10 April 2015

Another dead calm morning, so we are on a roll, every day this week we’ve gotten off to a nice start and a good sail day. We are both looking forward to time in Daytona Beach, we will have been on the move for 7 days in a row. A new record for us, our prior record was the mad dash down the West Coast of Florida in 6 days.

About 8 AM were were in Duck Roost Cove. It’s very pretty, wilderness in a 340 degree view and then the Worlds Largest Freestanding Building, NASA’s Vertical Assembly Building. There is a launch in a few days, this would be a great place to stay and watch it from.

A little farther on there is a cut in the island. For the next 3 miles we saw over a dozen manatees in the water. It was very cool to see them floating in the water.

Around 10:30 there is a long slow speed zone. We saw about six sets of dolphins, they all appeared to be feeding. We were tipped off by the smaller fish jumping into the air and then seeing the dolphin fin break the surface.

We also had our daily radio chat with Chamba, they were going to go to Daytona Beach to an anchorage south of the city.

At New Smyrna Fl the ICW goes to the left through a channel, the river runs along the barrier island. Rather than do the canal we took the river side. We were rewarded with white sand beaches and some really nice areas. It is about the same difference and only about 5 miles of the alternate channel.

We picked up a pretty good current in Port Orange. Normally at 1,800 RPM our cruising speed is 8.1 knots. With the current we ripped along at 9.8 knots. Nice on the fuel mileage and makes the trip go faster. We ended up docking about 10 mins earlier than planned. Total miles today was 41.4, the biggest one day jump since leaving Miami a week ago. We’ve covered 243 miles in the last week, so we are making good progress!

On the dock I met the Captain of Haley’s Comet, he owns a boat similar to mine and is on the Bayliner Owners Forum. He was about to run out and get parts and offered to take me with him. We went to the local discount marine place and I was very good, I only spent about $30. I got LED lights that later on turned out to be pretty useless, but they were cheap.

Another round of Doctails, tonight was on the “Mara Beel”. More good discussion, but one of the Admrials was pretty adamant when the Captains started talking shop about motors or oil or … to shunt the conversation in a different direction.

Porkchops and pierogi were on the menu for the night. Looking forward to some down time.