From St. Augustine to Cocoa
Thursday, November 20, 2008
It is funny this is posting is #13 because today we had some bad luck. We left St. Augustine before 7am to make the 7:30am bridge opening. Al called the bridge to let him know we were planning to go through and there was one power boat in front of us. Meanwhile, a catamaran called the bridge tender asking if he would hold it open because they were just around the bend, but we did not hear his response. We saw the bridge go up and the powerboat went through and just as we were about to enter we heard the horns blowing which usually indicate that the bridge is going down. Our hearts were in our throats as Al did a 180 ◦ and was frantically calling the bridge tender. All he could say was “Sorry, he was a little fast on the horn” and that we should come on through the open bridge. So we guess he wasn’t going to hold it open for the catamaran, but by the time we got straightened out to go through, it gave enough time for the catamaran to catch up and through the bridge they went. A few minutes later the catamaran hailed us on the radio and thanked us for the maneuver at the entrance to the bridge which of course helped them. Not too long ago we heard the Alligator River Bridge did close on a sailboat and de-masted it, so that is why we had heart palpitations aplenty!
The rest of the day was a motor down the ICW. After checking fuel prices on the internet, Al decided we would stop at Halifax Marina in Daytona to fuel up. We started to head in and ran a ground (bad luck #2) because somehow we missed seeing an important mark. Luckily, it was sand, because Al motored us back into the correct channel with only our ego’s bruised.
At least we did not ground Blue Heaven like the boat in the picture!
Not far from the marina we anchored by 4pm between marker 40 and 44 with several other boats. Our excitement for the night was me giving Al a haircut. I just had to get rid of his little flips!
Friday, November 21, 2008
We were up early again to be out of the anchorage before 7am. To me, this is getting old. When it is so cold outside, I just want to stay under the covers. Al wanted to leave early to possibly make Cocoa today.
We were able to motor-sail and eventually got some decent sailing in with the winds blowing 18 – 20 knots. They pushed us along quite nice at 7.2 knots. Even though we had plenty of time to get to Cocoa, Al decided with the wind direction that it would be better to anchor on the south port side of the Addison Point Bridge. He thought it would have more protection than Cocoa. He was wrong! There was land there which protected us from the wave action, but there was nothing high on the land to protect us from the wind. The wind howled at 20 knots and we continually swung on our anchor. The worst part was the snubber line (a line that takes the load from the anchor chain to the cleat and gives some stretch from the anchor to the boat) was making all sorts of loud noises. I gave up sleeping in the v-berth and finally fell asleep in the main cabin. Sporadic sleep (you women would know about that), while all the while Al snored away. I don’t know how men do it! This was the first night out of 36 that was not pleasant sleeping, other than our over-night ocean passage, so I guess we are doing pretty well if you look at it that way.
The clincher came by way of email from Estelle that said they had a quiet night at Cocoa!
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