Our route down the Indian River required constant and careful attention to the channel markers because, although the river is wide, it is deceptively shallow except for the narrow channel, and careless mariners can easily run aground. In fact, a couple of times some thoughtless and inconsiderate boaters coming toward us from the opposite direction practically pushed us out of the channel.
About an hour and a half into the cruise both engines were purring along happily (without even a hint of wanting to stall). Then Ken went down to check on things in the engine room, and I heard him yell, "Shut it down!" Diesel fuel was spraying all over the place. The good news is that the new lift pump was working fine. The bad news was that we had blown an o-ring on one of the secondary fuel filters, and about 10-15 gallons of diesel had leaked out into the bilge. So, we continued toward our destination on the starboard engine alone, with Ken working feverishly in the hot engine room pumping fuel into buckets to keep the bilge pump from activating so we wouldn't be pumping diesel fuel overboard. What a mess!
All's well that ends well, though, and we were able to make it to our marina in Stuart right on schedule. Then we hired a mechanic to replace the faulty o-ring, pump out the rest of the spilled diesel, and clean up the bilge.
Loggerhead Club and Marina in Stuart is located a few miles up the St. Lucie River, near the beginning of the Okeechobee Waterway, which ends at Ft. Myers on Florida's west coast. At the Stuart "crossroads" on the ICW, one has a choice of turning left toward St. Lucie Inlet, turing right up the St. Lucie River (which we did), or continuing south on the Indian River. Although we thought we had planned our route up the St. Lucie pretty thoroughly ahead of time, we did make one rather funny mistake. As we approached what we thought was the Rt. 1 bridge and looked for the marina, which should have been on the north side of the river just before the bridge, it wasn't there! Wrong bridge. We had to continue on to the next bridge, the correct one, and there we saw the marina, right where it was supposed to be. What a relief!
Once again, we love our new watery home. Unlike the peacefully quiet, reserved atmosphere of Loggerhead, Vero Beach, set in the heart of a lovely gated residential community, this Loggerhead sister marina in Stuart is wonderfully vibrant and alive, with restaurants on site, historic downtown Stuart just across the Rt. 1 bridge, and countless shopping opportunities close by. One meets many fellow cruisers on the docks, some returning snowbirds spending another winter in Stuart, others planning to move on, awaiting a weather window favorable for a Gulf Stream crossing to the Bahamas.
The marina has excellent facilities, including a heated swimming pool and hot tub, seen below.
We also have free use of an exercise room with state of the art equipment.
Although we didn't know it at the time that we reserved a boat slip here for the month of January, this is also the perfect location to be for the upcoming Stuart Boat Show (Jan.14-16). As luck would have it, this is taking place right across the street (Dixie Hwy) from here, so we can just walk to it.
We are now four months into our planned six month shakedown cruise (see our Sept. 13th blog posting). Where we will go from here, who knows? Are we enjoying the cruising life so far? Definitely, yes, but it has not been without its frustrations. For example, upon arrival here on January 3rd, our satellite TV system mysteriously stopped working. We have a KVH authorized dealer working on the problem, but so far, both he and the KVH techs are baffled. The equipment works perfectly when the dealer takes it to his office, but when he brings it back here, it doesn't. Luckily, this marina provides free cable TV service, so we're OK on that front for now.
If we have learned anything in the last four months, it's the importance of redundancy. When our fresh water pump fails (and it has), we can hook up to shore water on the dock with a hose; when one engine conks out, we have a second one to do the job; when one depth sounder mysteriously stops working, we still have another one to keep us from running aground; if our GPS chartplotter shuts down (or we hit the wrong button and screw it up), we still have an old one as a backup; two VHF radio systems provide communication security (plus a portable one just in case). Well, you get the picture. Anyway, when Murphy's Law meets the Rule of Redundancy, you'd better have a Plan B!
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