Vero Boat Buddies Yacht Broker and More

...Cutter Loose and Island Spirit buddies...

Where are we and what have we been doing? We seem to not be keeping up with the blog and that is because we are: Running the ICW, Visiting Boat Buddies, Installing AIS, Building a new web Server for IPYOA, Importing 16,000 photos into this server, Servicing my Yacht Broker clients and enjoying a happy, busy time. This may be too busy with too many items colliding together all at one time, but at least we are set up in Vero Beach, Florida, at the city marina mooring field and we can stop moving while we attend to all the non-cruising activities we are involved in.

Carey and Julie relax on Cutter Loose

Since we left St. Augustine, we motored 5 days down the ICW along with our good friends and boat buddies, Eric and Patricia, of world famous www.CutterLoose.com. Eric and Patricia returned last spring from 3 winters in the Caribbean and are now doing a review trip down the ICW from Maryland to Florida. We are lucky enough to be spending time together once again. It is like old times. Once we reached Vero Beach, we were given a car by our great friend Carey, IP SP CATSPAW and we drove to Titusville, two days in a row, to show boats and to meet with my yacht broker clients.

Thanksgiving for 200

While in Vero, we were rafted up with IP 460 CUTTER LOOSE. We enjoyed our time here in Vero by walking to the beach every day, enjoying the coffee shop and the beautiful town. Thanksgiving was hosted for 200 cruisers by the City of Vero Beach and the local CLODS, Cruisers Living on Dirt. These cruisers cook the ham and turkeys and the boaters bring all the side dishes. Eric and Patricia and Radeen and I staked out our tables and took our place settings and chairs to the community center. Lucky for us, we checked it out about 1 hour before the event started and we acquired the last 4 seats at separate tables, unfortunately.

Live music after Thanksgiving

After the delicious dinner, the local cruisers assembled their band for a live musical performance that was very entertaining and enjoyed by all. Of course, I grabbed a seat right up front, because live music is so wonderful to share. We really enjoyed this.

After Thanksgiving, we had planned to depart, and depart we did for Fort Pierce where there is a wonderful farmers' market on Saturdasy. We left Vero and motored down to drop an anchor off Fort Pierce where we took our fast 15 hp dinghy across the harbor and into town. On friday night, we made arrangements to meet up with IP 370 Morpheus of London, Richard and Jan, who are into their third year of cruising with sights set on the western Caribbean and Central America this year. Eric and Patricia spent time with Richard and Jan last in the Caribbean and they enjoyed talking about their adventures together. It was great to hear Jan overview their upcoming plans and how they will explore Central America and then store the boat in Panama ready to cross into the Pacific the next season.

Patricia, Eric, Radeen, Richard, Hayden and Jan

Meanwhile we stayed on anchor off Fort Pierce and installed our AIS system silent switch and rewiring to make this new AIS transponder a really cool install. Last year we rebuilt our entire alternator and charging system right here on anchor at Fort Pierce, that took 4 days, so building an AIS system and setting up the laptop software was a piece of cake. The system is working well and we now show up on Marine Traffic for all to follow.

We bought a $450 AIS Camino-108 from MilltechMarine.com

After 3 days on anchor, we needed to return to Vero, where we can secure our boat rafted up to IP 380 CAVU another buddy boat. Ron and Mary Ann (M.A. ocean sailing GrL) will be here for a few more weeks before moving onto Fort Lauderdale. We will be renting a car for the week so we can volunteer at the St. Petersburg Boat Show, Sat and Sun. Then on Monday we will be driving to Hilton Head, SC to survey and sea trial an Island Packet 35 that my client is buying. After that, we plan to return to Vero and head to sea ASAP, pushing onto Miami, FL. We hope to make the Wallcast concert on Dec 12th in South Beach.

Success! 16,000+ photos imported to IPYOA

During all of this activity, I have been working very hard on a major web site project where we have combined the Island Packet Photos web site of 11,500 photos into my IPYOA.com web site that had 5,000 photos.

This project has been going on since the Annapolis Maryland Boat Show of Oct 9th, 2015. We worked on it as we drove down the ICW daily! We have finally finished it and we are now working out the glitches and bugs. The site now holds 16,000+ photos of Island Packet Yachts shared by IP owners that want to share photos. The site is visited by thousands of visitors a month, and the server is sending out 20,000 pages each month. We think it is fantastic and we invite you to take a look and get involved at www.IPYOA.com/photos. As you can see, we have been working on a few fun proyects!

My Old IPphotos.com 2002-2015
13 years of service to the Island Packet Fleet

Bob Wiley IP 380 Judith III, always a great friend to visit

As everyone always says, it is the friends and boat buddies along the way that make this so enjoyable. We have really enjoyed spending quality time with so many of our sailing friends as we all move down the waterway and towards the Florida Keys and the Bahamas. A special time was a fun Sunday at Carey's, with Julie, Eric and Pat, watching football, playing many lively games and dining very well. Who knows when or where we will bump into you all again?

Patricia, Radeen and M.A. (MaryAnn)

Here are more photos to share of all our happenings.

Vero Beach landscaping is beautiful

Our Dinghy Dock at Vero Beach

Julie enjoys the bow of IP 460 Cutter Loose

Best Friends heading to shore for Thanksgiving Day

Bentley and Michele are so musical

Bentley, Michele and Jim
Salty Paws and Simple Life

Jim sharing his music with the cruisers at Thanksgiving

Bentley on the banjo

The newest member of the band studies Michele's drum

INSTALLING OUR AIS CAMINI 108

The radio, a $450 AIS transponder, no need to spend $800-$1000

Look at all the options to connect this AIS

The AIS connection options are perfect, NMEA 183, NMEA 2000 and USB

I added a silent mode switch to shut down transmitting

I added a GPS puck under the deck, works great. $10

The proof the GPS works great, 14 satellites

I added the AIS silent switch under the electrical panel. New label needed

Laptop AIS software allows you to see if the unit is transmitting

Proof of NMEA input into the laptop, look at the NMEA stream

There we are Fort Pierce, FL with 20 AIS targets

A rainbow as we arrive Fort Pierce

Yes, it was a full rainbow

Back to Fort Pierce we go

Particia and Eric, IP460 Boat Buddies

YACHT BROKER WORK

The IP 35 We are working with clients who may be buying this beauty

The IP 380 we are working with a client who is interested in this yacht

AND THE LAST

During our time in Vero, good friends Michele and Joe of IP 37 SIMPLE LIFE invited us over for cocktails. Well, they pulled a fast one on us and the next thing you know, Michele served a most delicious French Meat Pie coming out of the oven with the table all set for dinner. WOW, this was a real treat. Thank You, Michele and Joe. We have followed these two for years and we lived with Michele's cruising book from 2003 on our coffee table. Michele published a book about their year of cruising from Rhode Island to the Exumas and back. We were inpsired by her book, saying someday, someday, we, too, will do exactly this. Well, some day is here, and we are living their book. What a joy to spend time with these two great people. Thank you!

Michele and Hayden toast good times

The delicious French Meat Pie

Joe and Michele on IP 37 Simple Life

Radeen and Joe toast to good times

We are living a dream, we know it, we are grateful every single day to be fully involved in all we are doing. Thank you all for following along and for your comments and emails. 

Next up

... ...The St. Petersburg Boat Show

..........and then off to Hilton Head to survey and sea trial a boat