Melbourne

We got a late start from Ft Pierce today. We even asked if we could stay another night but they did not have space for us so after visiting with a woman on a sailboat which had Leawood, Ks. on its transom we found that she graduated one year behind us from the same high school. We also met another looper boat we had not encountered previously.
After much discussion as to our destination we departed headed for Melbourne and then I altered that to anchor Friday night and then go on to Melbourne for Saturday and Sunday nights. This is a nice anchorage and Shelly caught at least 12 fish this afternoon, several of which were keeper size but I released them rather than clean them. We still had fresh fish for dinner tonight. It was Mackerel that a group on a charter fishing boat caught yesterday and gave us some for taking their pictures together with their fish. They had caught their limit. Muriel learned a method of preparing fish from another looper at Marathon. We really like fish this way.
We spent a nice night at anchor and woke up to a cloudy morning. We took our time getting started and got some rain showers as we were getting under way. It was a very calm morning with some showers scattered in. It was nice to see how many people were using the small islands scattered along the waterway. We arrived at Melbourne about 12:30 and got settled into a slip quickly. We left the boats soon after we were checked in and walked the few blocks to the downtown area. There was an Irish parade which had just concluded but everything was in a festive atmosphere to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day. The town was full of people wearing all kinds of green and drinking green beer. We intended to eat corned beef and cabbage at O’Malley’s but the wait was so long we decided on another place and maybe we will return to O’Malley’s tomorrow.
On Sunday morning we did laundry and worked about the boats. Muriel and I took a walk out on to the bridge to scout out locations for viewing the space shuttle launch. After some drinks we walked into downtown again to O’Malley’s to get some corned beef and cabbage. It was very good and the bread pudding was even better. Soon after we got back to the boats it was time to walk out to the bridge to view the shuttle.
The shuttle lift off was awesome even from this distance. We estimated it would take three minutes to hear the sound and that was pretty accurate. We watched as the boosters separated and began to descend and then watched the shuttle engines burn until they went out of sight in the haze near the horizon.
We will leave here in the morning and take about a week to get to Daytona where we will spend the weekend while Blue Max visits with some friends.