After the shuttle went off we headed again down the ICW to hang with our friends boat S/V Ishmael. They were behind us when we went outside but passed us when we waited for the shuttle launch. We caught up with them at Vero Beach, Florida. As we came into the Vero Beach Municipal Marina to grab a mooring and catch up with our friends, much to our surprise and delight we found that the majority of the Jekyll Island Harbor kids boat population had migrated. In addition to S/V Ishmael we found that S/V Gromit and S/V Shiver had also arrived.

Our kids had soundly lamented leaving all of these friends at Jekyll Island and were absolutely ecstatic to see so many of these familiar boats in one anchorage. Commence the land games, boat movies and shared dinners. The parents, I must admit were equally happy to see each other and to share time, meals and even boat repairs.

In addition to these friends we made a few new ones including meeting another boater with a Vagabond nearly identical (okay it’s in better shape than ours) to ours. We also reconnected with S/V Melodeon who we met the first time in Oriental NC and S/V Lighten Up from Maine who we met the first time in the Hamilton Marine store in Portland Maine while we were both shopping for new life jackets, small world I guess. In addition there were 4 other boats hailing from Maine and one from Alaska. It was tons of fun.

For a municipal marina this is a great place to go. Nice facilities and a public bus, free no less, that picks up right in front of the marina. We planned to only stay a day or two but ended up doing due to some last minute shopping, added to the day or two of rainy weather plus the kids begging 1-2 turned into 5 days in the end. Can’t say I regret it for a moment. We had to be someplace and when I paid the bill of $75 Nicole pointed out that we have spent that for one night before at the dock, so it was quite the deal.