Our sailboat is a Catfisher 32.  It was made in England and there were only 18 ever built.  And if memory serves me correctly, they were all made between the years of 1985 and 1987.

So needless to say, with very few ever made and considering the age of the vessels, we were stunned to see another Catfisher 32 in the mooring field at Vero Beach.

Sailboat Ming (Catfisher 32)

Neal, the 76 year old owner of the other Catfisher, immediately jumped into his dinghy and rowed over to our boat.  Neal doesn’t believe in outboard engines.

Neal was more interested in the upgrades and work we have done to the Great Escape and I was more interested to hear stories about a 76 year old cruiser.

Apparently he travels up and down the east coast with the weather and makes the warm and sunny Vero Beach Florida his home in the winter and then travels back up north before the summer heat arrives.

Vero Beach Anchorage

We had a perfect little tight anchorage amongst the mangroves and the weather has been a comfortable warm during the days and a perfect cool temperature for sleep at night.

I asked Roxanne how she slept, “Horrible, those damn dolphins kept waking me up.”  The dolphins arrived in the quiet of the early morning to hunt for breakfast.  Without another sound to be heard, the dolphins breathing sounded like an erupting geyser which apparently disturbed Roxanne’s sleep.  I couldn’t help but laugh.

Roxanne and I take turns steering the boat.  We have a constant internet connection so work continues, even when we are on the move, from a perfect office window with an ever changing view that no corner office could ever compete with.

Ospry eating a fish on top of a mast.

Our next stop was Melbourne FL.  Once again we didn’t leave the boat and it had just occurred to us that it has been 5 days since we were on land.  It wasn’t odd because it was a long period of time, cruisers often spend much more time than that aboard, but odd only because we hadn’t noticed or had much desire to leave the boat.

But I was becoming tired of always being on the move so it was time to pull into a marina, enjoy some cold beers and eat a tasty cheeseburger.  We have decided to pull into the Titusville City marina, which is very close to the Kennedy Space Center and Daytona and so with an anticipation of a very cool stop, I hauled the anchor early and we headed towards Titusville.