Sunday 7 June 2015

June 5-7 Manatee Pocket - cool name eh?



June 5
We finally moved this morning at 7:30. I forgot about bridges…we have to wait for them to open so if we can’t reach each bridge on time, we have to wait for a ½ hour for the next opening.  And it’s really hard to turn in some o the spots because the channel is so narrow and all the private docks are so big! GRRRRRR!
And we’re back in stupid sport fisher country!  I have been trying to figure out what cultural quirk makes some power boaters so damned ignorant. It’s not age: we have had some very respectable considerate slow passes from young men and some pretty rude passes by a lot of old farts.
Size of boat is also not a confirmed factor. Yesterday a small [20 ft] powerboat deliberately sideswiped a diving boat with divers I the water then cut across the channel to sweep around us and rock us then went back over to the other side of the channel to challenge a bigger boat coming down.  Never a cop around when you need one!
Speaking of cops, after three boats were rocketing by us, turned and came back, because they missed their little inlet, [all full of small children] a fourth boat was coming up on us very fast and I waved them to slow down, to no avail. It was the cops! They waked us as well!
But we’ve had some big and small boats give us gentle passes; maybe they were all former sail boaters and understand the dynamics of sailboat design. And some can’t help it because their hulls were designed to throw big wake no matter the speed because it looks impressive. Anyone else have a theory?
We headed up to a place called Manatee Pocket. It’s a little bay off the ICW where there are a bunch of marinas side bay side and an anchorage in the middle. We managed to anchor amongst a bunch of small sailboats… sailboats seem to be the only ones who anchor off docks. We had dinner and watched a movie…Pirates II I think, and then crashed.
June 6
Joseph came to get us today so we could go to Ft Pierce. No-one is answering my emails from Titusville, and Ft. Pierce is about a half hour by car [all day by boat].
We met the owner…saw Amazing Grace on the hard…and signed up. We will take the boat up there and anchor As soon as he has a spot - the place is packed!!- He will haul and set us up to work on her. We went over to Indiantown to see where Joseph is located. He has a nice work space but he hates the place.  We saw several Prouts sitting there all sadly neglected…very tempted to ask about the ones bigger than us but I am not intending to spend another 10 years or even 1 or 2 working on another boat…hmmm…unless we could “flip” it?   NO, NO, NO, what am I thinking!?
We came back to the boat, had dinner and watched another movie.
June 7
We are sitting here deciding what to do today. Rick needs a DL and he can get a Florida one. He can also pick up the deck paint and more epoxy if he goes with Joseph tomorrow to back to North Palm beach. I can stay here and clean up stuff and repack some of the rooms than need to be re-organized before we go back to Canada to get the kids.
We will leave on Tuesday to head up to the anchorage and get ready to be hauled. I am not happy about that but if I think of it as the car has to go into the garage for servicing then it’s not so bad.
So, gotta go and do laundry then get ready to pull the sails… Ttyl



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