Christmas at Vero

Christmas tree crafted by Jan from items found on the beach, Aphrodite guards her gifts

All families have their Christmas traditions. Ours has become taking up a mooring ball at Vero Beach Municipal Marina in Florida. Jan and I have spent 3 of the last 4 Christmases at Vero.

Vero Beach is easy to reach and hard to leave. With the good weather and free bus to great shopping Vero Beach is just so easy and convenient. After leaving chilly Green Cove Springs in northern Florida we schedule a lot of in-the-water chores for Vero Beach. This year those chores included setting up the sat phone, bringing the outboard motor back to life, doing final provisioning, and servicing the fishing rods at the local fishing shack. This year the outboard motor, a Yamaha 8 HP two stoke, was especially balky. Parts had to be ordered from California which took 5 days including Christmas. Jan painted the salon table with chalk paint. She also redid the bunk with new 3 inch memory foam.  It is like sleeping on a pillow now. A cabin light was replaced with a fan. Mechanic Al did the 50 hour service on the new Yanmar engine. He replaced the oil and adjusted the valves. The most challenging chore by far was tightening the forward port motor mount. It was in such a tight spot that the chore took 3 days and 3 trips for the hardware store. I have made a separate post about this difficult task.

We renewed many old acquaintances. We went out to lunch and dinner with out raft-up mates from last year—Davido and Sandra from s/v Utopia. We hooked up with Skip and Harriet. They are one of the many cruiser couples who have purchased homes in Vero Beach. This group has adopted a name--CLODs. This acronym stands for Cruiser's Living On Dirt. The CLODs meet for breakfast weekly and attend the Thursday evening happy hour at the marina. Skip even took me golfing at his club. Thanks, Skip!

All of this activity took place in the Christmas season. Gifts were purchased and received. The marina office was full of new packages every day. This year I had the foresight to purchase a gift of jewelry for Jan back in Beeville before we left in October. I hide it successfully and really surprised her. The surprise was particularly complete because I had bought her a nice light fishing rod as a decoy gift.

Christmas Eve dinner was celebrated with Corpus Christi friends, Bruce and Tammy, on their boat, Dos Libros. Also present were our mooring ball partners, Joe and Sherry fron  Narsilion and Ken, who was Bruce and Tammy's mooring ball partner. We toasted Ken and Connie from Oz. We had spent the previous two Vero Christmases with them. Christmas Day was celebrated with a traditional cruiser's pot luck dinner. It was very well done. A call from the daughter's completed a great day.