Day 1 The Adventure Begins

On March 13, Marlene and I woke up on TIKA and decided today was the day to begin the adventure. We had been living on TIKA for 5 days at the private dock where it had been moored since we bought it. Our adventures to this point had been 1) To the fuel dock for its initial fill-up and 2) back the the fuel dock to pump-out our holding tank.

New Boater Lesson: If you discover at 10 pm that your water tanks are empty and decide to fill them in the dark, take a flashlight. I made the mistake of seeing WA...on the hull fitting and added water only to discover it wasn't the WATER fill, it was the WASTE fitting.....hence the need to head the the fuel dock the next morning to pump our holding tank.

So, Marlene and I release the the lines, and begin to weave our way out of the St. Lucie River to Intracoastal Waterway. Being Great Lakes boaters, we have never experienced the intracoastal waterway, otherwise known as the ICW or the "big ditch". While it appears to be a huge waterway, the actual channel is maintained by man and is very narrow. Within two hours of entering the waterway, I decided to go to the upper helm of TIKA to see if I could get the depth finder, which was working intermittently, to work. Marlene took the helm and shut off the depth finder while I went on top to play with the one on the upper bridge. Within seconds, even though we were within a hundred feet of a channel marker, the boat suddenly came to a stop as it dragged bottom. I couldn't believe it....two hours into the adventure and we might have to call Tow BoatUS!!!!. Luckily it was just past low tide and within 15 minutes we floated off and we headed back to the channel marker. From that point on we learned that you study the charts constantly to see how far the channel is from the markers. When the Army Corps of Engineers dredges the channel, the deposit the soil on either side of the channel, so you may only be dealing with a highway that is a hundred feet across. With markers often so far apart you need binoculars to see them, it is easy to stray out of the channel into the shallow area. Modern electronic chartplotters are a big help, but electronics can fail at any time. You need to have a partner watching the charts and the upcoming markers. Marlene, (the Admiral) is getting very proficient at this as we travel. After traveling the rest of the day uneventfully, we settled in on a mooring ball at the Vero Beach Municiple Marina. We were ready for drinks and time to unwind.