Jupiter to Ft Pierce

We pulled anchor in Jupiter in the morning.  Or I should say we pulled anchors in Jupiter in the morning.  We were anchored sideways to the channel to keep us from swinging into the channel during the night when the tides or winds changed.  Both of our anchors held fast and we had a decent night sleep.  

The journey Monday involved a mostly northerly route as most days will include for the near future.   It was a windy cold day in Florida.  I'm not sure why we have so many windy cold days on this trip but the entire trip has consisted of mostly windy cold days.  Windy cold days make the locals irritable.    They wear me out...  

I mentioned in the blog Sunday that I'd try to include a picture of the new bridge being built in Jupiter in my next walk.  As you can see they aren't messing around this is goin nog to be a serious bridge.  

We drove by some little houses again... it just amazes me how many of these houses there are.   Florida is obviously the recipient of the largesse of wealthy people who move here for the weather.. 

And I suppose they also move here for the lack of an income tax.  

When we arrived at the marina in Fort Pierce they put us in the front row.  I think they wanted to play one of these things is not like the others.  Can you tell which one is our boat?    And these aren't even the really big boats but it sure makes ours look small.

This is a large marina and they intend to make it larger....

Fort Pierce is a nice area but the downtown area is a little rough.  They're trying really hard to gentrify and make it nicer but most of the storefronts are either empty or under construction.  The things that survive appear to be restaurants.  All of the shopping I think has moved to suburbs.  

As I mentioned on Facebook yesterday,  I spent the evening fixing things on the boat.    Generator switch malfunctioned, I ordered some toilet system repair things again because some are broken again.  I replaced a macerator pump that had rusted out, saltwater is horrible on things.   I added a voltage regulator behind Katie's TV so that hopefully it will stay running even when the batteries get low.  Rinsed salt off of much of the boat and dinghy.   Lots of stuff like that...  

I should mention that the bad diesel we got does appear to be isolated to just the left rear tank.  We moved from the keys all the way up to Jupiter on the front tanks and there was not a speck of dirt or brown turdy looking things in the fuel reservoir.  I switched back to the rear tanks on the way to Jupiter and by the time we got to Fort Pierce we have junk in our left filter again.  Not enough yet to cause any problems with engines but just enough that there's still stuff in the tank that's coming out.  If this continues we will either have to stop and have somebody do what is called polishing the fuel or will stop using that tank except in an emergency until we have it cleaned.  Right now I'm still using it because it's not shutting us down and we're in protected water.  If it's pulling junk out of the tank it's just less junk in the tank that needs to be filtered and I have many extra filters on hand if I need to change them out.  

So enough about boat maintenance.  Today we decided to go for a bike ride because we're in a marina and we can get our bikes off the boat fairly easily..

The Navy SEAL Museum is about 4.5 miles from our boat.    Apparently this area is the first place that there was seal training when Kennedy created the special forces to try to adapt to the threat of communism.  

Before they were called seals they were called 

frogmen.   

The Navy seals are usually the first ones in when there is a special situation to take care of.   

This is a replica in miniature of Osama bin Laden's compound.  The seals were the ones sent in to take him out.   They even replicated the helicopter that crashed on the wall as well as the one that landed just outside the perimeter.   

We had a somewhat overzealous host that decided that Katie needed to handle some weapons.  I'm not quite sure but perhaps he thought she looked like seal material.  Lol. Not quite.

The training for these people is absolutely insane.  I have to really pay tribute to the amazing dedication of these people because most people would die.  And a lot of them die also....  

Since Katie was handling the automatic weapons they figured she might as well use them from the helicopter as well....

Seriously though, the people who become seals are next level performers.  We watched video and saw how they drop people from moving boats at 30 mph or helicopters and then how later they pick them back up at 30 mph by hooking them and yanking them clean up out of the water as they fly by.  The kinds of physical feats these bodies are capable of doing are remarkable.  

I didn't realize how long the special forces have had these jet suits with five jets two on each arm and one on the back that can literally walk them off boats or choppers and on to enemy positions.   This is a very Jetsons kind of thing.    

They showed us some video footage and pictures of some of the first landings in Kuwait during desert Storm.   The timing required and coordination is something.  Of course these people get all of the technology that's available as well.   Pretty cool stuff.  

Every once in awhile we end up seeing something familiar.  We walked up to this panel and all of a sudden I'm like hey my cousin's in that photo. I don't know how many people know but my cousin who was a pediatrician was a student at St George's medical school in Grenada and was taken hostage back in the '80s.  He was rescued by Navy seals as shown in this panel.   Our family was very thankful that the first doctor in the family was rescued and worse things  did not happen to them.  

Once we ventured outside we began to see some of the equipment that is used to deploy and retrieve Navy seals.  Of course most of this stuff is old and the new stuff they don't tell us about.  Even this old stuff often has things removed so you can't see what was there.  

They had a fairly interesting obstacle course that the seals use for training here.  Katie decided to use the balance beam system.  She didn't climb the walls or the over-under bars. Nor did she pick up the heavy beams they had to carry.  

Ross Perot paid to put the sculpture in the park depicting a seal rescuing another seal who was injured.  

As is frequently the case, we have to ride our bikes to get to things because it's our mode of transportation off the boat.  In Florida bridge building seems to be something they are doing everywhere so we had a number of detours and special sidewalks today to meander through.  

On the way back to the boat we decided to get some groceries and eat lunch at a Chinese restaurant.  It was actually quite good..

Once we returned to the boat I received a notification that another of my packages had arrived at the other marina across the channel.  I had ordered them to be shipped there because I thought that's where we were going to be staying but they were full and we could not get in.  We ended up in a much more expensive marina but this place is really nice.

So to fetch our package the easiest way was to dingy.  And since we were on the dingy we figured we might as well do some exploring as there are many channels and islands here that don't have anything on them.  The tide here is a serious thing and the flow of the water is fast.  There was one point out by the opening to the ocean where I had the dingy on plane and it literally wasn't moving because the water under us was moving one way and we were trying to move the other.  

My wife's favorite thing in the whole world is when I include pictures of her in my blog.  Especially when she's relaxing on the front of the dinghy.   Okay maybe that's not true... One of my favorite things in the world is taking pictures of my wife riding on the dinghy...  I'm pretty sure my wife's favorite thing is cereal.  (Ok, maybe not but it's a contender..   i shouldn't tease.  Ice cream is right up there for me....)

We finished the day grilling some steaks in the back of the boat, loading the bikes and changing the oil in the dingy motor.   The day well completed.  I'm going to try to get more sleep tonight because last night I didn't sleep very much.  We hope to leave early tomorrow so that we can get some things done here before we leave and still make time getting north.   

Till tomorrow, have a good day!