Back in the US

After approximately 30 hours of sailing and motoring we arrived back in the US. The marina where we are staying in Fort Pierce, Safe Harbor Harbortown, is quite shallow and we were advised to arrive at high tide, which was 4:45 pm this afternoon. Although we didn’t need to leave until early afternoon yesterday we were ready in the morning so we decided to go. There is a cruise line’s private island very close to Great Harbour Cay and we saw numerous cruise ships all day and night as we traveled in the Bahamas. It is hard to believe there are enough people cruising to even partially fill all of those ships. We had some relatively nice sailing and at one point during my watch last night it and then it became so brisk I thought we should put a reef in the mainsail. Shortly after George started his watch at midnight the wind moved behind us and became light. George wasn’t able to keep to sail from collapsing and the boom from banging—in spite of trying everything he could think of—so I got very little sleep and we eventually furled the sails. We took our time getting to Fort Pierce and we still arrived well before high tide. Since it is a weekend there were small motorboats zipping around everywhere. Fort Pierce is a popular stop on the ICW so there were sailboats anchored in every available anchorage. We had planned to anchor and wait for high tide but we couldn’t find a place to anchor that had enough depth for us. George finally called the marina and asked if there was anywhere we could come in and tie up while we wait to get into our assigned slip. They let us tie up to the fuel dock and even then Breeze On was sitting on the bottom. At high tide we moved the boat into our slip and George got to work clearing us into the US using the CBP Roam app. It wasn’t going well and we thought we might have to go to the Customs office at the airport to get it sorted out. Finally, after an hour, we were approved to clear into the US. We will be here for close to a month visiting family and friends. I will most likely resume writing blog posts once we are preparing to sail home. 

Fort Pierce Inlet. 

One of the popular beaches in Fort Pierce.