Jensen Beach to Marathon

Thursday, January 19th - Day 10

It was a fun morning catching up with the family news from Jon.  He was quickly fitting into the boat life and immediately changed his cowboy boots for sandals.  

Instead of doing groceries from here, we decided to wait and do them tomorrow in Stuart.  The park where we can dock the dinghy is only about 1/2 mile from the Publix there.  Instead, Jon and I walked into town and picked up a few things at the liquor store we needed for proper cruising.  It was a nice walk about a mile each way and Jensen Beach is a cute town with wide sidewalks and lots of palms.  

Back on the boat we worked a few boat jobs to get things ready for moving tomorrow.  We enjoyed cocktails and munchies in the cockpit watching a beautiful sunset.  Here's the three of us with the Sun setting in the background.

A short while later the Sun really lit up the clouds and water.  

Laura made us a great dinner and we relaxed and talked the rest of the evening.  Underway again tomorrow!

Friday, January 20th - Day 11

187nm (2 days and 1 night), 511 total miles from Savannah.  Temps mid-60s rising to mid-70s in the afternoon.  Sunny with winds under 10 knots.

Those of you that have been following us for a while know that we are very flexible with our schedule and plans.  As you can see from the "187nm" above, we didn't motor the 10 miles to Stuart and anchor for a few days.  We slept in a bit and left the mooring at 9:20am slowly motoring south while I checked that the boat was running good then browsed the weather for the next week.  

The weather window for running down the coast to The Keys 4-5 days from now didn't look as good as it did yesterday.  I was looking for fairly calm seas (3-4 ft or less?) and winds under 20 - not from the south.  The window had shortened plus there was no repair date yet on the Donald Ross bridge.  If we couldn't go through this bridge (maybe next week?), we'd have to leave the ICW much farther north - at least St. Lucy Inlet near Stuart.  If they fixed the bridge, we could jump off-shore from Lake Worth and make Miami (<>60 nautical miles) in a long day.  Without the bridge, we would have to do an overnight sail.

Today, tonight and tomorrow looked very nice for that trip so we changed plans, configured the boat for an ocean passage and motored out the St. Lucy Inlet.  About an hour after leaving the mooring, we were motor-sailing south down the ocean toward Miami and The Keys.

Our plan was to get passed Miami around midnight and maybe go into Biscayne Bay and anchor for a few hours sleep before running tomorrow to a protected anchorage near Key Largo for the coming high winds tomorrow night.

It was a very nice ride with the winds helping a little on the big sails but not enough help to turn off the engine.  Again, no pure sailing for this trip.  

Laura and I napped during the day and she tried to sleep until about 10:30pm when I would go down for a snooze.  

There were small fishing boats everywhere.  It was warm and sunny with no wind or waves so everybody was out here, near shore, fishing.  We needed to stay near shore to keep out of the gulf stream which slowed us down a bit during the day.  At one point I was 1/4 mile from the beach trying to get out of the contrary currents slowing us down.

Saturday at sea

It was a warm, comfortable evening and night.  Jon helped Laura keep watch for fishing boats while I slept about 3 hours.  Around 3am we approached the Miami ship channel (Government Cut) and I took over while Laura and Jon tried to sleep a bit.  No problems with the ship channel other than all the small fishing boats.  I did notice a large cruise-ship coming in about 1/2 hour later.

Now we had another decision to make.  If we entered Biscayne Bay and found a place to anchor later today for the high winds tomorrow, we might be there for 4 to 5 days waiting for weather to get to Marathon.  If we kept going, I estimated a 5pm arrival in Marathon today which would get us to the dock before dark.  The only problem was we had told the marina we would be in around January 25th - this was only the 21st.  Would we have a place to stay?

We've spent 14 winters in the Florida Keys so know everything around.  If the marina didn't have an open slip for us, we'd find some place safe to hang out.  We (I?) decided to keep going down the Hawk Channel and not stay in Biscayne Bay.

Now, you might say I've been making decisions to travel in a hurry.  We were not on a tight schedule and had plenty of time to stop in places to "smell the roses."  But, as I always say, "We live and die by the weather."  If we anchored near Key Largo to get protection from the big west and north winds the next few days, there was nowhere there to get off the boat.  The local marinas are very private and hadn't let us even tie up the dinghy for a walk in the past.  I was pretty sure the weather would be good today.  Not too sure of the weather 4 - 6 days from now.

Laura and Jon took over the helm around 6am as we were approaching Key Largo from the ocean-side.  Here was a beautiful ocean sunrise that Laura took a little while later

Around 9am, Laura called Burdines marina in Marathon to see if our slip was available today.  It was!  That was great!

The winds gradually increased and we rolled out the jib then the mainsail.  The boat was running nicely 5-6 knots without the engine so we shut it off and gave Gertrude a rest after 25 hours straight.  Jon's first sail on Second Wind!  I decided to pull up the mizzen (which we don't use often) and showed Jon how to actually hoist a sail.  It was fun on a moving boat and only took us about twice as long as normal.  Laura took this video a short time later.

The winds died 3 hours later and we had to run the engine again to keep our ETA before dark.  Just after 5pm I brought the boat into Burdines, slip 2 and we tied up the boat. It felt great to be here!

We spent the next hour or so getting the docklines configured to my liking, cleaning up the cockpit and putting the boat to bed after 32 hours underway from Jensen Beach mooring field.

Jon took us out to dinner at the marina restaurant and we were a little giddy being ashore and enjoying good food, drinks and company.  I think we all crashed around 9pm and we all slept well.  I slept over 12 hours and felt great the next day.

Trip stats from Savannah -

511 nautical miles in 11 days ("sat" for 5 days, traveled for 6 days)

6 nights anchored

3 nights on mooring

2 overnight trips on the ocean

Marathon

Sunday Jon and I took a long walk to loosen up.  Later in the afternoon, Jon volunteered to be hoisted up the mast to fix our steaming light that was not working.  Rob (in Savannah) had gone up and found a burned out light bulb.  I didn't have a spare but did purchase one before heading back down to Savannah a couple weeks ago.  Jon make quick work of the small but important project.

We invited Sal and Ina (our longtime friends and neighbors) for cocktail hour and music at the tiki-hut.  We also introduced ourselves to the neighbors on the other side and they joined us at the tiki-hut too.  Jon had taken another walk and I wasn't sure where he was.  Thinking about myself at 30, I figured he had stopped at one of the local pubs.  Turns out he was at the nearest bait shop talking to the owner about fishing around here (he's much more of a fisherman than I was...).  He joined us for the end of our get-together.

Monday Jon and I acid-washed the 1,600 miles of scum off the hull and scrubbed with soft-scub and a brush to get off most of the other marks and stains.  The boat was looking good again! 

Jon borrowed the dinghy to fish in Sister's Creek (the other side of Boot Key Harbor) and was a happy man tooling down the waterway with a fishing pole and bucket of shrimp  

Tuesday we decided to meet our friends Lee and Linda in Key West for lunch.  Jon had rented a car to drive to Tampa (his next stop for this trip) and walked the 4 miles to pick it up this morning.  It was a fun time with Lee and Linda who we meet whenever we are in the same part of the country.  They had just purchased a power boat and are planning on bring it back up the coast to Catskill Creek this summer.  Then we'll see them more!

Sorry I didn't get a picture of the whole group but did manage to take this one before Jon inhaled the special at the Hog Fish Grill - the Hog Fish Sandwich.

After lunch Jon drove us back to Marathon and we stopped at Publix to take advantage of a car for groceries.  We'll have tomorrow together then he's planning on leaving Thursday (unless he buys a boat and stays ....)

Thanks so much for following us and some of the great comments on Facebook.  If you would like to read more about our 17 years cruising on Second Wind, we have 4 (less than $5) books available on Kindle starting from the beginning.  You can check them out by clicking HERE.

We plan on heading back to Catskill again for the summer and will leave here sometime in April (unless we decide to do something else....).  

p.s.  I've finally had it with internet connectivity on the boat so ordered a Starlink yesterday.  I'll let you know how it works out for us.

Titusville to Jensen Beach

Friday, January 13th - (continued)

Later in the afternoon, the boat that was pushing the barge and trying to help the sailboat next to us came back without the barge.  He eventually was able to get the sailboat off the shallows but it took several tries including one where it looked like the front of the sailboat kinda came apart.  Bummer.  There was no way my little 20hp dinghy would have moved him.  A few minutes later both boats drifted by us.

The powerboat left and the small sailboat (pushed by the dinghy) slowly worked its way out to the ICW (over shallows again....) and north far away from us..

As we watched him go, I felt like a huge weight was off my shoulders with much less to worry about.  

We decided to stay another day to watch the SpaceX Falcon Heavy launch tomorrow.  

Saturday, January 14th - Day 5

Cloudy and windy (NW 20-30 knots).  Cool with highs in the 50s and lows in the high 30s

Last night was rough.  The winds that were supposed to be WNW ended up coming from farther north which sent 2-3 foot waves down at us from the north where this anchorage was open for over 6 miles to Titusville.  We did not sleep well but we were both so tired we slept through it after about 3am.

By morning the wind was howling from 30 - 40 knots and 41,000 pounds of Second Wind was jumping around pretty good.  It was time to move.  My plan was to pull up the anchor and motor through the Addison Point Bridge over to the eastern side where we might have a better view of the Falcon Heavy launch tonight.

Wow.  What a ride!  I was up on the bow trying to pull in the anchor chain and Laura was down below making sure the chain was falling right into the anchor locker.  I think I was moving up and down about 4 feet with the waves.  The chain was so hard to pull in that at one point I went back to the cockpit to see if I had left the transmmission in reverse.  Nope.  It was just the 35 knot winds blowing on the boat and masts.  Geez.

I eventually got the anchor loose and yelled to Laura to come up and man the windlass.  The boat was getting quickly blown toward the shallow water and I had to get on the helm.  It took almost full throttle to turn the boat back into the wind as Laura struggled with the last 10 feet of chain.

I called the bridge tender as we slowly motored to the draw bridge and I think I woke him up.  He probably figured no boats would be moving today with these high winds.

15 minutes later it was a whole new world as we slowly motored east on the calm southern side of the bridge.  We dropped anchor and relaxed the rest of the day.  

Here is a screen-shot from our chart plotter after the move.  North is at the top.  The purple line shows our track from the left side, down though the bridge to the anchorage on the south side of the bridge.  Barely had time to warm up the engine...

Oh.  1 hour before launch it was rescheduled to tomorrow.  Don't think I'm going to stick around because we have reservations in Jensen Beach which I've already changed once.  Plus there are no guarantees on tomorrow's launch so we'll probably head south.

Sunday, January 15th - Day 6

Clear with NW winds 10-12 knots dying during the morning.  Temps near 60 later in the day.

29nm today.  234nm from Savannah

Anchor up 8:30am and we slowly motored back to the ICW.  1/2 hour later we rolled out the jib, turned off the engine and sailed!  It was only for about 2 hours until the wind died and we had to motor again.  But, this was the first engine-off sailing of our trip. Laura took this short video while we were sailing.

Today was scheduled to be short as we only needed to make Melbourne which would set us up for Ft Pierce tomorrow.  As the winds calmed the boat traffic picked up - both local and cruisers.  It was a pretty day on the water and lots of folks were enjoying it.

We anchored at 2:15pm.  I worked a few boat jobs (dang antifreeze leak again) and we had a quiet evening on the boat.  

The SpaceX launch was scheduled for 5:56pm and it was beautiful.  From only 30 miles away we saw the whole thing including the ship going up and the two boosters coming back.  Laura took a great video with her Nikon of the whole thing but we have to wait for Wi-Fi to upload and share  It's 1.7 gigabytes....

Here was a pretty picture I took just after sunset. No more big winds!

Monday, January 16th - Day 7

44nm today - 309 total from Savannah

Warmer with highs near 70.  Winds light and variable.

We pulled the anchor at 8am and motored back to a very calm ICW.  This is one of my favorite areas to travel as we go from the wide open Indian River to weaving in and out of small islands.  Some of the islands have homes that are beautiful.  I think it would be neat to live on an island with only boat access.

I saw on the internet that the Donald Ross lift bridge was broken could not open for boaters.  This is just north of Lake Worth - what would be the next day's travel for us after today.  After checking on Facebook, I saw the area from Vero Beach to Hobe Sound is full of sailboats waiting to transit through there.  Powerboats under 30 feet in height can just go under the closed bridge.

This wouldn't be so bad but the off-shore winds and seas have not been good for running south out of Ft Pierce or St Lucie Inlets.  For example, today there are 5-6 foot seas near the coast.

As we got closer to Ft. Pierce, we could see boats anchored everywhere and the Ft. Pierce City Marina told us there were no open slips.  I had called yesterday and tried to reserve a week.  No room at the inn.

We had a nice ride through Vero Beach with the multi-million dollar, beautiful homes everywhere.  The bridge-tender running the Ft. Pierce North Bridge was a lot of fun.  She obviously enjoyed her job and was very happy when we called for an opening.  What a difference from a few days ago when the bridge tenders didn't even answer us when we said thanks.

A short while later we pulled into the Ft. Pierce City Marina fuel dock and took on 95 gallons of diesel (from Myrtle Beach) and 10 gallons of gasoline that we had used for our Honda generator to keep warm on the cold nights.  Phew.  What a difference from a few years ago with the prices close to $5 per gallon.  But, we now had fuel for the winter down in the keys and shouldn't need to fill up again until we get back here in the spring.  After fueling and filling up our water tank, the boat was sitting a lot lower in the water with the addition of almost 2,000 pounds.  I always feel better when we fill up our fuel and water tanks.  Now we are independent for another few weeks....

We motored out of the marina and back to the ICW where we crossed and went into the anchorage south of Harbour Isle.  Wow.  This big anchorage had lots of anchored sailboats too.  I assume most were waiting for the Donald Ross Bridge to get fixed.  We went in near the end of the anchorage and found a nice open spot to drop the hook.  Anchor down at 4:15pm.

Here is a colorful sunset picture showing all the anchored boats. There are usually only 1 or 2 other boats anchored here.

Tuesday, January 17th - Day 8

Warm and sunny.  Calm winds

15nm today - 322 total miles from Savannah

We slept in this morning as the instructions for our mooring said not to arrive before 12pm.  Boats leaving the moorings were supposed to be off by 11am.

9:30am we left the anchorage while all the other boats stayed put.  We slowly motored down the ICW to Jensen Beach where we had to go about 1/2 mile passed the bridge before turning into the mooring field / anchorage.  As we approached our assigned mooring, I could see there was a boat still on it.  I yelled over to the gent on the sailboat who told me they had been on the mooring for the past two nights.  He didn't say they had it reserved for tonight.

I called the mooring field manager (Mike) and told him what was going on.  He said that boat should have left by 11am and he had told them there were no other moorings available.  Maybe 15 minutes later the boat finally dropped their mooring lines and motored about 1/4 mile where they dropped their anchor.  I was not a happy guy.  Idiot.

Laura did her normal great job of attaching our lines to the mooring with a little help from me because the mooring loop was very heavy.  A few minutes later we were secure and put the engine to bed for a few days.

We dropped the dinghy and lowered the outboard from the railing storage spot for the first time this trip.  It took 7-8 pulls for the engine to start but I remembered it hadn't been run since we left Catskill in September.

Laura and I took the dinghy to the dock, tied her up and walked ashore for the first time in 8 days.  We dropped some garbage and took Laura's first walk since her foot surgery in October - about 1/2 mile total.  It was a nice day and felt good to loosen up the legs.  Here is a picture we took from shore with Second Wind on the mooring.  She's the boat in the middle.

Our friends Chris and Bob were at their condo in Jupiter and we made plans for dinner together in Jensen Beach.  They picked us up at 4:30pm and we spent a nice evening at Mulligans.  Food and beverages were good and it was nice to see them again after almost 2 years.  After dinner they took us to the local Publix where we purchased fresh veggies, fruits and some dairy.  Our purchase was just about right for the 5 bags we brought with us to fit the dinghy on the ride back.

Back to the boat at 8:30pm in the dark.  We found her!  Laura put away groceries while I struggled with hauling up the dinghy.  I think there is some wear on the pulley sheaves which is making them hard to turn.  I'll check this out better in the next couple days. Both Laura and I slept well that night.  Her nephew Jon is flying in tomorrow to join us for a couple weeks.  

Wednesday, January 18th - Day 9

We were up early getting the boat reconfigured for another person including cleaning out our forward cabin and finding places to put all the stuff we normally keep there.  Laura spent most of the day cleaning up there while I took laundry into the dock.  I spent most of the afternoon washing, drying and folding the laundry then dinghy'd it all back to the boat trying to keep it dry with the increasing waves.  Success!

Jon took an Uber from the West Palm airport and arrived at the dinghy dock just after sunset.  By then the winds and seas had calmed a bit so we had a quiet ride to Second Wind.  Jon settled in with many directions from us on how to use "boat stuff".  Laura made a great dinner of Chicken Chow Mien and we relaxed in the cockpit afterwards with cocktails.  

My plan was to shop for more groceries with Jon tomorrow then use the low winds / seas on Friday and Saturday to get down to The Keys.  But, we've decided to stay in this area a few more days and enjoy the Jensen Beach / Stuart area a little bit.  Hope this is the right decision and we have another window for sailing down the coast in 3 - 5 days.  Wish us luck!

Heading South Again!

What we've been up to -

The past few months have been quite different and a little crazy for us.  We left Second Wind in "Wet Storage" at Atlantic Yacht Basin (Chesapeake, VA) and rented a car to drive back to the Albany area the second week in October  My sister and brother-in-law (Denise and Tom) graciously offered us their house while they were in Florida so we moved right in. Laura had scheduled achilles tendon surgery on October 14th with a 6-week, no weight-bearing stint to follow.

After talking with her doctors, we realized we wouldn't be back to Second Wind until mid-January.  Atlantic Yacht Basin highly suggested we winterize the boat before their holiday break when nobody would be around the marina from Christmas to New Years.  I REALLY did not want to do this.  I've winterized boats in the past and it's a real chore.  Plus it seems to take forever to get the antifreeze smell out of the water tank.  Lastly, Second Wind has never been winterized (at least in the past 17 years) so it would be a real challenge to identify and get to everything on the boat.

Instead, I sent out texts to several of my friends to see if someone would want to join me for a couple weeks sail south from Norfolk.  Our long-time sailing buddy Rob accepted the challenge. Tom and Denise came back from Florida the week of Thanksgiving so Laura would have someone around to assist with her daily living.  I drove our car to Chesapeake, VA on November 28th, Rob flew in on the 29th, we stocked the boat and headed south on December 1st.

Atlantic Yacht Basin was great.  I had them haul the boat for bottom-paint and change a thru-hull that had been giving me problems.  All the work was done on time and close to the estimates.  They did run a little over the estimate on the thru-hull because the backing-block was rotted and had to be replaced.  All-in-all, a very good stay there.

Great Bridge to Savannah

We had some cold weather (down in the 30s) the first few nights but, overall, the weather was excellent for us. 

Here we are on our first day jib-sailing down Currituck Sound.

 

Now...  How many people would have left on a boat without knowing where they are going to stop?  I figured we would see how far we could get in our allotted time and find a marina nearby.  I didn't figure most of the east coast marinas would be full - mostly because of the major storms and damage from hurricanes in Florida.  After hearing from a boater friend of ours that had problems finding a marina in central and northern Florida, I asked Laura to start working on finding us a place to stop where we could keep the boat for a month (or two?) until she was ready to continue sailing.  She readily agreed to the challenge and got to work.

I texted her names of marinas and she started a spreadsheet with the contact information and results then spent lots of time on the phone.  It was a difficult job with many marinas being full or out of our price-range.  Some places wanted as much as $4,000 a month.  That's crazy!

The closest place we could have stayed was Myrtle Beach Yacht Club but we were there in less than a week.  The farthest place she found was Savannah Bend Marina just over the GA / SC border.  Rob and I had such nice weather and the boat was running great so we decided on Savannah Bend.  Note that we looked as far south as Titusville and all the places from Savannah to there were full or super expensive.

We arrived at Savannah Bend Marina on December 10th.  Rob and I put the boat to bed again (nap not sleep) with the hopes Laura and I would be back in a month or so.  Here is Rob and Second Wind (and her waterway smile) tied up at Savannah Bend Marina.

This time we even kept a freezer running that was full of leftover food from our trip - we were a little optimistic when grocery shopping in Great Bridge.  Rob and I both rented cars in Savannah and left the next couple days.  He drove back to the Orlando area to their Florida home.  I drove back to Chesapeake, VA, stayed at a hotel overnight, dropped off the rental, Uber'd back to my car at Atlantic Yacht Basin and drove 10 hours back to Albany.  

570 miles in 10 days is great for a sailboat down the ICW.  You never know when you will get held-up for a day or more because of nasty weather but we never had good winds or seas to travel off-shore and make more miles  I was so happy it all worked out for us and Second Wind.

We spent the holidays with Tom and Denise and our families.  We had a white Christmas!

Laura was progressing well and was now in a walking boot with Physical Therapy twice a week.  On December 28th we had her last doctor's appointment where they said it was OK to quit the boot and start walking again.  The doctor also gave us the best news that she could move back on the boat in "a couple weeks" and gave her a brace to wear when the boat was moving around.  

Back to Second Wind!

On Thursday, January 5th we picked up a rental car, Laura had her last Physical Therapy, we packed up the car and said sad good-byes to Tom and Denise.  After spending 3 months in their home (the last 6 weeks together) we had become good friends.

Late Friday afternoon we pulled into Savannah Bend Marina and Laura stepped onto the boat after almost exactly 3 months away.  We were back!!

I can't say enough about Savannah Bend and the manager Nicole.  She was awesome to us and I would definitely go back.  Here was a Christmas Tree in front of the marina office that cracked me up.

We spent the weekend hardware and grocery shopping plus working on the boat.  Besides packing away almost $500 worth of groceries, Laura was cleaning up a storm.  In my spare time I was getting the boat ready for cruising again including engine and transmission oil changes plus a full afternoon of scrubbing the decks from all the bird poop.  We did take Sunday afternoon off for a little sightseeing in Savannah and a nice dinner at Tubby's Seafood right on the waterfront.

The weather forecast for sailing down the coast was excellent so we pushed ourselves to get everything ready to leave Tuesday (Jan 10th) morning.  I returned the rental car Monday evening.  It took me 3 hours to travel 20 miles and back - accidents, trains and rush-hour traffic.  Then we were ready to go!

Savannah Bend Marina to Daytona

Tuesday, Jan 10th and Wednesday, Jan 11th - Cloudy, calm winds, temp mid 50s, sea temp 56

185nm (2 days and 1 night)

We departed the marina at 7:45am after a high pucker-factor undocking.  We were sandwiched into a slip that was very tight.  After I backed up the boat into the fairway, we only had about 3 feet between us and the boat on the next dock when I was able to turn the boat around in the fairway.  Laura was excellent (as usual) giving me distances off the bow and we made it out without damage to ourselves or other boats.  Success!

This is only a couple minutes later.  The marina is just on the other side of the bridge.  I love this picture because of the big smile on Laura's face.

A few minutes later we enjoyed our first colorful water sunrise through the clouds.  Look how calm it is.

We discussed traveling off-shore and doing an overnight cruse to St. Augustine.  Laura was agreeable - mostly because we had a great forecast with calm winds and seas.  We left the ICW a few miles later and continued east down the Wilmington River, through Wassaw Sound and out to sea.  Along the way, we had some playful dolphins at the bow for several minutes.  Laura was able to get this cute video of them.  It was an awesome way to start our cruise.

The ocean was fairly calm (as predicted) with only a slight swell off the port quarter which rolled us a little.  Both of us were a little disappointed it wasn't a better ride but things calmed down after we pulled out the mainsail and sheeted it in tight for roll-control.  

The Sun came out later in the morning and the skies cleared for a beautiful motor-sail down the coast of GA. 

During the day Laura called Burdines Marina in Marathon and confirmed our reservation for February and March.  YEA!  Another (partial) winter in the Florida Keys!

It was a subdued ocean sunset over the Georgia coast which is typical for clear skies.

We passed Brunswick, GA around 7pm and St Mary's Inlet / Florida border around 10:30pm.  Laura tried to sleep from 8 to midnight and I let her go until 1am.  Unfortunately, she didn't sleep much but recovered after a couple cups of coffee.  I hit the sack at 1am and slept for an hour or two until the boat started moving around a lot and woke me up.  Laura said the winds picked up to 13-15 knots which started building up a little sea for us to punch through.  It either calmed down or I was just too tired and went back to sleep for an hour or so.

I woke up at 5:30am and took over the helm.  We were only about an hour from St. Augustine inlet - even though we had lowered engine RPM to slow down the past few hours.  Laura was able to sack out for a couple hours as I ran the calm inlet just after first light and was waiting for the Bridge of Lions Bridge just before their 7:30am opening.

We spent the rest of the day on a quiet ICW motoring to Daytona where we anchored around 3pm next to the Main Street Bridge (one of our favorite anchorages).  Two sailboats came in a little while later but gave us plenty of room.

After 32+ hours of listening to the engine, it was great to have silence around the boat.  It's always a little of an ordeal for us to do an overnight off-shore like this but we wanted to get south to warmer weather as quickly as possible and it was tough to turn down the great weather. Plus, we saved 3-4 days of the Georgia ICW by bypassing it all off-shore.  If we had stayed in the ICW from Savannah to Daytona, it would have taken us 5-6 days instead of 2.

This cracks me up....  Laura and I both crashed on the sofa after putting the boat to bed for the evening.  I finally told her we couldn't sleep now because we wouldn't be able to sleep all night if we started at 4pm.  Instead we both got up, mixed a cocktail and sat in the cockpit watching the sunset.  Then I grilled a large pork-chop for dinner while Laura made the fixin's. We had our first boat-party! After dinner we watched a couple shows on TV then finally hit the sack around 8pm.  Both of us crashed and slept over 10 hours.  We needed that!

Daytona to Titusville

Thursday, January 12th - Sunny, calm winds, air temp 55

49nm (234nm total from Savannah)

There was a cold front scheduled to come though on Friday morning so we wanted to get a little farther south in a protect anchorage or mooring.  The moorings in Titusville would have been good but there were none available.  Instead I decided to go 6 miles farther and anchor on the north-west side of the Addison Point Bridge.  The bridge causeway would protected us from the south winds Thursday night and western shore should give us protection from the west winds on Friday.  

Also, I had made reservations for the new Jensen Beach mooring field next week on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday.  Laura's nephew Jon is flying in and will join us for "a while" including the trip down to Marathon.  Titusville is about 3 travel days from Jensen Beach so that would work out good if we left on Saturday after the Friday storms.

It all worked out well with a busier ICW along this route with boats traveling in both directions. We anchored at a nice spot in the wide open anchorage.  We were the only boat here.  Nice!

Except....  about an hour later I saw a smaller sailboat coming into the anchorage.  It turned out to be what we call a "derelict" boat that someone lived on as a water-condo.  The owner(?) was pushing the sailboat into the anchorage with his dinghy - probably to get protection from the south winds tonight.  It didn't even have a working engine.  Oh boy.

I didn't pay much attention until a little while later I see him getting ready to anchor about 200 feet away in a direction that would put him directly up-wind of us for the storm tomorrow.  No way!  This anchorage was about a mile long and 1/4 mile wide.  Why did he have to anchor there?   I went out on the deck and yelled over to him.  I said he would be directly up-wind of us for the storm and asked him to move.  He yelled something to me like, "If you didn't want a sailboat, why did you buy one?" (what does that mean?) and dropped his anchor right there yelling back, "I'm not moving.  You can move if you want."  Holy crap.  I don't think I've ever seen another boater act like this.  I guess the key is "another boater"....

So...  we picked up our anchor and moved to a different section of the anchorage where I wouldn't be worried about him running into us if his anchor dragged.  Laura wasn't too happy with me when we had to re-anchor twice because the first time we would have been too close to the shallow water when the winds changed tomorrow.  But, just after sundown I was happy with where we were and we had a cocktail and nice dinner.

Friday, January 13th - Day 4.  Storms and high winds, temp 70 but dropping into the 30s tonight.

Didn't move today.

Storms came through around 8am with 30+ knot winds and lots of rain.  The rain didn't last for too long and by the afternoon it was partly cloudy and the solar panels were doing their job.

"Karma is a bitch"

I went upstairs after the rain and saw our neighbor's boat was sideways to the wind.  That's not good...  Apparently, when the winds clocked this morning and turned his boat around on the anchor, he hit a shallow spot and was aground.  As I looked at my RADAR and chartplotter, I could see he anchored in a shallow spot outside the anchorage area.  That wasn't too smart.

Now, I'm usually the first person to help another boater in need.  There have been several times in the past when I've seen someone in trouble and dropped my dinghy to go over and help without being asked.  Guess what I did this time?  I had a great breakfast and watched him try to move the boat with his dinghy.  He didn't get very far.  A little while later a small crane barge with two outboards came by and stopped to help him.  Nope.  Still couldn't move.   Here's a picture of them trying.  Click on the picture and you can blow it up to see the barge and small sailboat.

Around sunset, he's still there.

We decided to change our plans and stay here until Sunday.  There is a SpaceX Falcon Heavy launch scheduled for late Saturday afternoon and we are in the best anchorage for the best view.  The launch pad is only about 10 miles from us.  Woo Hoo!  This should be awesome!

I called the Jensen Beach mooring field and moved our reservation back a day to Tuesday.  Now we have plenty of time to get there if we leave Sunday morning.  I'll let you know how it all works out....