We made it. \u00a0We made it to the Atlantic Ocean. \u00a0No more fresh water and back to the salt. \u00a0We had unhooked from the dolphin and started to head east toward Stuart Florida. \u00a0The travel was with light winds, a few fishermen and a lot of scenery of the lifestyle of the folks on the east coast. \u00a0Boats became larger and we were passing more of them. \u00a0\u00a0It must have been the day for the animals. Making our way east we saw our first alligator and also some horses coming to the water for a drink. \u00a0We locked through our last lock, St Lucie Lock with an 8 foot drop. \u00a0It was easy. \u00a0Hold the line and let it out. \u00a0Down is so much easier than going up in all locks. \u00a0As we were leaving I yelled to Scott “manatee”. \u00a0Directly in front of our bow was the beautiful manatee diving and swimming. \u00a0We slowed completely down and only pushed through as needed until the gentle giant was past. \u00a0Apparently it wanted a ride in the lock.<\/p>\n
Down the St. Lucie Canal towards the St. Lucie River andthe many boats we would pass. \u00a0They come within only about 10 feet of your boat at full speed. \u00a0It’s creepy to this laker girl. \u00a0No one slows down. \u00a0You rock all the time from so much wake. \u00a0It seems strange to us as we always slow for the boats that pass, but that’s in the north. \u00a0Down here it’s all about doing whatever works. \u00a0There is so much boat traffic that is it normal to come so close to each other. \u00a0It’s just different to us but Scott is getting used to it already.<\/p>\n
We found our home at Manatee Pocket, a very busy inlet. \u00a0We are staying the night at Sailfish Marina. \u00a0It’s mainly a fishing marina with large deep sea fishing boats. There isn’t a lot of slips available so we are at the end of the fuel dock. \u00a0It’s actually a great spot to watch the boats go by. \u00a0The marina has laundry, gas and diesel, wifi that works. \u00a0We con’t need much more than that. \u00a0We did, however, head out on the dingy to dinner at Shirmper’s Raw Grill. \u00a0A lovely dinner on an open patio. \u00a0We ended up traveling back to the boat after dark. \u00a0The boat traffic was gone. \u00a0I think we passed one boat. \u00a0The interesting thing to us is how many boats are anchored and look like they haven’t moved in years. \u00a0They are just anchored out in the open area, with their dingy attached. \u00a0Liveaboards we are assuming.<\/p>\n
We have been looking for a slip to leave the boat at for the 4 months at home. \u00a0Not an easy task as it seems. \u00a0We are looking at leaving her on the hard for the duration which hasn’t proved to be any cheaper really. \u00a0Wet slip real estate is slightly higher priced but not significant. \u00a0We are thinking that she might be better out of the salt water and wait for our return when we come back to move north. \u00a0Forgetting that Monday is an official holiday we are finding several places closed. \u00a0That could change the date for departure home by at least one day.<\/p>\n
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We made it. \u00a0We made it to the Atlantic Ocean. \u00a0No more fresh water and back to the salt. \u00a0We had unhooked from the dolphin and started to head east toward Stuart Florida. \u00a0The travel was with light winds, a few fishermen and a lot of scenery of the lifestyle of the folks on the […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nashville-florida","category-28-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lapointes.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lapointes.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lapointes.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lapointes.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lapointes.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3589"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.lapointes.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3589\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3626,"href":"https:\/\/www.lapointes.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3589\/revisions\/3626"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.lapointes.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lapointes.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.lapointes.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}