Taking a break at Vero Beach

Definitely one of our favourite places on the east coast of Florida is Vero Beach. Last season we spent about 6 weeks at Loggerhead Marina in Vero Beach and enjoyed exploring the area. So it made a lot of sense to stop here for a week – it is also a perfect location to visit with our family members who are in Florida now.

Our trip down from Titusville was exactly what you wanted – totally uneventful!! We left around 9 am Monday morning (Jan. 9) and stopped for the night at Melbourne. We had a very easy 24nm trip the next day to get into the Vero Beach City Marina. We arrived at the marina around 1pm on Jan. 10 and tied up on the south dock after checking in at the fuel dock.

This is a new marina for us but we’ve met lots of cruisers who visit this marina every year. The nice thing about the marina is that they have a very large mooring field and they will double (and sometimes triple) up on a single mooring ball. The north mooring field has 57 mooring balls but most of the time, there are double that number of boats because there are 2 boats/mooring ball. It’s kind of crazy to look at the mooring field- so many boats!!! This marina also has access to the free bus system in Vero Beach. It’s super easy to get from the marina to shopping areas.

Today we visited with Mark’s brother John and his wife Sadhana. They are staying just south of Orlando and drove out to us. We had a wonderful lunch and then explored the Pelican Island National Wildlife Refuge (there’s a name!). A short walk brought us to a lookout of the intracoastal waterway area – the Indian River. It was so nice to see protected wildlife areas in an area of major urbanization. We had a great walk and more importantly, a wonderful visit with John and Sadhana.

On Friday (tomorrow) Matthew, Margie and Oliver will be heading to Vero Beach and we’ll spend Saturday with them!! It’s hard to believe that their 4 week vacation is coming to an end and they’ll to flying back to Australia on Monday!!

Our next job is to start looking for crossing windows to the Bahamas!!! We’ll soon be in the land of clear blue water and sandy beaches!