FRIDAY FEBRUARY 26TH

Traveled from Titusville to Dayton Beach. It was a cool, calm uneventful passage.

We arrived in Daytona Beach early afternoon to discover it was Bike Week. The next 10 days, the town is host to approximately 500,000 people. The festivities include motorcycle racing, concerts, parties, and street festivals. It’s a motorcycle event and rally, that contends with the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally as the most popular motorcycle rally in the United States.

Sounded like blog material to me so away we went.




Lots of motorcycles of every shape, size and color. Chrome everywhere you looked. This bike had graphics of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on it.
















There were vendors set up selling wares and services. These were a sampling of air filters and horns.



You could pull your bike up into their trailer and they'd install them on the spot.




















This guy is doing some pinstriping while the owner waits. It was amazing to me that he could hold his hand so steady as he painted. Must not be the coffee drinker I am.












Some fun clothes on people.
These pants I thought were unique.














Sorry guys, but with the
cold weather had the biker
babes covered head to toe.
Here's one example. Check
back in a few days. The
weather is to turn sunny and
warmer so I'll see what I can do.







Hog on a Hog.















Mark modeling some sunglasses that were for sale. What do you think?

THURSDAY FEBRUARY 26TH

The wind was predicted to subside so we decided to trust the forecasters and headed out. It was cold and windy. Ross measured it with his hand held anemometer and it was sustained at 20mph with gusts. This stirred up the water and there were white caps and some pretty good rollers.

Someone mentioned that it was a hot chocolate kind of day. So, I made hot chocolate. It just happened that we were passing Cocoa Beach (remember where I Dream of Jeanie lived?) when I brought the hot chocolate up on the bridge.




Hot cocoa at Cocoa Beach.




It sure did hit the spot! And the steaming mug warmed our cold hands.









This is the NASA Vehicle Assembly Building. It was several miles away from us and yet it is so large that we looked at it for what seemed like hours as we traveled parallel of it. This building is the largest one story building in the world. The interior volume of it is so vast that it has it’s own weather, including rain clouds which form below the ceiling on very humid days. No, I am not making this up!

We’ve seen many, many dolphins the past few days. We’re certain they are going out of their way to torment Tami. Each time she tries to take a photo, they either are out of range or just disappear. She doesn’t find it very funny, but the rest of us do!





The wind died down and we ate our dinner of Cajun shrimp on the back deck and enjoyed this sunset.

WEDNESDAY FEBRUARY 25TH

We left Stuart by 6:30 a.m. as the weather was predicted to turn nasty and very windy by mid-day. We did pass through several rain showers but avoided the bigger storms by watching the weather radar via the Internet. Our plan was to anchor for the night, but we decided to stay in the Melbourne Harbor Marina instead.

We arrived early to Melbourne so walked up to their historic district a few blocks from the marina. Lots of fun shops, boutiques and restaurants. As usual, the guys didn’t last long. Tami and I met up with them at Meg O’Malley’s. It was an Irish pub complete with various ales and lagers on tap and the menu was pretty much Irish fare. We ordered a sampler platter of appetizers. The cabbage rolls stuffed with corned beef were my favorite. Of course there was something made with potatoes and then deep-fried. (how can you go wrong?) And a small sausage wrapped in pastry and served with course ground mustard. Very tasty!

It was too early for dinner so we ended up eating at The Chart House located at the marina. It was a bit spendy but the food and service were excellent. The added bonus was it was just a short walk back to the boat. The walk back however was windy. The wind arrived much later than predicted, but boy was it windy!

TUESDAY FEBRUARY 23RD

Woke to fog, but it burned off early and the sun came out warming things up. Stuart Florida is the Sailfish Capital of the world and there are many fishing tournaments here. Stuart's location to the gulfstream waters makes it the best place there is to land a sailfish.









There is a board walk that begins at our marina and follows along the water into the historic shopping district.


















We saw this small ray close to the shore. It was the same color of it's surroundings and I wouldn't have noticed it except to moved and and flashed the white undersides of its wings. I'm not sure if they're called wings, but I think you know what I mean.






The historic shopping district contains several streets with fun boutiques, art galleries, gift shops, coffee shops, and restaurants. Ross and Mark didn’t last too long, but Tami and I checked out most every shop.

























Where are those women?!!!












Actually we were just around the corner at the Tiki Hut sacrificing ourselves to be sangria taste testing guinea pigs for the staff there. Oh the hardships of traveling. The Tiki Hut had a large juicer and loads of fresh oranges, limes and lemons. They would squeeze them and make all sorts of yummy concoctions with the fresh juice. We sampled the wine sangria. They gave us the recipe but we haven't tried to make any yet.




In the center of the town is this fountain of a sailfish. It's actually in the center of a round about. Thank goodness for digital cameras and the delete button. Do you have any idea how many shots I took before I got one without a car in front of it?





Way back in Marathon on Valentines Day we went to buy shrimp at a local fish market. Before we left, they gave Tami and I each a rose. These roses have sat in a class of water on the table on our back deck since then. I've maybe remembered to give them fresh water a couple of times. We just can't believe how long these flowers have survived, and still look good. Here's Tami modeling one.




There is a theatre in the historic district that has performances of all sorts. And wouldn’t you know it, Tuesday night the theatre is dark. And it’s Tuesday. We resorted to calling a cab and went to see the movie The Blind Side for our evening fun. We all really enjoyed the movie. The weather is predicted to turn nasty so we hope there won’t be fog in the morning and we can leave at daylight.

MONDAY FEBRUARY 22ND

What a change from traveling yesterday! It was as quiet today as yesterday was chaotic.

The scenery changed after several hours traveling to the north. Gone were the mile after mile of condos and mansions. There were still many large, beautiful homes, but not packed in so tightly. The scenery also changed to more of a wild life sanctuary. At one point there was a large state park and refuge on the ocean side of us.

It was so quiet today that the only thing of interest I can blog about, or bore you about, are the Ospreys we saw. So here is your Osprey lesson.

The birds mate for life and build stick nests way up high in dead trees or on platforms built for them out over open water. The pair returns to the same nest year after year and add more sticks. Some of the nests weigh up to a thousand pounds. That’s a lot of sticks!

They live around 20 to 30 years. Nesting season is between December and February so we saw many birds in nests that we passed. Their eggs are about the same size as a chicken’s.









Their primary diet is fish. This one has a fish in its grasp but didn’t appear to be eating it. Maybe it was taking it back to the mate who was in the nest incubating the eggs.

The Osprey, like the owl, has the ability to rotate one its 3 front toes to the back when it catches something so it can grip it with two toes in the front and two in the back. Pretty handy, huh? Especially when you’re trying to hang on to a slippery wriggling fish.

They can spot fish in the water from up to 130’ and then plunge feet first to grab them. Another handy feature Ospreys’ have is closeable nostrils in their beak to keep water from flying up them when they hit the water surface. Don’t you just hate when you get saltwater up your beak?

Our destination for the evening was Sunset Bay Marina at Stuart. Stuart is about 7 miles off the ICW up the St. Lucie River. It is a very nice marina with solid wide docks and the best laundry facility I’ve encountered on the trip so far. Nice showers too. And ya, Tami and I did laundry for the next few hours after arriving here.

SUNDAY FEBRUARY 21ST

It was a calm, picturesque morning as we traveled up Biscayne Bay. The skyline of Miami was left behind, to be replaced with condo after condo.





This was one of the many bridges we had to wait to have raised for us today. They open on either the half hour or the quarter hour so we usually didn’t have to wait for too long.







We passed through Ft. Lauderdale today. This is the cruise pier. We counted 6 ships that were busy cleaning and reprovisioning for the next group of passengers. All these ships will most likely depart later today.





The day got sunny and warmer as it went on. It was the warmest day in this area so far in 2010. And I think everyone who had access to a boat was on one. It was absolute chaos as we traveled up the ICW from Miami to Delray. Our 44-foot boat is pretty puny compared to many of the boats in Florida. The ICW in many of these areas is not very wide and the boats were flying. Their wakes would bounce off the seawalls and back across the canal making waves go every which way. It was nuts!!!







We saw a couple of people in kayaks and wondered if they even survived. I think they were crazy to even be out in that kind of boat traffic. Sitting so low in the water makes it very difficult for boaters to even see them.

Visiting with my mom the other day she asked whether we had noticed the homes with large yachts docked in front of them? She and my dad had taken a boat trip with friends years ago in this same area. I told her we’d seen some large homes and boats but nothing out of the ordinary. Well, today we discovered what she meant. We passed mile after mile of mansions, and many had boats docked out in the front of them valued at over a million and up.The photo doesn't really give the perspective of how large the boat or the home is. Ross guessed this boat to be around 150 feet long.


A couple of other biggees was saw.









Okay, I realize if you can afford a house like this, you can afford a cleaning lady. Or a crew of them. But I bet everyone would still end up hanging around in the kitchen, if they could find it.




We did notice that many of these grandiose places where for sale.






It was good to finally arrive at a marina for the evening. It was a nerve wracking day for all of us, especially Ross. Too much traffic in too small a space. When we attended the Looper Fall Rendezvous we listened to speakers who gave us good advice as to anchorages and marinas. One excellent bit of advice they gave us, which we had forgotten until yesterday, was don’t travel on the weekends up the ICW on the east coast. Lesson learned!!!!

SATURDAY FEBRUARY 20TH

We awoke to a sunny, Miami morning. It actually felt like a shorts and t-shirt kind of day. We all got in the dinghy and headed out in search of a place we could lock up the dinghy and walk to a grocery store.We bought groceries and returned to the boat. Once that chore was taken care of, we returned to shore via the dinghy. The mission this time was to find the bus and check out South Beach, Miami. Finding the right bus stop and 25 cents later we were on our way.





We felt somewhat invisible walking around South Beach because we are so far off from fitting in. This is where the young, beautiful people hang out.


The water was a gorgeous color of aquamarine. We could easily understand why Miami Beach is so famous. Walking up and down Ocean Drive was the best people, and car, watching I’ve ever seen. Restaurants and bars all looking out over Ocean Drive and the beach.












Amazing cars cruising back and forth, filled with people who want to be seen.








We stopped at a place called Mangoes. It was hard not to be drawn in. The waitresses all wore wild costumes like this one. There was a band indoors and the waitresses would take turns dancing the samba up on the bar. Sometimes one of the male waiters would join them and they would do some type of latin dance. Fun music and really fun to watch them. Great mojitos too!!!















We spent some time over near the beach where there were guys doing body building. My abs hurt just watching some of the work outs they were doing. Lots of folks completely covered with tattoos. I would have liked to take some photos but I was too chicken to go up ask if it would be okay. They looked like they could snap me like a twig! And that wasn’t in my plan for the day.






The bars and restaurants all have their gimmick to try and get your business. This gal was dancing outside of what looked like a very upscale restaurant. Maybe she’s just putting herself through med school with this job?









South Beach, or SoBe as it’s known around here, was described to us a place where people go who are trying to be something they’re not. I think we saw a lot of that today.
















We returned late in the day to the Oddysea and ate on board. Our plan is to leave in the morning.