Eau Gallie

Eau Gallie is a town next to Melbourne.  They used to be two distinct towns but growth has brought them into being one large area.  What we saw was nice.  Well kept but not pretentious.  Beach on the barrier island and lots of good places to eat.  We stayed at the local yacht club and everyone we met was so friendly and made us feel welcome.  The club is first rate in every aspect!  We didn't have time to see too much of the club as we were lucky to be able to visit David's cousin Jake and his girlfriend Brittain.  They were great fun and Jake was very generous in taking us around to find parts for the boat and a quick provisioning trip.  A super bonus was Jake telling us about the Space X launch.  It was supposed to go the last night we were in town and we had dinner at a beachside restaurant but the mission was scrubbed.  Still had a great dinner and evening.  More on the launch in another post.  Here are some more pictures from Vero that I didn't have time to post the other day.

This was the tantalizingly close exit to the ICW from our mooring ball.  Sadly,
it's only three feet deep so we had to go nearly a mile to get out and around to this point.

Sunrise at Vero was gorgeous.  We needed to pull out early to make it
to Melbourne in time to get settled and meet Jake.

The greenery along the ICW is changing.  More than just mangroves are starting to appear on
the spoil islands.  Lots of invasive Australian Pines fill the sandy spits.

There are always marked water paths to marinas that we have to be careful
and not get confused with the ICW marks.  This set were small enough to
be obviously not our set of marks.

One stretch of water was populated with decrepit boats with folks living
on them.  This one looked like the person was also a hoarder.

And then there is how the other half live.

On the way to Melbourne David caught this decent sized Spanish mackerel.  This
was the only one we caught so it was a nice combo with our chicken for supper. 

One of the last bridges we'll have to have open for us for a while. 
They're not bad just tedious.

Brittain and Jake.  Nice sunset picture.

The three of us.  No one was around to take a picture and  get Brittain in there too

No rocket launch but beautiful sunset and beach scenery.

Nice, nice club and nice people.  We met several people that had some connection to us.
One lady was born in my home town but grew up in Fort Walton Beach.  Another
lady was good friends with some of our friends and another couple had heard our talk
on cruising at a FCYC meeting.  Small world.

This is the combo dockmaster's office, grill and pool showers building.
It was conveniently located at the end of the dock we were on.

Main club house.  They made excellent use of their waterfront view.  All
the restaurant and lounge seating looked out at the water, wrapping around the point.

Someone with a good imagination named this boat.  These boats are
used in the kid's summer sailing classes.

This is a screen shot of what we look at while we navigate.  It is on our chartplotter
and the blue is the waterway and the white line is our route.  The little red and green dots are
marks that we have to go between to keep in deeper water.  Some places are labeled such as
wildlife refuge and towers are shown to help us identify our location.  It isn't in the picture, but
our boat shows up as a little black icon to show our position.