Sadly, it's time to leave Eric, Lisa and Kathryn to make the 1400 mile trip home to Oxford. Sometimes talking to non-boaters about our lifestyle is amusing. Peter recently played golf with a young man who was amazed when told it would take "a month or so" to get home; he was thinking four days.
And she likes being first mate......
...and hangin' out with Daddy on Pop & Grammie's boat.....
and eating celery on her Easter Bunny quilt (made by Grammie, of course).....
Looking like a movie star....
and sitting up by herself!
We motored across Tampa Bay in a breezy chop and ducked into the Gulf Intracoastal Waterway at Anna Maria Island. Just south of Sarasota Bay we anchored between Lido Key and Otter Key. Legend has it that John Ringling (the circus man) won Lido Key in a poker game, and set out to make the island a Millionaire's Row. He succeeded.
After a good night's sleep we continued south to Englewood Beach, anchored and went shelling at Stump Pass. The wind was up and the pass looked like this with waves breaking on the bar. We don't use inlets like this one.
We stopped at Shell Point to visit Uncle Bud and Aunt Ginny. Thanks for the free dock!
Shell Point marks the westernmost point of the Okeechobee Waterway, so from there we travelled 145 miles east. We went through three locks which altogether lifted us 14 feet to the level of Lake Okeechobee. The lake was flat calm for our crossing. At St. Lucie, one lock drops us back down all 14 feet at once (slowly). Here are some Okeechobee Waterway pics.
Near St. Lucie Inlet on a Saturday morning. This is speedboat country; very few of the local boaters show any consideration, they just bounce over each others' wakes. While one boat was passing us 30 feet away, a Cigarette boat zoomed right between us, rooster tails flying.
At St. Lucie we turned north, bound for the sheltered mooring field at Vero Beach, where we rafted up with MTOA members Bill and Laura on Kindred Spirit. After a 3-mile walk to the beach and back, with a break for ice cream, Peter was pressed into service as guitar player for the local pick-up band.
Space shuttle launches are old hat to the "Space Coast" locals, but we had never seen one, so NASA kindly scheduled the launch of Discovery at a time convenient for us. (Well, maybe not really, but the timing couldn't have been better.) We anchored near Kennedy Space Center, about eight miles from the launching pad, and set the alarm for 0600. It was still dark at launch time. Ignition and lift-off seemed bright as sunrise. About 40 seconds later the sound hit us; our bodies actually felt shock waves.
In a few minutes the shuttle was just a distant star. Later the rising sun illuminated the smoke left behind, blown by gentle breezes into shapes and patterns reminding us of pictures from the Hubbell space telescope.
