Dolphins, Manatees & Boat Chores

Fort Pierce, Florida – ICW Mile 966 (12-17 Jan)

The USA seems to be experiencing some periods of freak cold weather. Places we’ve visited are dropping to temperatures that they haven’t seen in 40 years. Charleston 400 miles away normally sees mild winters but has recently been covered in snow. Life on board has been manageable so far but the further north the colder it will get so for the last month Simon has spent hours trying to fix our broken heater and researching repair options on the Internet. After much deliberation he finally decided to order a refurbished diesel (forced air) heater from Canada and its being delivered to Fort Pierce City Marina.

Another job that urgently needs sorting is changing our cooking gas from butane to propane, as butane isn’t easily available here in the states. Supplies onboard are running low and I don’t fancy living off dry pasta when we run out. This sounds a relatively straightforward task but as with most boat stuff it isn’t! The regulator that attaches onto the bottle requires changing and nothing here seems to fit on our set up. There is also the a huge pile of laundry that needs doing and the weekly trek to Aldi for the grocery run so I figured Fort Pierce was going to be a bit of a bore.

The waterfront area was relatively small and there wasn’t an awful lot to do within walking distance, but as luck would have it what it lacked in quantity was made up for in quality. One evening we were luckily enough to see 5 or 6 manatees bobbing up and down for air in the murky water next to the Manatee Conservation and Education Centre. For a dollar entry fee you could go inside and learn more about the creatures. It was a odd little place with a few fish tanks and some interactive displays hosted by 2 very enthusiastic elderly ladies and provided some light entertainment for Daisy.

Through the powers of social media Simon arranged for us to meet another boat family at the local library for Story Time, which turned out to be much more fun than expected. The kids got to make a mess afterwards with some art stuff Daisy mainly tried eating the glue but seeing her interacting with other children was great. I don’t know why it never occurred to me to visit the local libraries for fun free things to do. Simon and I got chatting with a friendly local lady called Anna who arranged to meet up with us later that week and the boat family that were also there kindly gave us a lift to get our food shopping. Simon managed to get a work around for gas and fitted the heater he purchased which is up and running and doing a great job of keeping us warm so all in all it was a success.