Vero - at a mooring

Ann's sunrise photo

Ann peeked out this morning an saw a beautiful sunrise so she snapped a photo. You are constantly surprised at the beauty of what you see on the ICW. The night had been calm so we were well rested. I dinked Hoolie into shore for his morning relief and then we were out of there.

A white pelican, not common

Heading south, we still did not improve our speed of yesterday, around 6.8 kts even with a clean dinghy. Looking ahead, I called the Vero marina and asked for a recommendation on a diver to look at Fleetwing's bottom, suspecting it was fouled from almost the two month stay at Titusville. We were even passed by a Catalina, a great ignominy.

Our diver was done in less than an hour, he mostly cleaned the prop and a few spots on the hull

Our diver greeted us as we entered the Vero mooring fields and followed us to our spot. Vero has a policy of putting more than one boat on a mooring and sometimes even three if they are crowded. Luckily, we found a mooring just for us although we may get company later on. Our diver proceeded to clean out boat and found that the major problem was the prop, it was covered with white worms that had solidified into a  big mess. It's a wonder we had any forward speed at all. The bottom itself was in good shape, I had applied Petit SR60 ablative bottom coat in the summer and it was doing fine, it was the prop that had a problem. So he polished the prop clean and that should fix our speed problem. We know from past experience that you need to average 7 kts south of here to make all the bridges without having to wait -it's as if the  bridges didn't even exist. However, doing less than 7 kts results of LOTS of delays (just missed by a couple of minutes...)

So now we should be in good shape but the weather is uncertain. We had intended being in Hobe Sound on Thursday but we're waiting for the Wednesday forecast to make that final decision. Presently they are forecasting 25 kt winds, not pleasant for Hobe Sound.