Great Sale Cay to Vero Beach, Florida

We awoke bright and early Saturday morning and noticed a lot of the boats at anchor had already headed out, so at 0700 hrs. we pulled our anchor and left  Great Sale Cay anchorage heading towards the Little Bahama Bank.  Very light winds were blowing so we motor-sailed most of the day.  We arrived at Little Bahama Bank at 1500, but instead of stopping and resting, we decided to keep on going and get back into Florida as quick as possible as the weather was due to change for the worse on Sunday. 

You can tell where the banks meet the Atlantic Ocean as there is a definite color change going from 20 feet of water to the mysterious deeper waters of the open ocean and gulf stream. Eva had to say goodbye to clearly seeing and watching the starfish in the shallows along with the fish swimming along side Makai.  As the afternoon quickly turned into evening the winds picked up a little and we put out full sail and looking grand.  We still only maintained between 6 and 7 knots as we were "crabbing" in almost two knots of current in order to get the right angle into Fort Pierce, Fl.  At 2330 hrs we encountered a Carnival cruise ship who was set on a collision course with Makai.  He had no plans of altering his course so as we got within a mile of him and watching their big screen television on deck, Captain Ed decided we needed to turn! An hour later, we were heading

 into the Fort Pierce Channel, which is very well marked making a night time entry a piece of cake.  As soon as we turned to starboard on the ICW we dropped anchor and headed for some shut eye.  It was a long 18 hours, but what we consider a very good crossing.  In the morning we headed to Vero Beach, where we are currently on a mooring ball and getting laundry and shopping done. We are seeing so many of our friends we had met in the Bahamas and will be traveling north with many of them.  We took a dingy ride to the marina to purchase 5 gallons of gas to keep on board for the dingy. Unaware a manatee was under the surface we started rising in the water being gently nudged up in the air and off his back!