We awoke to a beautiful morning.  Calm seas with a gorgeous sunrise.  We (well, that mean me) did have to clean the windows and wash the bugs off the boat. 

Left Alligator River Marina at 9 am, passed through the Alligator River Swing bridge and away we went on another day traveling the ICW!

Some clouds and spotty showers during the day but overall a very nice travel day. And I got to run the boat!

We passed Mile Marker 125 about 1pm (827 miles to go to Vero Beach! LOL!)

A very uneventful trip.  Pulled into Dowry Creek Marina’s fuel dock about 2:30pm filled up and pulled out to move to one of their slips.   Something wasn’t right….. the bow thruster was stuck in full starboard position and whatever John did to try to stop it would not work.  So we called the dockhand on the VHF to let them know what was going on and headed out of the marina so we could get away from other boats and I could take the helm (yeah, me!) so John could go downstairs to see if he could disconnect the motor.

There was no kill switch, so he had to pull the control wiring off of the thruster. Finally, once the thruster was stopped, we were able to head back into the marina and tie up for the night. Of course, nothing is easy and we had to back into a blind slip (without the aide of the bow thruster). Luckily, we were able to pull the boat in and get her tied up. There’s never any end to the excitement we seem to encounter.

After we got tied up, John took the thruster switch apart and cleaned the contacts, then wired it back up and seems to be working ok now. However, I did get a lesson in how to disconnect the thruster if it happens again. Sheesh.

Anyway, we all made it safe and sound (once again), with a beautiful view for the evening, and of course, happy hour makes everything better!