Great Loop: Slowing down in Stuart

Days 4-5: January 21-22, 2023

The change in plans to skip the Bahamas has removed the immediate time pressure to get somewhere fast. Our anchorage after crossing over Florida was next to Stuart, FL. It was voted the most beautiful city in 2008 and the wiki universe says it’s cited as one of the best small towns to visit. It also claims to be the sailfish capital of the world.

We were all beat after our long trip across Lake Okeechobee, so we opted to dinghy over to Shephard’s Park and got to the first restaurant we came to. That happened to be Lola’s Seafood Eatery. We were a little skeptical when we arrived as it’s an order at the counter restaurant catering more to the fried food varieties. We were pleasantly surprised, and everyone enjoyed their meals from special-of-the-day Seafood Gumbo to the Cod Francaise.

When we arrived the first night it was getting close to the end of the day, and we anchored by the channel near lots of other boats but unfortunately not in a slow zone. The next morning, we received many “wake” up calls from local boaters and by noon we decided it was a good Idea to move a half mile up down where the slow zone started so we didn’t bob around so much.

On Saturday we took a break to work on some projects. That led us to Best Buy, West Marine, Home Depot, and a bunch of cellular stores. One of the purchases was a toilet seat. For some reason the FomoFleet has a track record of breaking toilet seats, this being the 3^rd in a year. In our defense, the plastic holding the seat was 20 years old and very brittle.

Did I mention they have cool lizards running around everywhere! At first it looked like leaves blowing around but no, it was lizards running here and there.

After our errands the unanimous vote for dinner was the Basil Garden Thai restaurant that we scoped out across the street. The food was wonderful, and the server was great to chat with. He had been working there for over 24 years so was very knowledgeable when we inquired about dishes.

Stuart has a nice downtown area close to the St Lucie River. It also has a long-running Sunday Green Market that was fun to visit. They have a nice public pier for all sizes of boats for day-only moorage.