After one night in Fort Lauderdale anchorage, we decided to leave the next evening for a 36 hour sail all the bay to the Eleutheras island in the Bahamas.

This decision was based on many hours reviewing weather and wave heights and wind directions and also an enquiry to weather passage consultant Chris Parker who look at the departure date and locations and destinations to see if we should make for a reasonable passage of wind, waves and weather. We spent all day preparing the boat for the passage by tying things down and removing the dinghy motor and preparing food for the passage.

We left Fort Lauderdale about 6pm as the sun was setting and heading due east with high waves and reasonable wind that was dropping.

The first part across the Gulf Stream was as planned with 15 knot south west winds.

After we passed the Gulf Stream, winds increase well beyond predicted to 35 knots and 3-6 waves from south making for saltier conditions than predicted for about 4 hours.

We had to avoid several ships and adjust sails and one tug pulling a tow vessel alerted us on vhf that we were in collision course with its tow barge so we had to quickly tack to avoid this smaller tug.

We arrived in hatchet bay Eleutheras at about 8:30 am after 36 hours of sailing, motoring when winds died or had a poor angle to sail.

We anchored and works to set the boat for local sail hops in The Bahamas.

Today we sailed 50 miles south to Fort Lauderdale. It was lively on the Atlantic with winds up to 20 knots and we sailed over 8 knots at times. The inlets to get out to the Atlantic were busy with many boats and tankers and cargo ships and cruise ships. We sailed by mar a largo and hear about a special security operation around the trump house and a notice to mariner’s of a closed area.

We sailed into Fort Lauderdale and anchored at Sylvia lake.

Today we motored for about 15 miles south to north palm beach. We got a shore to do a traders Joe run and get a wet suit. We are traveling with two other sailboats and plan ti cross and explore the Bahamas with them too.

We had about 5 bridges that had to open for us mostly near Jupiter Florida.

We spent the last few days at Vero with some boat projects, last minute provisioning and parking the van at a fellow thru hiker friend property we just met the day before. We found some time to go dancing with a live band one night outside at vero downtown.

Today we untied our buoy and headed south in strong 25 knot north winds behind us.

There are two other boats we are buddy boating with and some more will be joining as we head south and make a crossing to the Bahamas and exploring areas of the Bahamas together.

While we continue to make repairs to our boat and prepare and provision the boat for travels south and then cross to the Bahamas, we continually engaged in social gatherings with other cruisers also moored on buoys at the marina.

Almost every night we attend another dinner with yet another cruiser couple or a few cruisers couples. Weekly there are social gatherings on shore too for more connecting. Most conversations evolve two topics – boats and boat systems and repairs and cruising locations and routes and anchorages. Some discussion about local boat and provisioning options too. We often play pickleball or bike or swim or walk to town to beach walk on the Atlantic.

Other days are busy with birthdays or yesterday we visited the botanical gardens in vero. Today the art museum offers their monthly free Saturday event.

We are doing various projects on the boat building an outside bed in the cockpit and electronics and battery issues and engine transmission issues and repairs with various techs.

Other cruisers have renamed this marina Velcro beach from vero beach as many cruisers get stuck here for a longer time than planned as there is so much to do and so many folks to meet.

Boat repairs have included hours looking at our battery storage and systems with multiple techs trying to diagnose our battery storage problems. Other chart plotter issues and autopilot. Everyone is helpful but often difficult to diagnose a problem with systems that are 24 years old.

We celebrated the holidays with the large group of cruisers here at vero beach city marina in Florida. We did caroling and some music at a large Christmas Day luncheon event. Most cruisers are all planning to head to the Bahamas and everyone is sharing their plans and experiences.

We were lucky when we selected this affordable marina to stop at this fall. Here are a few more pictures of different activities we have done here. We have a van but a free bus system picks up hourly at the Marina.

Almost everyday we do a variety of biking, walking, swimming, pickleball, exploring and visiting with other cruisers or social events.

We have been at a mooring ball with an adjacent sailboat tied to the same mooring ball (rafting) for about a month now. We had thanksgiving with this cruiser community and heading now to Christmas with them too.

This community is a mix bag of mostly older adult couples who live on their boat for several months a year and stop at vero for a bit before traveling more south or the Bahamas for the winter months.

The vero beach mooring field has about 50 balls that each can handle 1-3 boats on them. Each boat independently creates their own power and gets water by dinghy from shore and goes a shore multiple times a day for groceries or pickleball or whatever. The marina offers showers, packages delivery and water and dinghy dock.

Daily at 8:15 is the boaters net on vhf where the daily pickleball games or other events and information is available on the radio.

Vero has endless restaurants and concerts many within walking or bus distance for the cruisers.

We have been busy with swimming at a local pool several times a week and pickleball at various courts and many bike rides, beach walks, shopping in town and boat projects.

Tonight we organized the vero beach Marina dinghy holiday caroling event. Yesterday was the Thursday afternoon cruiser early Xmas white elephant party. last night was the free concert in the park. One night the lighted parade of vero was down the street.

We arrived at the marina and mooring where we plan to spend a month fixing up the boat issues and some maintenance issues like cleaning and waxing the hull. We hope to have family and friends come to join us here in Vero beach for visits.

The Atlantic Ocean and beaches are only 1/2 mile away where we can walk the beaches or go in the ocean. The waterways near us are more mangroves filled with some alligators so folks tend not to swim in Indian river, the waterway of the inter coastal at vero beach.

We splashed Tuesday afternoon and all systems appeared to work so we left cape Canaveral area and headed thru a lock and under two draw bridges to get to Cocoa Florida the first night. We spent a day there during heavy winds before motoring south on the icw.

We plan to stay in vero beach Florida area for a month for some boat projects and hang with the local boating community there.

We have spent the last full week getting the sailboat ready to sail in Florida and Bahamas waters. Numerous projects appeared as we tested various systems of the boat from our water and electrical to plumbing to anchor windlass that needed repairs as well as planned painting and cleaning. It should be ready to splash tomorrow.

We finished driving back to Florida to recommission the sailboat we left “on the hard” or ground back in June to ready it for fall and winter sailing in Florida and the Bahamas!

It has been a slow week once we returned from Europe to recover our van parked in Georgia to a boat in Florida. We unfortunately both caught bad colds in France the last day we were there which turned out to be positive on strep virus and another virus too. We took a few days to try and recover before we went in and got tested and better medications.

We were able to get back to our van which was parked in Amicalola falls park for 5 months and weathered two hurricanes. It started right up !

We camped for a few nights near the state park before traveling south in Georgia visiting Savannah and new other town. We are now back in Cape Canaveral to checkin with that boat tomorrow.

We spent almost a full day of train rides from our previous city south of Paris to a hotel just minutes from the Paris CDG airport. Trains required a short trek across the Seine to connect the two major rail lines.

The next day we boarded flights from Paris CDG to Boston then to Atlanta Georgia.

Arrived in Atlanta now heading to find our van still parked near Amicalola state park.

We spent some time researching how to bring the paints and paintings back with us while flying. Oil paints can be considered to be flammable and prohibited. The paints I have are special oil/water types that have a very high flash point so not flammable. We created special info sheets for security inspectors about flash points of the paints as some google searches said it was tricky to fly with paints. Amazing two security checkpoints later and careful analysis it appears that “ art materials” can somewhat exceed bathroom tubes and have more options.

We trekked a bit further north to BEAUGENCY France to position ourselves closer to get on a plane back the USA on Friday morning. We are back to train travel as we turned in the rental car.

This blog started as a cats of Camino pilgrim walk but some other pets made the cut too.

Cats are everywhere in France and Spain and especially s as long the Camino where hundreds of hiking pilgrims give them attention as you pass thru these tiny villages.

We left Tours and headed to Chinon for more exploring of castles and chateau. While walking high above the city we ran into cave houses built into the limestone hills, some that were occupied while others were one’s abandoned and looked to be original created maybe thousands of years ago.

Today we visited another chateau about 30 minutes out of tours. This one is unique as it is built out over the top of a river!

We have driven from southern France to Tours France to bike a bit of the Loire Valley and check out a chateau.

Another day of driving around tiny roads and visiting villages that are still lived in today that were created as early as 1000 bc during the medieval period.

We spend the night in Moissac and visited Laurerte, Cahors, and Saint-Cinq-Lapopie today.