Vero Beach City Marina - at a mooring

Not very pretty but then it's a manatee, loved by its mother...

When we first looked at the weather report, it was predicted to be 15 to 20 kts of wind out of the north, not good! The next day it changed to 10 to 15 and this morning they further reduced it to 5 to 10, excellent! So I topped off the forward water tank and naturally some water spilled over when the tank reached full which attracted the manatees in the marina. We had three by the side of the boat. For some reason they love fresh water!

We were tucked into one corner of the marina, against the bulkhead facing the street with only a narrow alleyway out of the marina. So Ann just backed Fleetwing about 1000 ft to the turning basin and then headed out. Fleetwing backs very well but you still have to pay attention to the wheel since it's unbalanced in reverse.

A simple tie-up at Vero Beach, just one line that's already attached to the mooring

All the storms that were predicted for today went either north of us or south so we had calm winds as we headed to Vero Beach. The boat ahead of us headed into the mooring field and the office said there was one last mooring free which they took. We thought we were destined to raft up for the first time at Vero Beach but on the way in we saw one other free mooring that the office was not aware of and we claimed that one. All boats after us had to raft up with boats already on a mooring (the procedure is to put out fenders in case you are assigned a boat to raft with, it's not voluntary, it's part of mooring in Vero Beach). But we were happy to have a mooring all by ourselves, at least for today. We like to run the genset to charge the batteries and, of course, we have Hoolie who may or may not be compatible with critters on visiting boats.

Most of the moorings had more than one boat tied up, Vero still charged by boat, not by mooring, doesn't seem fair

We'll have visitors on board for Tuesday and Wednesday that Ann knew from her days at the University of Maine, the aft cabin is all ready for them and I'm sure they'll be much discussion of days gone by. We plan on being here for several days before heading north to Titusville to pick up old friends from our days in Colorado while in the Air Force. It will be fun!