Day 3 - Daytona Beach

It was another beautiful day in paradise, sunny, clear skies, gentle southeast breeze as Kite dropped her mooring tether and headed south once again down the ICW. At 08:00 the sun was low and the reflection on the nearly smooth water was blinding whenever her course was easterly, which it was just now, as Kite passed between the moorings to enter the ICW channel. As soon a she had passed between the two red buoys marking the right edge of the ICW channel, Peter revved the engine up to cruising speed and turned south, heading for the next red buoy a quarter mile distant. Kite accelerated quickly with the flooding tide and was soon up to her 6 knot cruising speed. And then BUMP, as her keel collided into the sandy shallows at the edge of the ICW channel, and Kite lurched and came to a sudden stop. Peter reacted quickly, backing down the engine and pivoting Kite until she pointed north, then powering off the sand bar into the flooding current. Kite was free in an instant and heading across the ICW channel, to the "green side," referring to the color of the buoys marking that side of the channel.

Consulting his GPS map display, Peter discovered that in heading for the next red buoy, 10A, he had left the ICW channel, because a buoy was missing and he was actually heading for buoy 12! (We heard hours later on a radio broadcast that buoy 10A had floated away during the night.) Safely on the green side, Kite cruised down the ICW again at 6 knots and the rough start was soon forgotten as she headed for Daytona Beach, 45 nautical miles to the south. Ringle left her mooring a half-hour later, but had no difficulty catching up, as her cruising speed is 7 knots. Peter caught a photo of Ringle

as we cruised together through the beautiful waterfront homes of Palm Coast.

Ringle in Palm Coast

The ICW in this part of Florida passes inside narrow barrier islands, often less than a half-mile from the Atlantic Ocean. There are often dense forests blocking a view of the ocean, but the temperature of the easterly breeze is much cooler as it moves across the cold ocean water. We were tempted to put on our jackets. The favorable tidal current stayed with us for most of our voyage today, but as we entered the Halifax river at 15:00 it turned against us and slowed our progress. There are two draw bridges in Daytona Beach that we had to pass through, and the last one had restricted opening hours from 16:45 to 17:45 to accommodate the rush hour auto traffic at that time. At our reduced cruising speed of 4.5 knots, Peter calculated that Kite would arrive at the last bridge during the restricted hours, and would have to wait half an hour for the bridge to open. So he pushed the throttle all the way forward to get maximum speed, hoping that if we could maintain at least 5 knots we would arrive before 16:45.

The southeast wind was blowing directly at us, so we could not count on getting any help from our sails. During some strong gusts Kite slowed to 4.8 knots, then as the wind subsided her speed returned to 5.2 knots. The timing was going to be close! At 16:37 we passed through the first drawbridge, and from there we could see to the second one. It looked different! In fact, it wasn't even there! Only the fender walls still remained to mark where the ICW channel passes through. In less than 1 year since we has last passed through this area, they had completely removed the Memorial Drawbridge and it is no longer a consideration to navigators passing through Daytona Beach. It is hard to say if we would have made the opening had it been still there. It certainly would have been close. But we just passed through and accepted our good luck.

A few moments later we arrived at Halifax Harbor Marina, our destination for the next 2 days. Rain and t-storms are in the forecast so we will wait a day and enjoy Daytona Beach. Our slip in the marina is just across the dock from Ringle, very convenient.

As we were "rushing" to make the bridge opening, we heard a Coast Guard broadcast about the Cape Canaveral security zones in the ocean being closed at 16:00 for a rocket launch. Looking online, Lyn discovered that SpaceX would be launching a Falcon9 rocket with a satellite payload from Cape Canaveral at at 18:30. This was to be the first re-use of a previously launched booster. And that is what happened, as you can see below.

Launch of Falcon 9 rocket on 30 Mar 2017

We learned a few minutes later that the booster rocket had been safely landed on a barge in the ocean,  ready to be re-used once again.

We discussed the weather forecast with Vince and Eveline and agreed that we would spend two days in Daytona Beach. Then they invited us to dinner aboard Ringle at 19:00, to be followed by a viewing of High Noon, a 1952 western that won several Oscars at the time. The spaghetti dinner was delicious and the movie was fun. We went to bed late and planned to sleep late in the morning.