Vero - at a mooring in the cold weather!

Typical doubling up in Vero

 Vero is crowded with cruisers trying to find a weather window to the Bahamas. The weather for crossing the Gulf Stream has been terrible with strong winds out of the north for weeks on end (you do NOT want to cross the Gulf Stream with its 3 kt current heading north against a 20 to 30 kt wind out of the north!) So cruisers are holed up all up and down the Florida coast waiting for that magical window to appear for a crossing. Meanwhile, Vero is crowded. It's one of the few places that has a mandatory policy of putting more than one boat on a mooring when they get more boats than they have moorings. So if you get a mooring by yourself, you're asked to put out fenders on one side or the other in case they need to assign another boat to the mooring. So far, we are alone but we are becoming the minority.

As far as the weather is concerned, it's cold - at least for Florida. The high on Thursday is only predicted to be 56 with a low of 35 that night with winds of 15 to 20 in the morning out of the north! It's due to warm up some later in the week but only into the low 70's at best. We really need to get further south!! On that note, we plan on leaving Vero Thursday morning to reach Joe Mastri's area at Boynton Beach for two days before heading on down to Ft Lauderdale. We are so looking forward to Key West in February!

In Florida, no less!

This afternoon, Ann was wrapped up in the cockpit in a blanket - unheard of in Florida. But we were comfortable. We plan on running the genset tonight and generate some real heat in the cabin! If the sun comes out Thursday at predicted, we'll be quite cozy in the cockpit with the full enclosure.