We've been entertaining ourselves with our store of books, a bike ride, and  the Hampton Haunting block party Saturday night --- some pretty decent bands and some very intriguing costumes (it took me a minute to realize the 230 pound man in the white satin mask, short vest revealing a well-endowed belly and the heavily belted skimpy pants, best resembling the bottom part of a women's 2 piece bathing suit, was a TV wrestler, but aside from the gal in the grey torn dress with a large bow in the back of her head made from a hefty bag, the best costume was the man in the raincoat with a large, gift wrapped and bowed box hanging just below his waist --- guess he had a special present).

The brisk wind and rain finally stopped today.  Yesterday the radar installers showed up and got to work ripping apart the dashboard, crawling out the eisenglass to the roof that's not supposed to be walked on to get at the radar arch, pulling cables and wires this way and that.  Tools and metal snippets were everywhere.  Great progress was made however, until the Great Radar Dome was being raised to it's throne atop the radar arch ---- the pedestal was the wrong size --- the installers realized this when the newly drilled holes in the radar arch did not match up with the holes in the pedestal.  Oops.  Must be the boat zinc packer that put the wrong size zincs in the box to Bruce a month ago found a job with the radar pedestal vendor.  Lesson learned --- never trust what's written outside on the box or what's written on the packing slip or bill.

So things came to a screeching halt and the correct part was to be overnited.  Exactly when overnite was to come in the next day was anyone's guess.

So of course today dawned bright & sunny and absolutely calm.  Great travel day.  Much to our surprise, the installers returned about 10:30 --- I was sure it would be about 4pm.  Things seemed to hum along for about half an hr until they realized they didn't have the right screws and they needed the ladder.  Fortunately, the office was only about 15 minutes around the water.

By 2:30 the radar was in and actually showing up on the screen --- a huge yellow blob!  Too many buildings too close by.  We finally got underway, water like glass, to the fuel dock just down the way.  After impatiently (our store of patience, never large, was getting severely depleted at this point) waiting for some leisurely sailboaters to languidly fill their fuel tank, and then their water tank (what happened to multi-tasking???), we finally got fueled and on our way past the Norfolk Navy Yard (we didn't see the USS San Antonio or any other boat with it's unique pyramid profile --- actually, didn't seem like a whole lot of ships were docked.) (Editor's Note:  Nancy and Bruce's daughter-in-law is an officer on the San Antonio.)

A bit further down, past some huge, 10 story cruise ship, we found the Portsmouth Municipal Marina.  Nice docks, nice breakwater and a handsome city view, and cheap rates (altho nothing could be better than the pay 2, stay 3 deal at Hampton that turned into a pay 2, stay 4 deal).  Bruce got talking to a professional Captain that had come from Cape May to Portsmouth, today -- guess he got in a bit more than 11 miles!!  Tomorrow he's getting up at 5am to get thru the first set of bridges before the rush hr, and intends to get to Beaufort, NC --- it'll take us 3-4 days to get that far!!

Tomorrow we face the 5 bridges and the lock, but weather looks good for another day. 

Today we were like the energizer bunny, we just kept going, and going, and going.  The weather forecast looked pretty good until at least the afternoon, and then the winds were going to pick up.  Friday looked like a day to stay put, so we started out from Coinjock just before 7am; fortunately the boats in front of us peeled off fairly early so we could get out.  Bruce fell in behind a fast moving power boat and checked on the radio that he was headed to Beaufort, about 154 miles further south, so we figured we'd tag along behind him until the weather looked bad and we would tuck into one of the few marinas along the way, either at 30 miles or 70 miles.  Those were our only choices as this stretch is truly no-man's land.  Just water and North Carolina pine forest.

We dodged the always black little round crabpots that seemed to go out for at least 7 miles into Albemarle Sound (the crabbers must have had to pack an overnite bag to make the trip to check on their pots, as the shoreline showed little sign of habitation).  The Albemarle wasn't too bad, 1/2 foot waves, which is pretty calm, as we understand it (from boaters telling tall tales of their bow going under huge Albemarle waves).  We raced along in "Emayoni"'s wake as we neared the Alligator River, and the rather tricky wiggle thru the shoals to the swing bridge, until Emayoni quickly slowed and then appeared to not be moving.  We were picking our way thru the markers, and not drawing much water.  Looking at my handy dandy GPS it looked like we were on the edge of a 5 foot shoal (we draw 3 1/2 feet) and there was 7-9 foot water to the right, so Bruce headed that way and the depth finder dropped like a punctured balloon & in seconds it was showing 3 5/10's feet.  Back up, Now!!!!!  He's getting so well-trained, no argument, no are-you-sure??? and backed us out of what I was sure was to be our first grounding of the trip.  There was a Tiara that had been following behind us, and, no fool he, the captain had not ventured into the supposedly deeper water where we and Emayoni were floundering.  As the Tiara was still moving, albeit barely above neutral, that looked to be the safest water, behind us.  Emoyani was trying to unground and was backing up.  A crabpot was immediately behind her, the captain probably couldn't see it, so as Bruce was dutifully backing us up I got on the radio and totally butchered the name of the boat trying to tell them to watch out for the pot --- Imogene, Imaganeen, Emolliant.  You can hear folks on the radio for miles, so if I didn't somehow identify them, they wouldn't necessarily know it was THEM I was warning about a crabpot.

So, anyway, I got my tongue untied, and the boats got ungrounded, and we got down the Alligator River, keeping close in unpronounceable Emoyani's wake, figuring she was our canary in the mine --- if there was something to hit, she'd get it first.  We got thru the river and then the canal, and the Pungo River was quite calm, so we figured instead of stopping at 70 miles along at Dowry Creek or Belhaven, maybe we'd keep on going to Oriental, another 50 miles --- we only would have 10 miles of dredged channel --- the rest was open water.  On past Belhaven we sped in Emoyani's wake.  Pamlico Sound was even calmer than the Albemarle Sound we'd been thru a few hrs earlier, even tho the NOA forecast was for the Pamlico to be 1-2 foot waves to the Albemarle's 1 foot waves. 

We came out of the south side of the cut into the Neuse River, and it was looking pretty calm, so we thought, gee, maybe we'd bypass Oriental, and head right onto Beaufort, NC --- it was only 20 miles or so past Oriental, and we had all this open, calm water we could speed thru, in Emoyani's wake.  We even played around with the radar a bit on the Neuse, starting to make a little more sense of the appearing and disappearing and re-appearing yellow blips, and figuring out which one was our fearless leader, Emoyani,.

We sadly parted ways with Emoyani at the Beaufort inlet --- she headed out to sea, obviously undeterred by the NOAA forecast for high winds and mountainous waves coming in tonight.  150 miles was quite enough for us in 1 day, so we happily putt-putted into the Beaufort town dock where we will hunker down with all the amenities, including wild ponies across the way on the barrier island and cable TV on our boat.  And now we wait for these horrible high winds to come in that we've been concerned would catch us all day.  They were supposed to happen just about now, But it's absolutely calm --- so much for weather forecasts!!!

We smugly hunkered down in Beaufort yesterday, the town marina flags and pennants snapping smartly in the stiff wind.  We noticed a Carver Voyager (biggest boat Carver makes, larger than ours), "Optimizer," left the dock at dawn and was back at the dock an hr later ---- the owner, who looked about 23, was from New Jersey and had gotten to Beaufort totally "outside."  He even went around Cape Hatteras a day or 2 before to get to Beaufort --- Navy Lt. J.G. Carrie sez that Hatteras was always rather nasty on the USS San Antonio,  So it must have been pretty nasty outside Beaufort Inlet yesterday for such an intrepid mariner to (wisely) return to the dock.

We did a speed shopping trip with the marina loaner car, an ancient Buick station wagon with faded and peeling paint with faux wood sides, 175,000 miles, foam coming out of the driver seat, and notes inside not to lower the passenger window, whose fit was less than snug to the door frame, and to bring the vehicle back in no more than an hour.  We knew there was a West marine and Wal-Mart somewhere out the main drag towards Morehead City, but not exactly sure which came first.  Fortunately traffic was light at 10am, so we were able to change lanes on a dime, pull into a parking spot, sprint into the store, race up and down the aisles looking for the items on our list.   It reminded me of some old TV show where contestants vied to see who could fill a grocery cart with the most groceries in 10 minutes.  Other shoppers popping out into the aisle ways were at risk of a grocery cart front end collision.  when we got back to our battered Buick, we had about 10 minutes to make the 20 minute drive.  Stopping at a red light, we realized we were the ones squeaking.

Having survived the speed shopping, we spent the afternoon checking weather and NOAA reports, and thumbing thru charts and guidebooks and checking tide tables.  The next day looked pretty calm, low tide was about 6am so there would be little current going out the inlet.  We decided that if we might have to go outside further south to get in Charleston because of bridge construction over the ICW, Beaufort to Wrightsville Beach would be a good test.  Not too far (67 nautical miles), calm winds (single digits), and if it was bad, we could just turn back and go down the ICW.

Jim and Carrie came over in the evening for dinner --- it was great to see them.  Jim is growing his hair out --- you can see it now. (Editor's Note: Jim is their son, a US Marine Lt., just returned from Iraq and stationed at Camp LeJeune.)

This morning dawned cold, just above freezing, but calm.  I checked the weather one last time, and it looked like all systems were go, so we headed east out into the ocean.  We felt a bit like huge wusses as 20 foot fishing boats sped past us with 5 and 6 guys in knit hats and lots of fishing gear.  A mile or so out, we turned right, southeastward and set the waypoint for Masonboro Inlet, or Wrightsville Beach. A pair of dolphins broke the water in front of us, as if welcoming us to their world (we first saw dolphins in Beaufort on our first trip 2 yrs ago)  We noted the compass heading, just in case we lost the GPS. Every 15 minutes I wrote down our latitude and longitude just in case we lost the GPS and the boat broke down, we could give the Coast Guard an idea of where we might be. I realized I'd forgotten a ziplock bag to put my paper in --- if we had to put on the life jackets, my data would be destroyed in the water.  Maybe the windbreaker was waterproof??? Not that I was paranoid or anything.

Madame Cheval purred along, despite our trepidations. We had following seas, sometimes hitting over 23 knots, pretty fast for us (not that Cap'n Bruce was trying to get back to land just a little faster or anything).  To our right was Emerald Isle (Leeroy, we gave a wave to the Pink House), but to our left was France, Portugal???  At first it felt like driving along a mountain road with a 1000 foot dropoff to the left with no guardrail.  But there were some other boats out there, so it didn't feel as forlorn as we feared, and we never quite lost sight of good old America on the right.  Turned the radar on and got a bit more acclimated to that.  Off what must have been Camp Lejuene were some big Navy ships.

As projected, in 3 hours Masonboro Inlet's marker appeared ahead of us, just where it was supposed to be, and we headed in between the welcoming arms of the breakwater, returning to the ICW.  We were about an hour before high tide, so the incoming current was negligible.  Wrightsville Beach had no marina vacancies, so we proceeded further along the ICW, across a cut to the Cape Fear River to Southport, at the mouth of the Cape Fear River. About 105 miles today.  Took a walk into town and celebrated with ice cream cones --- wild and crazy boaters that we are.

Tomorrow looks even calmer, 3 mph winds, so we are aiming for Winyah Bay up to Georgetown --- it avoids my least favorite part of the ICW --- the narrow section cut into rock before Myrtle Beach--- no soft grounding in that section.  Low tide will be about 6:30 am heading out the Cape Fear, so we should have a slack tide and calm winds.  We should hit Winyah Bay inlet about high tide, again getting close to a slack tide, so the tide timing has been really propitious.

Hopefully we'll get to Charleston by Monday --- weather looking a bit cranky Tues/Wed.  Charleston would be a good place to hunker down for a few days. 

Altho all the guidebooks and knowledgeable boaters caution against using the Cape Fear Inlet, we checked the tide tables and wind forecasts, and decided to head out nevertheless.  You can't ask for winds much better than 3 mph, and low tide was at 6;42am, so we headed out of the Southport Marina about 6:50.  The biggest risk was just getting out of the marina between a sailboat on the outside of the T dock and the marshy finger at low tide about 25 feet from the sailboat --- we take up 14 feet getting thru, not counting for maneuvering room.

The surf crashed onto the sand bar on the north side of the inlet between Bald Head Island and the marked channel.  I noticed a "sunken boat" icon on the GPS on that sandbar --- I was surprised there was only 1!  Bruce carefully kept to the middle of the channel, and we noted that there did not appear to be any current going one way or the other against the buoys marking the channel.  About a mile out the water appeared to be briefly at a slow boil --- the warnings about attempting the inlet with opposing tide and wind conditions seemed entirely reasonable.  After clearing the southern sandbar, we turned southwestward towards Winyah Bay inlet, roughly 70 nautical miles away.  Today the coast sucked even more westward away from our trajectory, so we soon lost sight of land on either side.  But having survived yesterday, it seemed more like a run on the Chesapeake Bay, particularly on the lower bay where you can barely see land.  We were feeling pretty smug until Bruce spied a huge turtle about 15 feet off the starboard side of the boat.  Fortunately, it was close to the surface, with a shell at least 3 or 4 feet long by about 2 1/2 feet wide --- not something you'd want to hit at high speed. 

We entered Winyah Bay inlet about an hour before high tide.  We picked up a bit of speed with the following tide, but it wasn't bad.  The jetties on the north and south side of the inlet were just below the water surface --- when we went thru a yr and a half ago a catamaran had hit one of the jetties and had pretty much lost the left side of the cat.  If you stayed within the markers, you were fine.

We're tied up at Hazard Marina at Georgetown, about mile 408 on the ICW, on the T dock with a fine view of the paper mill.  We're fueled up, pumped out, and waiting to see what Hurricane Ida will do to the southeast US.  Charleston Municipal Marina has a waiting list, so if it doesn't open up tomorrow, we'll just hunker down here.  Doesn't look like we'll have the incredibly calm conditions to head outside the next few days.  It may not be smart to get too much further south until Ida passes thru.  Hazard has cable TV (for all those essential football games) and is cheap, plus we have a great view of the harbor.

Took a walk thru Georgetown --- already decorated for xmas (already?!?!?!).  It's a cute town, the marina is in a part of town next to a stereotypical southern residential area --- well manicured stately homes sheltered under what may be old oak trees --- they shed what looks like an acorn, but the leaves are shiny and oval --- typical of a tree in a hot climate.  If we get held over, we'll head down to the diner on Front street for the $6.00 omelet and a time warp trip back to 1953.

Ida finally moved out of the neighborhood so we could get moving again.  Sounds like it's been pretty rough up north where we passed thru just a bit over a week ago.  The lock in Virginia is closed due to flooding, so  good we got thru when we did!

Since we've had a week layover, the tides, which move up about 45 min a day, are sometimes no longer in our favor.  We didn't get a real early start as we were hoping some of the other boats adjacent to us would leave.  By 8 it was getting pretty obvious that the large sailboat in front and the small sailboat behind, each about 5 feet from us, were going nowhere.  With the help of one of the stay-at-dock's, Bruce managed to get the bow out with the bow thruster (the battery powered bow thruster is only helpful in low winds and current)  --- we figured only because we were at slack high tide and there was no current.  The marina is on a little bend and normally the current, whether going in or out, pushes into the dock.  Needless to say we were vastly relieved not to get our anchor tied up in the sailboat lines ahead of us.

It was still overcast, but the winds were more "normal," maybe 10 mph as we headed downriver to cut into the ICW.  We saw a bald eagle land on a tree right next to the water, huge talons outstretched, and the dolphins were playing a tight game of chicken with the boat.  One daredevil surfaced just about under the anchor before diving.  I prayed Dave was 100% right that the dolphins are smart enough to stay away from the props.  Sure enough, this one was Einstein and Michael Phelps combined as we passed over the scamp without a nudge or bobble.

The tides in the ICW can be an hour or 2 later than the tides closer to the ocean, so somehow, after about 20 miles out, we always seemed to be within 90 minutes of low tide.  With a 5 foot tide swing, that starts to be significant.  South of McClellanville we hit 5.9 feet a few times.  I had notes that we had seen 6 foot water at high tide on the way back ---- given the 5 foot tide difference, there was no way 1 foot was going to do it for a boat requiring 3 1/2 feet.  We must have strayed from the perfect course previously (which can be a matter of a few feet too far to the left or the right) ---- we followed the "magenta" line on the GPS, which shows exactly where you are supposed to go ---- bearing in mind that the info on the GPS chip must be at least 4 yrs old or more, and sometimes the boat icon on the screen isn't quite where you really are.

After we carefully picked our way around a marker that had been written up in our new guidebook as particularly treacherous, a powerboat passed us, but didn't go much faster than we were going.  We gratefully followed him, again using our less than magnanimous Alligator River tactic of assuming the lead boat would run into trouble before us.  Occasionally he would drift off the magenta line and slow down and start tacking left & right looking for better water, so it was a real help to us!

The sun did come out about halfway thru, all the better to see how low the water level was on the marker pilings (the shellfish growing several feet above the water line is a good clue as to where the high tide level is).  Sixty nerve-wracking miles south of Georgetown, we popped out of the ICW into Charleston Harbor --- Fort Sumter, rather small and forlorn, to our left.

Got into Charleston Municipal Marina on the south side of Charleston, again another masterful docking job against the current.  Looks like the weather will continue to improve and extremely low winds tomorrow, so tomorrow we'll probably head out Charleston Harbor for Port Royal sound, which leads the way to Hilton Head and Parris Island (now there's a dichotomy of living situations!).   

Weather reports didn't look too bad this morning, so we headed out of Port Royal Sound from Byew-firt, SC at 7am (no one in front or behind us, so getting away from the dock was pretty easy).  All the debris/suspended dirt that we had run into less than 24 hours before seemed to have been all washed away, which was a nice surprise.  It took us just over an hour to get the 15 miles out of the Port Royal Sound, which is wide and deep, but extends well out into the ocean, with shoals on either side.

As seems to be the routine, we headed south/southwest at the end of the well-marked channel towards St. Simon, GA.  The swells seemed to be a bit higher than before, but the "ripple" still didn't really constitute waves.  We're so used to the "Chesapeake Chop," that I'm finally learning that "2-4 feet" of ocean swell is a piece of cake vs 4 ft of Chop. As we got closer to St Simon on our 70 mile ocean run, it got calmer and calmer, so we decided to head the extra 20 ocean miles to St. Mary's Inlet and Fernandina Beach on the Ga/Florida border. 

All we saw today was a sport fisherman racing along closer to shore and a sailboat farther out to sea, and a smaller turtle, only the size of a pizza pan.  We're getting more accustomed to the solitary sea voyages, altho you know you're not that far from land because of the brown cloud to the west, and clear skies to the horizon on the east.  I think of our intrepid immigrant forefathers & mothers who got on sailing ships from Europe and headed out into the empty ocean space.  No GPS, no radio, no handy green and red markers to show the way thru treacherous waters, and the only way they were going to move was when the conditions were far more windier than what we've experienced.  Things must have been pretty desperate to pack up and leave the known for the unknown.

I checked the guidebooks for military/civilian boating protocols as St Mary's inlet leads into the King's Bay submarine base.  I liked the guidance that said to do what the coast guard said over channel 16, even if you "don't see the merit in their instructions."  As Dave pointed out on our first trip down, the fast little coast guard boats probably have 19 yr olds on the triggers of the mounted machine guns in the stern.  According to recent research the frontal lobes of teen-age males is not fully developed until the early 20's.

Fortunately, we were not hailed on Channel 16 and we didn't see any trigger-happy teenagers, and proceeded into St. Mary's inlet about 2 hrs before low tide.  As placid as it was, we got some familiar Chesapeake Bay Chop, a good 3 feet, for about 1 mile heading in, just before reaching the shoreline.  What little bit of wind there was (2 mph???) was going against the outgoing tide.  I don't think we'll venture outside if the winds are projected to be over 9 mph.

We passed an old fort on the southside of the inlet, and turned south to Fernandina Beach and got docked.  It's fairly industrialized along the Fernandina Beach waterfront, and a train track runs from some sort of factory (Bruce thinks it may make glass) on the north end of the island southward on the ICW side of the island.  So we were surprised to find that once we crossed the train tracks there is a very attractive Southern Victorian town with Palm trees and strange flora. We made it to Florida.  Whew! 

We thought we might have to hold up here for weather, but our weather forecasts this morning were from Charleston, 150 miles north.  Looks pretty good for tomorrow, so we'll head down "inside" to St. Augustine.

We covered 120 miles today and cut out the whole state of Georgia and 175 miles of ICW.  No offense to Georgia, but its ICW is worth missing.  We skipped Field's Cut and Hell Gate and Jekyll Island and the turn where the GPS was wrong and the sailboat got stuck, etc etc etc etc.  Plus I didn't have to deal with Bruce's confusion at heading west on the serpenting Ga ICW when the whole objective was to get ourselves south. 

We're south. 

Bruce, the dock social butterfly, discovered that Fernandina Beach manufactures the world's finest wood pulp, used in many applications and exported around the world, hence the railroad, direct access via St. Mary's inlet to the ocean, and that fragrant sweet paper mill aroma. We had to wait a bit for the cheap fuel dock to open up, which worked at as we departed into the high tide.

I had some fairly alarming notes going behind Amelia Island, but we had double digit depths the whole way.  We weren't expecting shallow depths south of the St. John's river along Pleasant Valley, a residential area along the ICW with a rather puzzling name as it's flat marsh land.  We finally figured out the valley occurred during low tide, as we were getting 5 feet in several spots at high tide, so at low tide, the ICW must have been devoid of water, and 5 feet below the surrounding land, hence a valley.  However, the mucky bottom couldn't really be very pleasant.  There was a dredge busy at work, fortunately for future transit.

We got into the St. Augustine municipal dock at about mid-tide, so the current was pretty strong, and we had to slip by all the dredges and tug boats working on restoring the old Bridge of Lions, a unique Spanish stucco style bridge built in the 20's.  I was busy running around the boat hanging bumpers and getting lines on, so didn't fully appreciate Bruce's docking job, but I did hear the engines roaring and clouds of black diesel smoke billowing, so I knew he was turning the boat as hard as it would go against the broadsiding current to get turned to back into the slip.  Last time we tried such hard churning, one of the engines konked out, altho we're still not sure if the engines weren't warmed up (we were leaving the dock then) or if maybe Bruce somehow hit one of the buttons on the transmissions or somehow was responsible for operator error.

With great relief we got tied up & took a walk into town, checked out the used bookstore, found some nylon screws for the boat at the old-time Hardware store with a sign out front, "Spend your $$ here so I can retire." Might be able to buy a cup of coffee --- at the 7-11, not Starbucks, with what those 20 screws cost.

As we crossed the street back to the marina, we got a good whiff of horse --- the tourist horse carriages have been plodding the same route for so long, that you can smell the sweaty horses even when they aren't in sight.

Looks like good weather for tomorrow, so we'll head for Daytona. 

We had a late start from St. Augustine, waiting for high slack tide so the current wouldn't be so strong.  All the boaters were standing around the docks, ready to help the first one out, everyone wanting the slips to clear out before they attempted an exit.  Given we were backed in and going out into the current, it was much easier getting out than in --- no black smoke on the way out!

It's a pretty cruise south of St. Augustine behind the barrier island and thru wide cuts thru the marshes.  About 20 miles south it narrows and goes thru some new attractive houses & condos ---- we noticed 2 condos on either side with marinas with transient slips.  Bruce cleverly noted that tidal currents wouldn't be an issue as (for some reason) the tides are about 2 feet at this point vs the 5 plus foot tides from Charleston thru St. Augustine (getting higher as you go south until nearing Daytona).

Getting north of Daytona, our notes indicated somewhat shallow water (somewhat shallow is defined as less than 2 digits depth but more than 5 feet.  Less than 5 feet is defined as REALLY shallow water).  So we were going along at a leisurely pace and noticed a house for sale "Bought for 1.2 million, $575,000 today."  Ouch.  It was a fairly modest house (as houses can go along the water) built in the 80's from the look of it.  Some of the newer, grandiose places must have been $10 million or more and a mere $5 million today.

We haven't noticed many for sale signs along the water, which surprises us, given all you hear about Florida real estate being among the hardest hit in the country (after being some of the highest flying a few yrs ago), and that Florida is one of the top 10 states for being in fiscal trouble --- residents can only expect a rise in taxes and fees and a drop in services, so you'd think people would be bailing out.  Maybe it's so bad, they've just given up.  I suppose a lot of Florida property could be rented to snowbirders, allowing owners to try to ride out the market for awhile.  I'll have to set the social butterfly to work investigating what's going on. 

We splurged last night and went to the Charthouse literally steps away.  Nice view across the wide ICW and good prime rib.  We do a lot of grilling at home, and despite my boating culinary tricks with various soups and stews and concoctions, after several days we are just totally pc incorrect and drooling for a hunk of red meat.  We controlled ourselves and used knife and fork so they didn't kick us out.

Next we head for Cocoa, hoping we get thru the Titusville bridge (which was sticky, again, and not opening a few days ago) and the nearby railroad bridge.  A handy cruiser website has postings that the railroad bridge is closed mornings and afternoons for repairs ---- an unexpected problem. 

So could be an exciting day.  Not that we like exciting days! 

Well, Bruce pulled a real fast one on me & I never saw it coming.  I should have been a bit more suspicious of that nice prime rib dinner.  We eased out of our spot in Daytona (as usual in Daytona, there was a 100 foot plus yacht about 4 feet in front of us, and a modest sized 50 plus foot express cruiser behind) about 7:30 am to knock off 70 miles to Cocoa. 

About 50 miles down the ICW we would encounter our favorite bridge, which the Cruiser's Net website has notices that it's been getting sticky again this yr.  Fortunately, I checked the website this morning to discover that a railroad bridge about 2 miles from our favorite bridge in Titusville (near Cape Canaveral) was undergoing repairs in the morning and afternoon, so if you didn't get there about noon, when it was open, you'd have to wait until 5 pm to get thru.

As we chugged out, passing the inevitable early morning sailboats, Bruce kept asking me how far it was from the Ponce de Leon inlet (NOT a major inlet about 15 miles south of Daytona) to Cape Canaveral inlet, a major inlet with huge Cruise Ships going in there.  Finally I got it that he was interested in avoiding the bridges and going outside at "Ponce," as most boaters call it.  I like to read the guidebooks, zoom around with the GPS and check things out and get waypoints set the night before we go on one of these ventures (triple-checking that the waypoint gets us to where we want to go & not 50 miles out to sea.) So as my fingers flew over the GPS buttons checking out the Ponce inlet (permanent markers going out into the ocean, good sign, decent depth, but not the widest inlet on the east coast) and started setting a waypoint for Cape Canaveral, which is the one inlet that is not a straight shot south (you have to work around a substantial eastward shoal on the north side), Bruce started running out of water.   After a quick zoom back to where we were, leaving a waypoint labeled "CapeCoint 46" (I only got halfway thru re-labeling  Waypoint 46), we got thru the skinny water and headed north east out the Ponce.  We were getting near high-tide and the winds weren't bad, so we popped outside without too much turbulence.

Now I had to scramble to set waypoints around the Cape Canaveral shoals and check the charts as to how we were going to get in the Cape Canaveral inlet & thru a lock and under a bridge back to the ICW just north of Cocoa.  We had some idea of what was involved having done some land reconnaissance when we were down there 2 yrs ago.

The swells were a bit higher than when we've been outside before, and coming at us almost broadside, but the wind was behind, so the waves were going with us.  The engine load wasn't too bad and we were moving along at pretty good speed despite the extra swell.  We decided that Madame Cheval was galloping over the ocean, the swells doing a pretty good mimic of sitting a smooth horse's gallop, a bit of raise, and then a drop, sitting deep in the saddle, and then a rise up, with a bit of Marnii side pass thrown in with the sideway swells.

We amused ourselves with various notices on the GPS about right whales, and staying 500 yds from right whales (what boater in their right mind wouldn't stay more than 500 yards from an animal 5 times the size of their boat in 50 feet of water?!?!?!?!) and the north security zone and east security zone (because we were near the rocket launching site).   We did decide to comply with the notice to not drag the ocean floor because of unexploded ordnance.

As we got near the well-marked entrance to Cape Canaveral, well out in the ocean, I noticed on the charts that it was "only" 55 miles to Ft Pierce inlet.  Conditions didn't seem to be getting worse, so we decided to avoid the lock and the bridge (about a foot too short for us, so we'd have to wait for an opening), and just head to Ft. Pierce.  Amazingly, we still got phone reception, so I got a reservation at the Ft Pierce Municipal marina, just inside the inlet and cancelled the Cocoa reservation.

So we rolled and wallowed and galloped our way for almost another 3 hrs., We'd done a land reconnaissance of the Ft Pierce inlet 2 yrs ago; we hit it about 2 hrs before low tide, so the current was coming out against us.  We figure it's better to have to power thru rather than have the current pushing us along from behind --- less control.  As we turned into the inlet, we stayed to the north side, as the swells were coming at us from the northeast, pushing us to the south.  As seems to be the norm, the inlet had rock jetties on either side as we got closer to shore --- not something you want to encounter.  Bruce did a masterful job keeping the boat centered and into the current.

A quick check of the charts, new guidebook, and GPS showed that after going under a large bridge, we'd have to make a hard right into the marina.  When we got to the right turning spot, there were no markers for the marina channel.  Outside the dredged channels it was 4 feet of water, and we were getting near low tide. Fortunately, we decided to raise the marina on the radio rather than try to use the GPS to maneuver the boat down an unmarked channel.  The channel had been totally changed back by the bridge.  Would have been nice if the reservation clerk had mentioned the change.  The dock hand said, oh, yeah, none of the charts or GPS have the change. 

The wind seemed to have picked up a bit by this time, but Bruce got thru the little channel and thru a rather narrow aisleway as I did my usual scramble with lines & bumpers.  I heard a hard churn as we got near the gas dock to make the turn & avoid a tied up sailboat.  Another turn down a not so wide alleyway and a masterful backing up job into the slip with about 9 inches to spare on either side of the boat.

7 hours running, 15 miles in the ICW and about 100 miles outside, but we avoided 120 ICW miles and a couple of bridges.

We grabbed a beer and headed to a bench overlooking the ICW.  The bench still seemed to move with that ocean wallow, but it was good to be ashore.

35 miles to Stuart where we'll stop.  We'll probably head out mid-morning to be near hi-tide. Madame Cheval (the boat, that is!) is ready to tied up for a good wash and rest; she's earned it!