Day 1: Hobe Sound, FL, to Melbourne, FL

8 hrs. This will be our first day on the 'Loop' (Florida-to-Michigan). I don't intend to write a long narrative for each day, but thought I'd register a few thoughts and observations on these first couple of days, as we settle into the daily routine and as various experiences begin to become routine. Also, I'll endeavour to include some trip-log detail from the Nebo software that Preston runs.

We depart the private and anonymous Loblolly Bay Marina into Peck Lake on the Indian River. 'Loblolly' comes from the name of a genus of pine tree that is common to this southern climate, and I think there's a less complimentary local usage of the word, as well. But the marina is part of a private gated community (and the residents want to keep it that way, no admittance to riff-raff!). We sign in with the gate-guard, and thereafter display a certificate on our rental car dashboard to facilitate our regular coming-and-going.

This is the beginning of the long navigation up the Indian River that Preston finds 'boring'... so Graeme and I will get to run the boat over lengthy portions while Preston attends to documentation and paper work below. He will be keeping one of his dolphin's weather eyes on whomever is steering though, to make sure we're 'in the channel' at all times.

We run about 80 miles and eventually slide into the Melbourne Harbor Marina in the late afternoon. I've been to Melbourne, FL, three times over the past couple of decades, so we three go uptown (which is nearby) to see if I remember anything of the main drag. I don't, so we stop at Meg O'Malley's Restaurant & Irish Pub for dinner. We negotiate the double track of the Florida East Coast Railroad, which carries freight trains between Jacksonville and Miami, some of them doing 80 km/h through the centre of town (with MUCHO lusty blowing of the horn, it has to be said). Lorraine thinks the 5-chime locomotive airhorns sound as good as the whistle on US Sugar's ol' 148. I do not disagree.

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