On The Hook Again

The earlier post of the same title didn’t work out so well. We’ll try again. As always, you can double click on the pictures to make them bigger.

Find the little green boat in the center of the picture: that’s where we’re anchored out tonight.

For the second time since we bought "Next To Me" one month and two days ago, we've left the marina and taken a trip by ourselves. With Cathryn at the helm, which required overcoming some nervousness, and Bob on the deck lines, we pulled out and went north on the Intracoastal Waterway, past Vero Beach.  18 miles and 2.5 hours later, we arrived just offshore of Hole in the Wall Island and set the anchor in 9 feet of water. We’ll spend the night here.

The trip up was beautiful. We sipped lemonade (Cathryn) and coffee (Bob), watched dozens of dolphins, cormorants, egrets, blue heron and pelicans, waved at every boat we passed, and enjoyed the sights of towns, elegant homes, mangroves and spoil islands, the small islands created as a result of dredging the channel where the "spoils" are dumped in a pile in shallow water.  It's sunny and warm, a little windier than we prefer for our first night anchored somewhere other than a protected cove, and very beautiful.

Maybe when we get done with the Loop, we’ll buy a place on the Intracoastal.  Look!  This place even has a little guest cottage on the right.

Our “MiFi” is working well; last month with fairly intensive use, we only used 5 gigs. Because there is no internet in the marina where we’ve spent the past month, we were reliant on this Verizon MiFi for internet access.

Look closely:  see the signpost just to the left and further back of the island in the foreground? That’s the channel marker for the ICW.  We hope to find it in the same location relative to the boat when the sun comes up in the morning.  We wonder when we will get a good night’s sleep while on the hook for the first time?