Day 5 - Titusville

Yesterday was a day ashore, as we avoided high wind and rain. We mostly just rested and caught up with personal essentials, like showers and planning the next few days travel. Vince and Eveline met a fellow boater that also had errands to run at a hardware store. so they rode with him in his car. While there they also ate lunch and shopped for some other things they needed.

When Vince and Eveline returned to Ringle, they freshened up for a while and then came over to Kite for a Captains meeting. We discussed the plans that Lyn and I had considered for our next few days, and agreed to get a mooring at Titusville, 45 nautical miles south of Daytona Beach. And the following day to travel to Cocoa Village, a picturesque historical village where we plan to spend two or three days, depending on the weather forecast. And then it will be onward to Vero Beach, where Kite will stay at a mooring until Sunday, when she will travel to Hutchinson Island to spend a week at the Marriott Resort and Marina, where we will meet our grandchildren and their parents for a week of fun in the Florida sun. Meanwhile, Ringle will continue southward and visit some friends of their own. We will keep in touch by text and meet again in south Florida.

Today's voyage to Titusville was quite uneventful. We departed at 7:00, just before sunrise, to catch the favorable current from Daytona Beach to Ponce de Leon inlet. The sun rose just as we turned into the ICW from the marina channel, but it was not a very colorful sunrise. As we were leaving the city limits of Daytona Beach, we passed an island that was a nesting area for pelicans, and as you can see they were there in great numbers.  The photo represents one tenth of what was there on that island.

Pelican rookery

Our route took us through New Smyrna Beach where we thought we would be just too late for a bridge that opens on 20 minute intervals, but as luck would have it, when it opened there were 12 sailboats waiting to pass from the opposite direction (going out for a sailboat race). When we saw that, we radioed the bridge tender and told him that we would pass through just after the last northbound boat. Then Peter took Kite to maximum speed and we got there just before the last race-bound sailboat passed through and we waited and then passed as we had promised, just after the last northbound boat.

Mosquito Lagoon had a half-knot unfavorable current, but the wind was from the north northeast at around 10-15 knots, so we unfurled Kite's jib and got a half-knot assist from the wind throughout that long passage. It was so clear today, that Peter was able to use the Vehicle Assembly Building at the NASA facility on Cape Canaveral as a reference to steer on while traversing Mosquito Lagoon. 

As we approached Haulover Canal, we noticed that the bridge had one span permanently open. Consequently, as Kite entered the canal, we didn't bother to radio the bridge tender and continued on through to Titusville. Half an hour later, we heard Ringle radio the bridge tender and ask if they would hold the opening until Ringle passed through. The sarcastic bridge tender told Ringle that the bridge would be in that configuration until June, and he thought they could make it through by then.  :-)  We got a good laugh from that.

Here we (Kite and Ringle) are at Titusville on a mooring for the night. We plan a short hop (20 miles) tomorrow to Cocoa Village, where we will stay at the marina for a few days to enjoy the historic town and let some bad weather pass by.