Visiting Vero Beach

As Sue said, we just caught the last bus Saturday afternoon for a quick trip to the grocery store.  We decided to stick around until Monday to try to figure out some way to fix our leaky dinghy floor.  Since the buses don't run on Sunday, and the closest stores are 2 to 3 miles, and Lowe's and Home Depot 8 miles, we didn't do much.  We dinghied through the mooring field looking at all the boats and their hailing ports to see where they are from.  One boat was from Muskegon, Michigan so we stopped to say "Hi".  Three boats rafted together were from Ohio, so we stopped to tell them how disappointed are friends back home are that Ohio State beat Michigan.  (Sorry, Brenda!)  One of the boats we saw was JoHee.  JoHee is the 20 foot boat we were stuck with when the lift bridge wouldn't open.    Roger is travelling with Kitty, so of course we had to stop and chat.  It turns out Kitty is quite a special cat, and is writing her own Blog. 
http://svjohee.blogspot.com/search?updated-min=2010-01-01T00%3A00%3A00-05%3A00&updated-max=2011-01-01T00%3A00%3A00-05%3A00&max-results=11
I think Kitty's blog is much more interesting than mine, so I am hoping you will start following her adventures so I can quit writing this.  Skip, Kris, Eileen, and Harold who have seem my terrible typing skills will understand what a relief that would be to me, and how much extra free time I would have every day to do more boat projects for Sue.

And speaking of that, Sunday we finished a couple of small projects.  We also tracked down the leak in the  dinghy floor, and came up with a couple of ideas to maybe fix it.

This morning we caught the first free bus into town.  One transfer, and an hour later we were at Home Depot buying lumber.  I had to have the sales guy cut my boards to length so I could get them back to the boat on the bus.  Pretty strange waiting for someone to cut wood for me, while biting my tongue to not tell him how to do it.  You would also think with all the tools they sell they could have a decent saw blade for a nice cut.  But I digress...  We then went to Wal-Mart - cruisers never pass up a stop at Wal-mart.  Then we missed the bus.  We didn't know where or when the bus stopped, since we had gotten off at one stop, and then went to different stores.  When the bus did finally come it was jam packed, with standing room only.  Every time it stopped several people had to get off to let the person at the very back of the bus get off.  Then the first people would get back on, and then the new passengers could get back on.  Two or three people got off about four times, before getting off for good.  All in all, can't complain too much as the price is right.

Back at the boat, 5 and a half hours later, we had a late lunch.  By then it was raining so we couldn't try to seal the leak in the dinghy.  But we did put the wood slats that we bought under the leaking floor so now we aren't sitting in water.  And talking about projects, at Vero Beach you have to raft off with other boats.  So, yesterday a 45 foot boat came in an rafted off us.  It turns out the transom of their dinghy is breaking so the outboard motor is flexing.  I suggested a temporary fix, which they didn't have any wood to implement.  Now I've been to Home Depot, so I have wood.  And a saw.  I cut a couple of pieces of wood for them so they can stiffen up the motor mount.  Like I don't have enough projects of my own.

The plan is to leave tomorrow morning, and not get stuck in "Velcro" Beach - though it certainly isn't a bad place to spend some time.