Dec 1

Today, we baby sat the contractors installing hurricane shutters on Clyde & Lynda's condo most of the day.  The only highlight of that was when they dropped one of the heavy roll-up shutter units and broke it along with injuring one of the guy's hands.

Late in the afternoon we met up with several other cruisers in town.  We met Bentley & Jim from Salty Paws, Norm & Judy from Integrity (formerly boaters, now land-yacht cruising), Sam & Mimi from No Agenda, and Jim & Rosie from Libelle.  We all went to a organ recital at the St. Augustine Basilica, a very old Catholic church.  After the recital, most of the gang was going to do the weekly art gallery walk and make dinner of the free snacks at each gallery.  We had not eaten all day though, so we opted to go to a real sit-down dinner at the Gypsy Cab Company, where we had an excellent diner last spring while here.  We were not disappointed.

GPS N 29-53.553 W 081-17.621  Nautical miles traveled today 0.  Total miles 7393.

Dec 2

I started the day doing a few minor boat maintenance chores.  I diagnosed a problem with the shore power cord repair that I did back in Charleston, resealed the wires from the solar panels through the deck, fixed an error I made when servicing the jib sheet winches a year ago, and tried to re-secure one of the snaps for the cockpit enclosure.

Our highlight today was meeting up with Milano Myst, another Texas boat whom we originally met in Newport, RI.  We chatted on the VHF for a while and then offered to take then to the grocery, since we had a car.  We picked Rob up and hit the Radio Shack where he got an external wireless antennae, and Publix for groceries.  We should hook up with them again over the next week or so as we move south.

We spent the evening in the condo watching college football and some evening shows.  Barb kicked my ass in playing Sequence while we watched.  Guess I know who the wining part of the team was when we beat my son and his girlfriend.

GPS N 29-53.553 W 081-17.621  Nautical miles traveled today 0.  Total miles 7393.

Dec 3

We enjoyed the condo, with it's cable TV, today.  Barb did laundry, while I did website updates and we watched football.  We only get NBC on the boat here, so cable is good.  We plan to head south tomorrow, so some trip planning was done too, although most of it is already done, so I was just reviewing.

GPS N 29-53.553 W 081-17.621  Nautical miles traveled today 0.  Total miles 7393.

Dec 4

We were up early this morning so that we could catch the Bridge of Lions 07:30 opening.  We have five opening bridges to go through today, and the Bridge of Lions in downtown St. Augustine is the only one that has a set schedule.  If we don't make the 07:30 opening, we will have to wait until 08:30.  We left the slip at 07:00 on a high tide.  Once we got out of Salt Run and into the main ICW channel, there was a strong current running with us, so we were around the north end of Anastasia Island and at the bridge by 07:20.  We turned around so we were pointing into the wind and current and hovered with several other boats.  Precisely at 07:30 the bridge opened and off we went.  There was one powerboat and three sailboats going south.  I deferred to them all and brought up the rear.  With the favorable current, we were making seven and a half knots running at about 2200 rpm.

The ICW in this part of Florida runs less than a mile inland of the beach.  The scenery was of a variety of resort condos, retirement communities, large relatively new homes, and small older houses.  There were no problems with depth in the ICW, and even though there was a strong wind, it was directly behind us, so the ride was comfortable.  The really amazing part though was dealing with the opening bridges.  We have never done Florida on the inside, so we expected to have the same hassles as we do with the North Carolina bridges.  The first pleasant surprise was that with the exception of the Bridge of Lions, they all open on request.  We went through four opening bridges, two of them in downtown Daytona, and never slowed down.  We stayed right near one of the other sailboats for the whole trip.  When we were about a half mile from each bridge, we would call them, give them our name and hailing port, and they would say bring it on.  The bridge would open before we got there, and we would blow right through.  They all wished us a safe journey as we passed through.  North Carolina needs to send their bridge operators down here to learn how it can be done.

We arrived at Halifax Harbor Marina in Daytona about 14:20.  I didn't know it, but Halifax Harbor actually has two separate basins.  Transients generally are put in the south basin, which has nicer floating concrete docks.  I had already turned into the channel for the north basin before I contacted them on the radio.  As luck would have it though, the south basin is full, and they are assigning us a t-head in the north basin, so we are in the right place.  And unlike the last t-head I attempted to dock at, there is no rock wall anywhere in the vicinity to get in my way.  We came in very slowly to give the dockmaster a chance to ride his bike over to the north basin from the south side so he could take our lines.  We will definitely need help with our lines since the wind is still blowing hard and will blow us off the dock.  I turned around an approached the dock.  We got a bow line on, and then a forward spring, so then I could back down on them and get us closer to the dock.  Even with the four dock lines secured, we are still blowing off the dock a foot or two, depending on the tide.  We are on a fixed dock, and there is a three foot tide range, so we can't be snugged up tight like we would be on a floating dock.  But, I'd rather be blown off the dock than pinned against it.

After an arrival beer, we hit the showers.  Even though we are in the older part of the marina, the bathrooms and showers and upstairs boaters lounge were very clean and nice.  We then took a walk through downtown Daytona.  We walked about a mile to a BofA ATM for some cash.  We are building up our onboard cash supply in preparation for leaving the country.  On the way back, we stopped at The Red Tail Bar & Grill  for dinner.  Turns out their happy hour special on beer sucked - half price on Bud, Bud Light, Miller Lite, and Coors Light, but happy hour also meant half price on a nice selection of appetizers.  So, we ordered three appetizers and made dinner of it.  We both had non-happy hour priced beers, which seemed to baffle the bartender.

Back at the boat, the wind is still howling out of the north, and the TV weather girl said the morning low will be in the high forties!  What's up with the cold following us?  We're in Florida for cripes sake.

GPS N 29-12.435 W 081-00.890  Nautical miles traveled today 47.  Total miles 7440.

Dec 5

We started the day with a little unplanned excitement.  I had been up for an hour or so and checked in on the SSB with Cruisehiemers, when Barb got up.  As she came out to the main saloon, she turned on the coffee maker.  A few minutes later, I smelled something burning.  My first thought was that perhaps a hair was on the burner of the coffee pot.  Once I started moving about to isolate the smell, I found it was coming from under one of the chairs in the main saloon, where the power inverter is.  As I took the cushions off the seat and opened the compartment, visible smoke came out.  I could see the melting connection and as I touched the wire, it came apart.  Barb immediately went above and unplugged the shore power cord.  The wire that fried was the input wire from the shore power to the inverter.  We were able to turn the inverter back on and finish brewing the coffee from battery power.  An interesting aside was that the smoke alarm never went off.  It goes off lots of times when Barb cooks, when there is no visible smoke or anything burning, and here it didn't go off when there was visible smoke.

Why this happened is somewhat of a mystery.  We were definitely drawing about as much 110v electricity as we can, with the heat, the water heater, the coffee maker, the TV, and the computer on, but a connection shouldn't fry before a circuit breaker pops.  The wire that fried was laying against the other wires and there was melting on a couple of them, so I cut out and replaced all six connections on the shore power in and 110v out of the inverter.  We then plugged the shore power back in and I watched and held the new connection in my hand to see if it got too hot again.  Of course, now we were not drawing as much, so while the wire got a little warm, it was not too hot to hold.  After several minutes, the input shore power went off.  I got my meter out and found no power at the dock plug.  The dock breakers are not right at the plug like in every other marina we've ever been at, so we had to call the dockmaster to come look at it.  The breaker was in a box half way down the dock, and it was blown.  We reset it and everything has been fine since.  This further adds to the mystery.  Why didn't the dock breaker blow earlier before the wire fired, and then it did blow when we were obviously drawing less amps?  Guess we'll never know, but it all seems fine now.

Our planned excitement for the day is to go to the Daytona Speedway.  If you don't know what NASCAR is, you may not know the significance of Daytona.  Daytona was the birthplace of NASCAR back in the 1950's.  NASCAR's roots were from bootleggers running from the police on back roads in the south.  Bill France Sr. was the founder of NASCAR and the first races were held on the beach here in Daytona.  By 1957, the cars were getting too fast and the crowds too large to keep doing it on the beach and the public highway.  So, Bill France made a deal with the city to lease almost five hundred acres of land and build a real race track.  The rest is history.  When you look at the pictures I took, notice the lake in the infield.  The lake was formed when they dug out dirt to build the high banking of the track.

We were going to take a city bus to the speedway, but as we were getting off the boat, a liveaboard from a couple slips down walked up and asked if we needed to go to the store or anything.  We told him we didn't need a ride to the store, but we were planning to go to the speedway.  He happily took us.

Daytona USA is the tourist attraction at the speedway.  For free you can walk in and go look at the track from the lower level of the grandstands.  Your paid admission includes a tour of the speedway, an IMAX 3D movie, and a nice interactive display area.  We arrived in time to grab a hot dog and a beer before going to the noon showing of the movie.  The movie was very cool.  As far as I can tell, the movie is shown exclusively here and not in other IMAX theatres.  But if you ever get the chance to see any IMAX movie in 3D, do it. 

In the display area, was the winning #48 car from the 2006 Daytona 500.  When you win the Daytona 500, you loose your car for a year.  It goes straight from Victory Lane to Tech Inspection to the display for a year.  The car not only has the battle scars form the race on it, but stuck on confetti from the Victory Lane celebrations, and the signatures of the whole team that made the car.  Right across from the current champion's car was a picture of the grandstands full of people, fronted by a display of funny cabbage head mannequins.  Across the room was a display of a half dozen cars on a platform that is angled at thirty-one degrees like the corners of the track.  Behind those cars were about a dozen white cars hanging from the ceiling that represented many model years and famous car numbers from the past.

Out on the track, we took the tram tour around the facility.  While we were waiting for the tour to start we could hear something racing around on the track.  We walked over to trackside and saw that it was motorcycles.  We learned later that it was a Dunlop motorcycle tire test.  These guys were on crotch rockets racing through the infield road course and half of the main track at speeds near 200 mph.  That's just nuts.  Once on the tram, we drove around inside turns three and four.  I got a nice picture of the high banking and the wall where it says "Daytona" and accidentally got one of the motorcycle nuts in the picture.  We then stopped at Victory Lane and got a few good pictures.  I especially like the one of me on the podium.  Looks a lot better than when I was second in Phoenix last week.

From Victory Lane, I got a good shot of the start/finish line.  That means in the past few years we have been at the start/finish line of both Indy and Daytona.  Pretty cool.  Outside the front entrance were two large bronze statues.  One was of Bill France and his wife.  The other was of Dale Earnhardt.  I was never a big Dale Earnhardt fan, but his place in NASCAR history is indisputable.

After several hours at the track, we were ready to go back to town.  We knew the city buses came here, so we asked at the information booth where the nearest stop was.  The lady told us to go across the street to the mall.  We did, and eventually found the right place for the once-an-hour bus.  We got the bus within about twenty minutes, and were lucky enough to get the one that also picks up about forty high school students.  Once back in town at the main bus station, we walked back to the marina.  We had a nice dinner aboard and prepared to head on south in the morning.

GPS N 29-12.435 W 081-00.890  Nautical miles traveled today 0.  Total miles 7440.

Dec 6

Another early day on the waterway.  This time of year, in order to make fifty or sixty miles in a day, we have to leave at first light.  So at 07:00 we were ready to go.  The wind had been blowing from the north the whole time we've been here, which has held us off the dock nicely.  We undid our lines and just let the wind push us away from the dock several feet and then drove away.  All dock maneuvers should be so easy.

We have three opening bridges to pass through today.  The first one is about fifteen miles south and opens on the hour and twenty past and forty past the hour.  The other two are much further south, and they both have restrictions that they don't open at all between 15:15 and 18:00.  Since it's already dark at 18:00, we need to make those bridges before their restrictions or else we won't get to Cocoa today.  Once out in the ICW, we found that we had a foul current slowing us down.  At full throttle we were making under five knots.  I was counting on six and a half all day to make those bridges.  Two hours into the trip, we passed the Ponce de Leon inlet.  As soon as we passed the inlet, the current was now running with us and we sped up to over eight knots.  If this stays with us for a while, it may average us out to be ok.  The first bridge we came to was just south of the inlet, and we timed it perfectly.  We got the 09:20 opening without ever slowing down.  We passed through New Smyrna Beach and continued south towards Mosquito Lagoon.

This whole section of the waterway has signs all along it warning about manatees.  About halfway between New Smyrna Beach and the northern end of Mosquito Lagoon, we saw ones nose.  It was about twenty feet off our side and we both just happened to be looking right at it as the nose broke the surface for a breath and then sank back below the surface.  So, even though it was just a nose, we can now say we've seen our first manatee.  What the day lacked in manatees, it made up for in dolphins  We saw dozens of dolphins all the trip, and one came way out of the water right next to the boat and smiled at us.

At the very northern end of Mosquito Lagoon we came to a place where there were thousands of bids in the water.  The majority of them were cormorants, and there were also sea gulls, white pelicans, and regular pelicans.  The mass of birds in the water probably spread over a five hundred foot diameter circle and the channel went right through them.  As we entered the mass of birds, they all started flying away.  Now if you've never seen a cormorant take off from the water, it's quite a flapping/running noisy event.  The water just boiled with all these birds trying to get out of our way at the same time.  As far as I know, we didn't run any over, but it would have been hard to tell with all the churning of the water.

A little further south we encountered another obstacle in the waterway.  There was a thirty-some foot trawler anchored in the channel.  This wasn't a big problem for us, as the channel was plenty wide enough for us to get by, but there was a large dredge with a tug pulling and a tug pushing it northbound a couple miles south of here.  A we passed the anchored trawler, we saw nobody aboard.  Now an explanation for anchoring where he was might be that he had an engine problem.  That could also explain not seeing anybody if he were down in the engine compartment.  But if I were in that situation, I would be making frequent announcements on the radio to make sure every other boat in the area knew what was going on.  We warned the northbound dredge about the anchored boat, and I never heard any calls to the Coast Guard about a collision, so I guess he got by ok.

Once we were in Mosquito Lagoon, we no longer had the favorable current with us, but we also didn't have a foul one.  We were still running at full throttle though, even though my calculations showed we should make the bridges with an hour to spare.  We passed through Haulover Canal and through it's opening-on-request bridge, again without even slowing down.  In another eight miles we got to Titusville and the first of the two bridges I had been worrying about.  We had just caught another sailboat, and the bridge opened for us both together.  About five miles further south we got to the Addison Point bridge, the last of our obstacles.  We did have to slow a minute there, only because there was a northbound boat also, and the bridge tender told us to wait and let him come through first. 

When going south in Mosquito Lagoon, you are looking directly at Cape Canaveral before the ICW turns west through Haulover Canal.  For ten miles or more we could see the huge Space Shuttle assembly building on the horizon.  Once we were west of the canal and headed for Titusville, using our binoculars, we could clearly see the shuttle on the launch pad.  Hopefully we'll get to see it launch tomorrow.

We got to the Cocoa Village Marina right at 16:00 and were directed to our slip.  Two guys took our lines and expertly tied us on all four corners so that we are not touching the dock at all.  There is no tide here so we don't have to worry about lines being tied right for both ends of the tidal range.  We got checked in and immediately hit the showers.  The facility is brand new and very nice, except that being brand new, it has low-flow water saving shower heads.  One of the things boaters look forward to are good hot showers with good water pressure.  Well, I eventually got the hot part, but the pressure is better on the boat.

At 17:00 our friends Carl & Debbie from Diva showed up to go to dinner with us.  We knew Diva was in a marina not far away, and we had hailed them on the radio as we were coming in.  They had a car, so they came and got us and took us to dinner at Murdock's Pub.  It was good to catch up with them again.

GPS N 28-21.442 W 080-43.456  Nautical miles traveled today 59.  Total miles 7499.

Dec 7

This morning we found our friends Rob & Carole on Milano Myst over on the other side of the marina.  We visited with them a little and agreed that we will get together later to hopefully watch the shuttle launch.  We walked into town and our first stop was at the S.F. Travis hardware store.  S.F. Travis was founded in 1885.  Not much has changed since.  When you enter the store, a clerk will immediately ask if you need help.  If you came for something specific, they will take you to the right place in the store.  That may sound easy, but the store is in seven buildings, three of which have second floors, and there is little order to where things are located.  So having a helper is good.  If on the other hand, you just want to browse, they turn you loose and off you go.  Browsing through here is part old fashioned hardware store, and part museum.  There are things here nobody would possibly use anymore, but they brought back memories.  If you were restoring an old house to it's original style, you would love this place.

After more than an hour in the hardware store, we went a couple blocks down the street to Ryan's Pizza.  The funny thing about Ryan's Pizza is that it has a very Irish decor, not Italian.  We ordered a few slices of pizza and a couple of beers.  The pizza slices were huge and one each would have been plenty, but I had ordered two.  I actually didn't quite finish the second slice.  From lunch we walked through the historic Cocoa Village area of shops. 

Later in the evening, hope was diminishing that the shuttle would get launched tonight.  The weather has been poor all day, with high winds and a low cloud cover.  The schedule is for 21:35, and by 21:00, they were still counting down.  We went up to the office where they have Direct TV and had NASA-TV on.  The countdown went down to five minutes where they held it for five minutes hoping for a break in the clouds.  The break didn't come within the few minutes of opportunity to launch, so it was scrubbed.  While it hadn't looked promising all day, it was disappointing to come that close and then not go.

GPS N 28-21.442 W 080-43.456  Nautical miles traveled today 0.  Total miles 7499.

Dec 8

The wind is blowing hard out of the north, which means it is coming right at the stern of the boat.  The marina has what is called a wave attenuator that runs parallel to the slips, about a hundred feet behind us.  The wind is blowing so hard that even behind that wave break, we were getting a couple foot chop smacking the stern of the boat all night.  The wind really picked up about 04:00, and we didn't sleep after that.  The boat was bouncing around a lot, and it sounded terrible inside whenever the stern slammed down after a wave.  By 11:00, I needed to be off the boat.  We walked into town to Murdock's Pub for lunch.  We had a nice lunch and several beers.  I was in no hurry to get back on the boat as wildly as it was pitching around.

When we did come back, we stopped in the marina office and arranged to stay another day.  The wind is supposed to persist well into Saturday, and the shuttle has been rescheduled for Saturday evening, so we'll stay.  As the afternoon wore on, I was getting mentally prepared to sleep on the couch in the main saloon instead of in the aft cabin.  It would still be noisy, but maybe tolerable.  We watched TV and played a game for most of the evening.  The wind and waves were calming down unexpectedly during the evening, and by 23:00 it was almost calm.  Maybe we'll get a good night's sleep after all.

GPS N 28-21.442 W 080-43.456  Nautical miles traveled today 0.  Total miles 7499.