Finally far enough south for it to be warm

This picture is of something very rare...boats actually sailing on the ICW! They were ahead of us for several days. We put our big genoa up too, and gained up to one and a half knots of speed!

I can tell that Wayne is back in retirement mode because he keeps asking me what day it is. We have a calendar in the salon that I mark off the days just so we can keep up. Life is good.

We traveled several long days. Saturday we went from Daytona to Merritt Island and Sunday we made it to Vero Beach. The current was in our favor most of the time and the wind was helping us along. We just wanted to get south. We have seen lots of dolphins. They love to dive under the boat. I used to worry about them getting hurt but the design of our hull is such that the keels and the rudder protect them from the sail drives. The dolphins just like to play.

Near NASA we saw an island that had white pelicans and pink flamingos. It is times like this that I wish I had a camera with a fancy telephoto lens. We could see them nicely through the binoculars. The white pelicans are really pretty, for a pelican that is.

Sunday was Wayne's birthday, it was a travel day, so we celebrated by going out to lunch today in Vero Beach. He got several cards, emails and phone calls with well wishes.

We are at Vero Beach City Marina on a mooring ball. Here, as it gets crowded there may be up to 3 boats on a mooring ball. We were alone last night, but had two other catamarans join us today. Our new neighbors are Salty Paws and Gypsy Rose. We plan to be in Vero Beach for at least a week or more, so I will tell you more about Vero Beach later.

We are happy to be where it is warmer. It was nice to wake up this morning and find the temperature 62 degrees inside the boat, much better than the 42 we had last week. We were hot wearing jeans today, so tomorrow we may have pull out our shorts.