Day 143: Squirrel! Squirrel!

Vero Beach City Marina to Melbourne Harbor, Melbourne, FL (docked)

June 7, 2022

As much as we liked Vero Beach, it was time to head farther north. We were able to fill our water tank with marina water. The water here is dark and opaque, so we don’t want to use our watermaker.

Docks at Vero Beach City Marina – fuel, water, and pump-out available

We know we are moving north – although we had some bridges to go under today, none of them were on demand. We made great time (averaging 7 knots) heading to Melbourne today.

There are schools of fish visible in the water the Melbourne marina; apparently the pelicans know about this because we saw several of them very near our boat.

I feel as if we have crossed some sort of line in nature: in Melbourne we saw one small lizard and a bunch of squirrels. These were the first squirrels we have seen in a very long time as they aren’t native to the Bahamas.

This marina is a bit more urban than the one in Vero Beach, which was in a residential area. We are able to easily walk to the historic part of Melbourne that has some shops, restaurants and a very nice brewery that had tasteful brews, great staff, and very delicious food.

A benefit of staying in a marina is having electricity to run fans to try to combat the heat and humidity. A more important benefit is that John doesn’t have to haul a mud-encrusted chain and anchor when we leave.

Our current plan is to get to Cocoa, if not further than that. There is a Tohatsu dealer there who might have some parts for our outboard (if they will ever answer their phone).