Ranger Tug 21ec "Lil' Green Tug"

I first discovered Vero Beach Municipal Marina 20 years ago while helping deliver a sailboat from the Chesapeake to Miami. After four days at sea, and four days of constant seasickness, we finally pulled in at Cape Canaveral and motored south to Vero Beach. The marina was like an oasis, lush and green, well kept, and the moorings were well protected from tropical storms. I remember it as being the highlight of the trip, and I vowed that someday I would be back. It took a while, but I'm finally here! John Holland unhooks the boat while the forklift operators decide how they will offload it. John Holland towed the boat from the Chesapeake this past week, arriving at Fort Pierce, Florida, on Wednesday. The forklift operator put the boat on an outside maintenance rack where I did some cleaning and made some upgrades. I intend to keep the boat here at Taylor Creek Marina in indoor storage for the hurricane season which lasts from June through the end of November. Solar...

It was a long, cold winter in Indiana. My bedroom walls were covered with photographic prints of Lil' Green Tug anchored on the Patapsco River last summer, bobbing in the warm Chesapeake sun, while six inches of snow was falling outside my windows. But this will be my last dreary winter. I've made plans to bring the boat to Florida to live aboard next winter. Vero Beach Municipal Marina I got a fair price on uShip.com for towing the boat south, and it should be arriving in two weeks. I've already made my escape, arriving a few days ago at a condo community in Vero Beach. It was a sunny 81 degrees here today, 59 drizzly degrees back in Indiana. Once the boat arrives at an indoor storage facility in Ft. Pierce, I'll give it a good cleaning and waxing, and install the solar panel on the Igloo cooler on the stern swim platform. Over the winter I had the marina in Pasadena, Maryland, connect the two air-conditioner batteries to the one house battery, tripling the h...