’s exactly what our friends on SV Pokey have been doing for the past three weeks.
The one weird thing about Vero Beach is that in their mooring field, they allow up to three boats per mooring ball. A mooring ball is essentially a “permanent anchor” with a floating ball on top that you tie your boat to. Every other mooring field we have ever heard of, only allows one boat per ball. Whether or not Vero Beach’s mooring balls are designed to hold ~100,000 lbs of boats is not something to think too hard about before going (easier said than done for my engineer husband).
With all of this in mind, we pulled up to the Vero Beach mooring field Sunday afternoon hoping to tie up to a ball with Pokey. Unfortunately, we weren’t allowed to tie up to the same ball because the marina felt Alaya was too long for that spot. So, we headed towards our assigned ball where there were already two boats tied.
This was a unique “docking” experience for sure. Lucas’ job was to pull Alaya next to the assigned boat, close enough where I could then jump onto the stranger’s boat to tie Alaya off. Oh, and to make things more complicated, it was pretty windy – fun stuff!
Lucas did a great job getting us close, I leapt over their rails and ran forward to tie us off. Shit. There’s nothing to tie us too, all their cleats were full of other lines. While I was struggling, Lucas managed to stop Alaya and jumped on the boat to tie off the stern line. He then ran forward to help me. We managed to barely get her tied off on the bow. Now that Alaya was tied to our neighbor, next we needed to tie her to the ball. Sean, from SV Pokey, helped with this part, he rode over on his dinghy and was a great assistant. Phew, we did it! We took a deep breath and looked around our new spot.
Shit.
Another boat was having trouble in the mooring field. He had run aground about 300 feet north of us. Sean and another good samaritan rode their dinghies over (we didn’t have time to launch Margaret and Lamb Chop). The marina also sent a boat to help. The group got him off the sand bar and he headed towards his assigned mooring ball. We started our upon-arrival chores.
A few minutes later we heard a lot of profanities being shouted close by.
Shit.
This same boat was now quickly floating towards us. The solo sailor aboard was having transmission issues. There was really nothing we could do except throw out our fenders in case he was going to collide with Alaya. The previously mentioned good-Samaritan-on-a-dinghy came to the rescue again (We later learned his name is Josh, super cool guy). The captain aboard the troubled sailboat threw Josh a bowline and he, alone in his dinghy with a 3.3 HP engine, at WOT, barely moving, slowing pulled the sailboat to safety.
Where was “safety” you ask? Alaya, of course. We were now four boats wide on a mooring ball that probably was designed in the 1980s for just one boat. Lucas was very motivated to help fix the issue. Before dark, they had diagnosed the issue, made the repair and helped the boat back to his originally-assigned mooring ball. We celebrated the wild events of the evening with drinks with Sean and Anna. What a start to our stay in Vero Beach!
The next two days in Vero Beach were uneventful in comparison but lovely. We walked along a beautiful, but chilly, section of beach and had fruity cocktails at a beach bar before exploring more of the cute town of Vero Beach. Sean and Anna showed us the ropes to using the community’s free bus service as we took a field trip to the grocery store. We met some more cool people, including Josh and his partner, Michelle.
While we were unsure about Vero Beach before we got there (and frankly even more so, after our first few hours there), it really grew on us. I can totally understand how it can easily become “Velcro” Beach.
We were only velcroed for a few days because we had another reunion in mind. We wanted to meet up with our friends on SV Victoria who were about 20 miles away in Fort Pierce. We left with SV Pokey and headed south. It was a blustery but warm and sunny day on the ICW. We even got to see a few dolphins. We made it to our anchorage around 2 p.m. and had a wonderful afternoon catching up with Dan, Sarah and Benny on SV Victoria. We had a few rain squalls roll through while we were learning how to play a new dominos game in Victoria’s cockpit. That meant our dinghy ride home was bumpy, especially since we were in rowing-mode without Lamb Chop. Sean and Anna took pity on us and gave us a much appreciated tow back to Alaya. Thanks, friends!
We woke up the next morning to even windier conditions and decided to head further south to a more protected anchorage. We parted ways with Pokey and Victoria before turning west into the St. Lucie River. We planned to park Alaya at a marina there for a few days while we visit family on the Gulf side of the state. Another exciting but too short reunion with our sailing friends, until next time!
