Northbound ’19 – Travel Day 5: North Palm Beach, Fl to Fort Pierce, Fl

Conditions: Sun and clouds, hot.  Winds SSE 10 – 15 mph, seas calm to a light chop.

Distance traveled: 37 nautical miles

Time underway: 4 hours 27 minutes

Average Speed: 10 kts

Max Speed: 15 kts

Fuel used: 54 gallons

After a great evening at Old Port Cove visiting with our friends Steve and Claudia of the beautiful Nordhavn Ranger we had a good night’s sleep and we were once again off the docks just before 8 am which seems to be our easy departure time when we don’t have too long a day or weather to outrun.  It was a good time to leave as the weekend crazies were still sleeping it off and we were able to pick our way through the first bridges of the day on schedule.

In the course of the day, we traveled the intracoastal through Jupiter and Stuart on our way to Fort Pierce and the Fort Pierce City Marina, our stop for the night.  We have never traveled the stretch of waterway between Palm Beach and Stuart before and it quickly became one of our favorites.  It’s mostly slow-going and there are a lot of expensive homes lining the water but there are also several terrific stretches of less populated areas and preserves, including Hobe Sound, north of Jupiter inlet.  It reminded us more at times of cruising in the Carolinas.  We identified a couple of anchorages along the way that would be neat to check out our next time passing through.

One of the best parts of the ride was the fantastic breakfast Tim prepared while we were underway.  An OLOH McMuffin – eggs over easy on an English muffin with smoked salmon lox, thinly sliced onions, chive cream cheese, and capers.  We pulled into Fort Pierce City Marina, our first time here, just a few minutes after our friends on Miss Norma had arrived.  We were looking forward to seeing them and Jasper was eager to see Ringo.  It’s a well-run municipal marina with some new floating concrete docks (no room for us on those) and older, wooden fixed docks (that’s us).  Our only wish for this and all marinas is that slip maps should be available online.  Many marinas provide this easy bit of information and it makes a world of difference in negotiating an unfamiliar place [Cruiser’s note: the entry channel to the marina from the ICW is well marked and straight forward with good depths.  The fairways are wide throughout much of the marina and we had plenty of room to maneuver]

Cocoa, Florida is next and perhaps a wait for some weather to pass.  See you out there…

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