Time to ‘hit the road’.  Sunrise and clouds.  Lots of clouds but the weather forecast promised the sun would come out north of us.  We are heading north.  Perfect!  Notice how calm the water is?  Yep, very little wind to interfere with us casting off.

Sunrise in Loggerhead Marina – Stuart

Leaving Stuart, FL

We picked a Tuesday to head out because we will be motoring through “The Crossroads”.  This is a busy intersection of waterway.  We were told to pick a non-weekend day and take our time to traverse this intersection.  Lots of “go fast boats”, commercial barges, sailboats, and trawlers are expected to be around the intersection.  Basically, it would be a very busy place to be.  I imagined it to be like a busy road with 4 way stops, spaghetti junction, and the like with cars zipping by you as if you are standing still.  After several days of rest we were ready to tackle this new challenge.

I put a red dot where the marina is located.  This is what “The Crossroads” looks like:

The Red Dot is us in the morning.

The Crossroads is where you have the Atlantic Ocean inlet, the ICW north and south, and the St Lucie River – Okeechobee waterway all meet at the same spot.  Of course, because so much water is coming and going, there were low spots to be aware of.  Going slow around the curves was mandatory.  Don’t see it?  How about this?

The Crossroad – see yellow cross. Green arrow pointing to the spot.

Lots of boats go through that intersection on their way in from the Ocean ( commercial traffic and tall sail boats), fishing boats ( on their way out to sea with clients on board ), and people like us trying to just go north or south along the waterway. I looked like a lighthouse.  My eyes glued to binoculars and my head/body turning around 360 degrees looking out for other boaters.  Telling Wayne what boats I saw so we could anticipate them.  Generally, normal operating procedure just magnified.

We were ready!!  Here is one of the early morning boats on the waterway.  We don’t exactly know what this skiff does, but we gave him a wave and hoped he had a good day.  Officially leaving the Okeechobee Waterway and into the ICW (Intracoastal Waterway).

Example of one of the boats we saw

Luck was with us!  A very calm and cloudy day.  We had a drizzle here and there and only a handful of boats were on the water.  No backup.  No accidents.  No commercial haulers.  Only a couple “go fast boats” that went zipping by us.  Several tall sailboats on their way to warmer waters.  We were positively thrilled.  We pretty much had the waterway to ourselves.

How is this?  A perfect rainbow.  or is it a double rainbow?  We can’t see the pot of gold, can you?

Perfect Rainbow

It looks like we are going to motor right over the edge of the rainbow.  Surely, we should stop and collect our pot, right?

Rainbow hitting the water

It didn’t take long before we approached Fort Pierce, FL.

Ft. Pierce power plant

On the other side of the waterway is blue skies and sunshine!  Also the Atlantic Ocean via the Ft. Pierce Inlet.

See that opening? It is the Atlantic Ocean

We were graced with not only a rainbow for a hour of our journey north but also a couple of dolphins.  This one looked like it was jumping sideways.

Dolphin riding our wake

I was surprised as to how wide this area of the ICW was.  Lots of room for our boat and plenty of water depth.  We had great weather for our journey north.

We arrived at the Vero Beach City Marina in early afternoon.  We decided to splurge on something we haven’t eaten in almost 6 months.  Domino’s Pizza!!  Yum!  They delivered to the Marina!!  How cool is that.  As we munched down, drank a beer or two, we enjoyed the sunset…..

Sunset in Vero Beach, FL

Later….

Evening lights in Vero Beach, FL

One of those blessed uneventful days.  Wonderful!!