We stayed in Vero Beach, Florida, for several days. It is a very popular cruisers stop, with inexpensive moorings - sometimes rafted up two or three boats at a time. We got lucky rafted up to another boater who was very helpful to Eric as we needed to run some errands and he lets us use his car. The dinghy dock (basically a parking lot for all the dinghies as people come ashore) could get very crowded at popular times of day, having to climb over many boats to actually get to the dock.
The kids liked Vero as it had lots of dogs for Ava to pet, geckos for Reed to catch, and good wifi! There is a free shuttle that runs all around town and we took advantage to head to a mall to catch the new Star Wars movie on opening day. Fun! Sunsets were beautiful and the weather was good.
From there we headed toward the busier part of the ICW - the Palm Beaches. We saw lots of interesting things - pirate boats, huge yachts with boats inside them, houses that decorated their lawns with fake snow and holiday decor, and lots of wildlife.
North Palm Beach is a great stop, with reasonable and secure marinas, good boat supply stores and fun things to do. Reed loved to fish off the dock and talk to the captains of the huge sport fisher boats that came in with their catch at the end of the day.
Another reason we stopped there was to visit with our family friend, Elfriede. We celebrated Christmas at her house as well as New Years and her 89th birthday on January 4th. It was hard to say goodbye when we finally left but we will see her again in May before we head north.
Santa was good to the kids - iTunes for a bit more music to store for the kids, a Minecraft sweathshirt that Reed had been really wanting, and lots of art supplies for rainy days at anchor. The family gift was an inflatable paddle board, which the kids loved for the box to play in (some things never change)! It will definitely come in handy in the Bahamas! And will be nice to have when we get back to Seattle, too.
We are headed south again now, currently in Hollywood City, FL. Reed managed to get a very bad ear infection and we won't head to the Bahamas until that clears up and we get our weather window - sometime the week of January 11th if all goes as planned. Once we head out, blog posts may be few and far between depending on internet.
I'll keep writing but there may be many posts coming up at one time. In any case, thanks for following and enjoy!