Travel bug

We are underway northbound in the Chesapeake Bay, making tracks toward our next scheduled stop, in New Jersey. It's been an eventful couple of weeks, and I want to catch up the travelogue here before it again gets away from me. The write-up of the Sail250 and Harborfest events will have to wait.

Vector tucked in at Little Creek Marina, as seen from the bridge over the creek.

I ended the last post on Sunday evening, our final evening at anchor off Hospital Point. Monday morning was the end of the show, but we needed to weigh anchor early to have a favorable tide out the Elizabeth River. We were on our way out of downtown before the first tall ships left the dock. It turns out that had us running right into a half dozen warships from several countries all backing out of slips at Naval Station Norfolk, we assume for FleetEX 250. The pilot aboard a Brazilian destroyer called us to ask us to move over to the red side, which meant I later had to call a pilot aboard a different warship to cross back. It was amusing to leave the harbor in a conga line of warships.

This Brazilian warship is overtaking us after backing out as we passed by.

We arrived to our destination of Little Creek right after lunch, made a quick stop at Cobbs Marina for a pump-out (our reserved marina's pump was down), and were backed in, tied up, and plugged in at our slip at Morningstar Little Creek (map) just as the mercury climbed into the upper 90s. We were thankful to have the power for the air conditioning, and spent the rest of the day inside. It was too hot to go anywhere else, so we ate at the on-site restaurant, Stony's Dockside, which was decent. An expected storm hit around midnight that gave the boat a good rinse, but also had me on deck moving fenders so we would not hit our neighbor just a foot off our starboard side.

Vector at Little Creek marina.

We arrived here a full day early, and Tuesday was spent packing and getting ready for our trip to Nevada. I got in an early walk before the heat became brutally oppressive, making stops at UPS, the grocery store, and a barber for my ministerial 'do. The heat and another storm trapped us on the boat all afternoon, and we finished up some leftovers aboard for dinner.

Wednesday morning we had a 5am Uber to the airport, which from here is just a ten-minute ride, and we were off on our whirlwind visit to the Reno/Lake Tahoe area for our niece Jennifer's wedding. We were on the ground in Reno by 1:30, picked up a car, checked into our local hotel, and met up with local friends at a Chili's across the street. It's been a very long time since we were last here, and it was great reconnecting with Dee, Julie, Jim, JC, Melissa, and Jimmy Joe over dinner.

Sunset over the Sierra Nevada from our hotel in Reno.

Thursday we drove up the hill to Stateline and South Lake Tahoe, which is something of a trip down memory lane for us. We'd both spent a lot of time here between skiing, camping, and motorcycling over the years. We checked in to our hotel and then met up with the family. It was great to have a day before most of the wedding guests started arriving.

The bride's family's condo had a lovely view over the lake.

Friday was the rehearsal, wherein we all learned just how windy it was going to be lakeside for the ceremony on Saturday. Afterwards was the welcome dinner at another lakeside venue, and I tried to meet as many guests as possible so I would not be facing so many unfamiliar people at the ceremony. I quickly exhausted my capacity to remember names and relationships, but it was great meeting everyone and it was a fun party.

Saturday was the big day, and after a hearty breakfast at the hotel I did some eleventh-hour practice on my delivery, mindful of the wind forecast for the lake. Being on east coast time we were up early every morning and had the mornings to ourselves. We took a good half hour to get dressed; it's been over a decade since I last donned black tie. I even had a brand new wing-collar formal shirt delivered to the hotel for the occasion; my two older ones were showing their age.

We visited one of the many parks on a free morning. This sort of vista takes me back; it is one of the things we miss living on the boat.

We got to the lovely Edgewood Resort a half hour early for sound checks; as I stepped up to the trellis I could see spray whipping off the lake onto my pant legs. There was a small craft advisory and two to three footers on the lake, with maybe 15kt winds onshore. Louise wisely brought warm fall clothes to this summer wedding, and I was quite comfortable in a wool tuxedo.

Pretty much everything went to plan, and, wind-tossed as they were, the entire wedding party filed in in grand style. I was a bit teary-eyed watching my niece walk down the aisle, but I managed to hold things together for the relatively short ceremony. I did not draw anything out, with the wind uncomfortable for many, and all too soon I was pronouncing them husband and wife and sending them off to the relative comfort of the more sheltered patio for pre-reception cocktails.

Officiating. Photo: Joyce Irby 

My part thus mostly concluded, I was happy to assume the role of just another wedding guest. It was a great reception, and we ate, drank, and danced a lot. After the reception, Louise dropped me at the after-party (seriously) before driving herself back to the hotel. This may have been a mistake, as the young groomsmen insisted on plying myself and the father of the bride with shots. I escaped with only minor damage after about an hour when I caught a ride to the hotel with the bride's parents. I tip-toed into the room at 1am, or 4am on my internal clock.

Louise snapped this between dances. That's the resort's signature espresso martini in my hand.

Sunday morning we went to the farewell brunch, where we again saw I would say the majority of the guests as they filtered through on their way out of town. It was at this point that Louise and I parted company; she needed to be in the Bay Area Monday morning to get her mom moved into assisted living, something of a last-minute change to our itinerary. She caught a ride to SFO with friends, and I stuck with our original flight and hotel arrangements.

I did my best to live up to this bobblehead doll, a gift of the bride and groom a few months ago.

That included driving our other niece Lauren, the bride's sister, to the Reno airport Monday morning. On the way we stopped in Minden at the county recorder's office so I could discharge my final ministerial obligation of filing the marriage paperwork. After dropping Lauren off at the airport I had time for a final lunch with our good friend Dee before turning the rental car in and hopping on the shuttle to the Silver Legacy resort downtown for the night.

Yes, that is a pair of black bears seeing if they can get in the back door of the condo. No, we did not open it for them.

I had a final few hours to myself to stroll Reno and marvel both at what has changed and at what has stayed the same in the 45 years I've been coming here. I ended up eating dinner at the cafe in the Whitney Peak Hotel, a rare casino-less establishment on the strip that was blissfully quiet compared to its surroundings. I remember when this building was, instead, Fitzgerald's Casino. I took a spin through the midway at the Circus Circus just for old time's sake, though there was no show when I passed through. And I turned in early to make the 4:00am shuttle to the airport, the entire reason I chose this hotel in the first place.

This did not exist on any of my early visits to Reno. 78 lanes.

The resort and all of Reno was packed with bowlers here for the months-long USBC championship at the National Bowling Stadium, and I think the shuttle driver must have loaded 50 bowling balls before he started taking normal luggage. Bowlers, it seems, all travel with a minimum of three balls in their luggage. I was at the airport in plenty of time for my pair of uneventful flights, and I was back at the boat by 6:30, walking over to Stony's for a quick bite. The place was packed with people in Sweden team colors for the FIFA match, some of whom appeared to be actual Swedes.

The Swedes and their cohort. Very cheerful considering they lost the match.

Tahoe had been blissfully cool, and even Reno was comfortable (it's a dry heat) compared to what I faced on my return. Wednesday temperatures had climbed into the 90s by lunch time, and after picking up some packages at the office I basically shut myself in the air conditioned boat. After getting unpacked I spent a good deal of time researching and ordering a new computer for Louise. At dinner time I braved the heat on the e-bike to run to The Dirty Buffalo for draft beer and dinner before making a quick stop for milk on the way home.

Lake Powell, rather what's left of it, from the air.

Thursday was another scorcher and I resigned myself to more inside projects. Our friend Dave had gifted us an electronic piano that had some inoperative keys, and I tore into that, quickly learning that it was every eighth key was was dead. That gave me false hope that it was just a ribbon cable or a bad connector on the key matrix, but after two days of working on it I had to concede defeat and consign it to the dumpster. I took the e-bike to Regino's for dinner, decent Italian food but the bar was charmless. By the time I turned in, I had the sense I was coming down with some kind of crud; my niece had reported getting sick after I dropped her at the airport. I had taken a quick walk at 11pm, when the temps had finally come down into the 80s, and I found myself getting chills.

Attempted keyboard repair. I had to take all those keys off to get to enough of the circuit board.

The descent was rapid, and whatever it was had me flat on my back for the next couple of days. It was all I could do to finish up the keyboard project and then just vegetate in my easy chair watching videos. On Saturday, fearing the worst, I took one of our remaining viral tests, which immediately came up positive for Influenza-A. No wonder I was miserable. By the end of the day Saturday I was out of cold meds.

Enough said. I want more of these tests, which we got as part of a clinical study.

Sunday morning I had a rental car booked, and so I put on an N-95 mask to go get it. I immediately hit up the drugstore for some more cold meds and the grocery to replenish the lunch supply. I again donned the N-95 to pick Louise up at the airport, one of the two reasons I had originally booked the car.

My seatmate on the flight to Norfolk.

Yesterday morning I was feeling considerably better, and I headed off stag to Viking Lifesaving to pick up our freshly recertified liferaft. Complete service on the raft was north of $1,500, but we're good now for another three years. We loaded the raft aboard and I returned the car while Louise wrapped up the last of the laundry in preparation for departure.

We were both sitting in the saloon waiting for the dryer to finish when we felt something hit the boat hard. We ran on deck to see another boat backing in to the slip next to us, and he had underestimated the cross-current and gotten cattywampus on his way back. We had several fenders out on that side from when we originally backed in next to another boat, having left them there for just this sort of thing. But we could not be so lucky that he would have just hit the fenders; his steel rub rail hit our paint forward of the fenders, with one of the mounting screws taking a big gouge.

Another gouge. Through the paint, primer, and part of the fairing, but thankfully not to bare steel.

Normally I would have just gotten contact information and insurance from them, but after the mate first told us they did not hit, and then, when confronted with the actual damage, told us it was not them and we'd just have to fight it out with their insurance, we just called the Virginia Marine Police instead. They dispatched an officer who was about a half hour out; we informed the marina we would need to remain in the slip until they arrived.

Our paint embedded in their rub rail screw.

Considering we had a fresh gouge, and some of our paint was embedded in their rub rail, it was pretty cut and dried and I expect the report to read that way. I do have their insurance information; this is the third time we have been hit while docked in the span of a year, all in Virginia, and this is the third Progressive insured responsible. As soon as I have the police report I will be calling Progressive to file a claim; the last claim is still open since we have yet to repair the damage. We might be eligible for the Progressive Frequent Guest club.

Tennessee River.

All of that delayed our departure by another hour and a half or so, but at least we had air conditioning. We were finally off the dock and leaving Little Creek a little before 1pm. Due to the short day, I had picked out an anchorage off Mobjack Bay, a ten mile detour from our usual route. But an hour or so into the cruise, with the air temperature well into the 90s and the seawater temperature not much cooler at 88°, we decided to push on to Deltaville with a 7:30pm arrival so we could have more air conditioning without running the generator.

Passing over the Elizabeth River, with the Hospital Point anchorage much quieter than a week earlier.

Perhaps an hour out of Deltaville I stepped in a puddle on my way to the galley. The condensate drain pan for the pilothouse air conditioner, into which the drain from our mini-split is routed, had overflowed. Accessing that drain plumbing to figure out why is a major challenge, and so we just rerouted the mini-split drain into a bucket, an arrangement we had worked out while running it on the hard. We have to empty the bucket every hour until I can get the proper drain working again.

Condensate collector.

We dropped the hook in a new spot for us (map), in the other arm of the creek, but close to our old haunt at Deltaville Boatyard. Our friends Tim and Crisalida aboard s/v Paquita are just across the neck at a different boatyard, and it would have been great to get together for a beer at the Deltaville Tap Room adjacent to our anchorage, but I definitely do not want to pass the flu along to them. I likewise could have visited with friends Stacey and Dave aboard Stinkpot, who were docked a half hour away in Great Bridge while I had the rental car, but I did not want to risk transmission.

Moonrise over Joint Expeditionary Base Little Creek.

The very full day and the lingering fatigue of the flu had me crashing early last night, and we had a quiet night in the anchorage. We were headed back out of Jackson Creek by 8 this morning. Solomons is a long day from Deltaville, at 9-10 hours, but once again we wanted the nearly-free air conditioning for the majority of the day. Right now the plotter says a 6pm arrival, and the CDC says I should no longer be contagious, so maybe we will tender ashore for dinner.

Final night in Florida

We are underway northbound in the ICW, after a little over a week in Jacksonville. We have a little more relaxed pace now, with our next commitment in Norfolk at the end of June to fly to Nevada for our niece's wedding. We should cross the 31st parallel by the end of tomorrow, beating our insurance deadline by just under three weeks.

Vector at the enormous Riverfront Park dock, with the Allsop bridge in blue.

When last I posted here, I wrote that as yet Louise had no need to move her flights up, but that very afternoon she did exactly that, switching her outbound flights from Sunday to Saturday. That eliminated our one-day buffer to settle in to Jacksonville, but it was a short run. We tendered in to Palms Fish Camp for dinner and a short walk afterwards. They had a new beer for me on draft, Flying Squirrel Nut Brown Ale from the local Veterans United brewery, which was excellent.

Jacksonville is full of murals and other public art. This one, from a distance, looked 3D, but when I got close I could see it was 2D on a textured surface.

Friday we weighed anchor with the flood and were tying up at a familiar spot on the free downtown dock at Riverfront Plaza (map) by 12:40. Louise had plenty of time to pack and get ready, and I took a stroll around downtown to see what was new and different. Jacksonville is perpetually trying to reinvent itself, and downtown redevelopment has been ongoing the entire time we've been coming here.

This creek is near the end of a two-year daylighting project that will turn everything you see here into a public park. On this pass I spotted the fire department with a wire rigged over the creek, practicing water rescue.

At dinner time our friends Erin and Chris from Barefeet swung by in their car and picked us up to take us across the river to the City Grille for dinner. This place is walking distance from the south bank dinghy dock and I have been meaning to try it; it was fancier than I expected but very good.

Vector as seen from the elevated walkway of the new playground at Riverfront Park. The Friendship Fountain is across the river in the background.

Erin, who is an early riser, was very insistent on picking Louise up at 4am to take her to the airport, and Saturday morning I was up at 3:45 to walk her out to the corner. As I was coming  up the stairs I could hear her on the phone with Erin about a flight delay. It turns out American had texted her that her flight would be delayed by four hours, not what we wanted to hear so soon on the heels of missing our flights to the DR altogether.

This line of food trucks arrives every weekday to the plaza at the Vystar building to serve lunch to the downtown office workers.

Erin was already on her way, and Louise decided to just go to the airport at the scheduled time and see what she could do. After saying goodbye, I sat down at my computer and found a 5:45 departure to San Francisco that could easily stand in for her scheduled 6:20 to San Jose, and that's what she ended up doing. It meant moving her rental car reservation, and ultimately changing her return flights to match so she could get the car back. The pony in this pile was that she actually got money back as the SFO routing was a lower fare.

I ran into the First Wednesday Art Walk on my way out of Cowford's Chop House. I could have saved myself one dollar (really) by buying my burger from a food truck instead.

I tried unsuccessfully to go back to sleep, but I ended up just catnapping a couple of times. Saturday was rainy all day and I was mostly trapped on the boat, a good time to work on projects. I also had to run the generator a couple of times, but that would be the last time I would run it until after Louise returned; the new solar was able to meet all my needs the rest of the week, even heating the water for my showers. In keeping with the rainy day theme, Chris and Erin picked me up around 4 and we went to The Perfect Rack for a few games of pool (boy am I rusty) and a casual dinner. The Kentucky Derby came on the TV while we were eating.

Chris and I shooting pool at Perfect Rack. Photo: Erin Miller

The Kentucky Derby as seen from our table.

While Louise was taking care of business in California, I spent the next five days at the dock stag. There is technically a three-day limit, and I was prepared to move, but I did not want to single-hand the boat over to the anchorage unless I had to. I had the entire dock, all 1,000' of it (less a bit reserved for police and water taxi) to myself the entire time save for one night, when our friend Eric showed up on his trawler, Terrapin. We exchanged greetings but I already had evening commitments.

The filet mignon sliders (best deal in the house) at Morton's happy hour do not come with a side, so I ordered the house-made chips, which I thought were a little pricey. Sunglasses for scale. I took them home and we just finished them today. I would do it again in a heartbeat.

Stag I ate at Keane's Pub on Bay Street (not worth it), the bar for happy hour at Cowford's Chop House (excellent, and they had Duke's Brown from right next door on draft), and the bar at Morton's, also for happy hour (no drafts but excellent bites). One day I met up with friends Jill and Rudy from Briney Bug, who are settled in at a nearby marina, and they took me to European Street Cafe for lunch.

The rooftop bar at Cowford's. It was just too hot the day I was there and I ate at the main bar in the dining room instead.

Erin and Chris also swung by for dinner twice more. Once to whisk me to Indian food at a placed called Persis, something I only get to do when Louise is not with me. And once to go for a nice four mile hike on Cinco de Mayo out at Little Talbot Island State Park, which was to be followed by (what else) Mexican food at La Catrina. That was a pipe dream, as there was a two hour wait, and we ended up eating at the excellent KT's Pizza and Italian in the same parking lot.

Chris and I on our hike at Talbot. Erin wanted a shot with this post-apocalyptic tree. Photo: Erin Miller

I ended up twice at the waterfront Hyatt for a breakfast sandwich, once because I spotted the American Pioneer cruise ship at the adjacent bulkhead and I wanted to have a look. And in addition to several long walks around downtown, I took the Skyway out to the Amazon locker at the transit center twice, and one evening took the new NAVI autonomous transit service, just getting off the ground, out to Metropolitan Park to see how the docks and other projects are coming along.

American Pioneer at the dock. They have their own branded tour buses meet them. If you look closely you will see the fuel tanker bunkering them. We pass these guys on the ICW, and they use navigation tracks that I help create each year.

On the project front I spent most of the time designing, digging out parts for, and wiring up a solenoid to effect charging of the start battery while underway. Previously this battery was only charged by the generator, which was perfectly adequate when we were running it more or less every stop. The solar has changed that equation and we now need it to also charge from the main engine alternator.

New solenoid to bridge the start batteries to the house bank for charging. I tried to mount it vertically or horizontally but I could not find a way to do it with the bend radius of the 2/0 cables, so I finally just settled on this jaunty angle.

In the middle of that project I grabbed one of my meters to check a voltage that should have been around 12 and was aghast to see 30, which is in the normal range for circuits on a different system. I quickly learned that it was the meter itself that was the problem, and at a break in the project I went down the rabbit hole of diagnosing and trying to repair the meter. In the end I just bought a new one for an amount far less than the value of any more of my time trying to fix it. I really, really hate tossing electronics in the trash, though.

Just as a 12vdc circuit read 30v, this 120vac circuit is reading 300v. The meter is done.

Our anniversary came and went while we were apart, and Google Photos saw fit to remind me we were here on our anniversary exactly five years ago. It also reminded me that, also on that day five years ago, I replaced the saloon flooring while we were at the nearby docks in Metropolitan Park (those docks are closed for construction right now). I have to say the flooring has held up pretty well for five years.

One morning these bike cops were gathered outside the boat and staring at it. Turns out they were just admiring it, and expressed that they were happy people were using the dock.

Thursday night Louise returned, after another ride-share hiccup that had her waiting at the airport an extra 40 minutes, when she was already exhausted. In hindsight I should have asked Chris and Erin if I could borrow the car, but I did not want to park it on the street overnight. Not that I have seen any sort of issues down here. I walked out to the street adjacent to the Performing Arts Center to be there when she got back.

My ride on NAVI, which for now are Ford E-Transit vans with autopilot hardware, to be replaced at some point by Holons. The attendant is there to operate the wheelchair lift, but can also take control as needed. They are still working the bugs out and the units brake abruptly fairly often.

Friday we dropped lines with the tide and made the short one-hour cruise upriver to the Florida Yacht Club and tied up (map) for our free night. We needed to do laundry and top up our water, and it was nice to have air conditioning as the temperature and humidity have been creeping up. Erin and Chris met up with us one final time, whisking us off to Moon River Pizza for one final get-together. They swung us by Publix on our way home for a few essentials.

Jax Fire stopped at the dock for a bit and they chatted me up on their way out.

The club is now finished with their extensive renovations and it's all very nice. We did not use any of the amenities on this visit, but at just a dollar a foot for reciprocal members, this is where we would tie up if we both needed to fly out of JAX at the same time. We popped inside to look at the final part of the renovation, a casual dining and bar venue adjacent to the pool. We got a late checkout Friday, had a nice walk, and availed ourselves of the in-slip pump-out before dropping lines.

The new docks at the Metropolitan Park Marina, which is now adjacent to the almost complete Four Seasons Residences. They are still running utilities but the docks might be open this summer.

We just went the hour back downriver to Jacksonville, dropping the hook in our usual spot near the Baptist Hospital (map). Our plan had been to tender to any of the several city docks and have dinner, most likely at a nice Mexican place in Brooklyn that we like. But it was starting to rain as we set the hook, and it rained all evening, so we just stayed aboard and ate the half pizza we had brought home from Moon River the night before.

Dora the robot vacuum was in the pilothouse cleaning when I heard her cry out from the saloon. I found her like this, teetering on the brink of the companionway. I'm glad she got stuck and did not just plummet off the precipice to her doom.

This morning we weighed with the tide for the run back downriver to the ICW and then north. We've had a fair tide most of the day, although we are now pushing against the flood here in our last few miles to the anchorage.

Historic Shrine temple, the oldest in Florida, now an office building.

Update: We are anchored in a familiar spot at the junction of Bells River and the Amelia River, in Fernandina Beach (map). We are well-positioned to hop over to the nearby Port Consolidated fuel dock in the morning; we are down to our last 55 gallons. In consideration of Mothers Day and its attendant restaurant crowds, we tendered ashore right away for dinner at Mezcal Spirit of Oaxaca on Centre Street, a favorite of friends Dorsey and Bruce. It was quite good and we had no trouble getting a table when we arrived. It was full on our way out.

This house here in Fernandina has a whimsical collection of carousel horses interestingly displayed.

Tomorrow morning we will bunker fuel and then head north to St. Simons. If the forecast holds, we will be able to go up the outside. From St. Simons we will be inside at least as far as Savannah.

Thwarted.

We are underway northbound in the ICW, having left the Titusville Municipal Marina this morning, where we docked for a full week so that we could fly to the wedding of our friends Tim and Crisálida in the Dominican Republic. I am sad to report that we missed the wedding, and therein lies a tale. The last time I felt this way was 2008, when we traveled to DC to attend an historic presidential inauguration, tickets in hand, but were stopped cold by the Purple Tunnel of Doom (Google it; our own story is here).

There we are, at Table 2. Well, me and my husband Louis, maybe. Fortunately this and many other photos and videos were posted online afterwards, and we even got to watch the ceremony as it was livestreamed. Congratulations, Crisálida and Tim. Photo: Tim Boehmer

Today's run is mostly a long, straight slog through the Mosquito Lagoon, which affords me the opportunity to write sporadically. I have much to report, so I will start at the beginning, two weeks ago when we were still anchored in Palm Beach.

Dinner on the deck at Chucks, where Vector dominates the view. We were disappointed happy hour ended at 5, even though the web site said 6.

Tuesday morning I had hoped to run ashore in West Palm for bagels at the new shop that has opened since our last visit. But I was still feeling pretty crummy with the remains of a head cold, and instead we just decked the tender. We weighed anchor at the end of the ebb for a fair tide part of the way to Hobe Sound. The ICW at Jupiter Inlet was recently dredged and we had an easy run all the way to Conch Bar, where we dropped the hook (map) so we could dinghy to Tiki 52 for dinner, which was pretty good. They seated us out of the line of fire of the live music, which was pretty mellow anyway.

These two sailboats were anchored near us. Fellow mariners will recognize that neither is legally lit. We see this kind of thing all the time in Florida.

Wednesday I woke up feeling crummy yet again, and we made the five-hour run to Fort Pierce with mostly fair tide. We dropped the hook on the north side of Causeway Island, just off the ship channel. Our first attempt had us in a weird eddy and we moved to our usual spot (map). We tendered over to Chuck's, at their very shallow and somewhat beat-up dock, for dinner. We found the food overpriced and just OK, buy hey, they have a dock. We stretched our legs a bit after dinner.

Eau Gallie Yacht Clubs was replanting their seasonal flower bed while we were there.

In the morning we weighed anchor to make the 0900 opening of the Fort Pierce North Bridge. The replacement high bridge is very nearly complete and I expect this was our last ever opening for this drawbridge. Today was a long day's run to the Eau Gallie Yacht Club in Indian Harbour Beach, where we were tied up by 4:30 (map). We would have loved to have stopped in Vero Beach to connect with our friends there, but with a lingering head cold that was not a good idea.

Cheers from Pub Americana, Cocoa Village.

We really like this club and their casual poolside bistro, but we really needed a walk, and a quick stop at Publix, and so on this occasion we went instead to long-time favorite PizzaVola. After dinner we strolled over to the nearby massage joint and got a half hour each of much-needed back and neck work before swinging by Publix on our way back. One might question the wisdom of schlepping a backpack full of beer and groceries a half mile right after a massage, but such is the nature of cruising errands.

Vector in Cocoa. We're a lot closer this time, just outside the cable area.

The yacht club is just a day's run from Titusville, and we were now two days early, which is how we like it. A good thing, because I was still coughing and congested Friday morning, marking an unusual full week since I had come down with this crud. We made it a leisurely morning, and I walked down to Ross to see if I could find better shoes for the wedding (no dice), and then spent a half hour in the pool before we dropped lines.

I ran into this classic car rally strolling around town.

We made it a very short day to Cocoa, where we dropped the hook in a familiar spot (map). At dinner time we tendered ashore, tied to the seawall (it seems clear they will never rebuild the dinghy dock), and walked over to Pub Americana for dinner. The town was pretty quiet, unlike our last visit during the holiday boat parade.

It was quite warm, and this nice waterfront splash park was very popular.

Just three hours from Titusville, and with nothing in between, we opted to just spend a second night right there in Cocoa. I felt mostly recovered from my cold, albeit with a lingering cough, but I was grateful for a full day off. In hindsight, I should maybe have taken some time to post here, but instead I puttered around the house in the morning, and went for my longest walk since coming down with the crud in the afternoon. We had dinner at Bugnutty Brewing, a small-batch craft house where the house beers were quite good.

Bugnutty Brewing. Uno at every table.

Sunday was the start of our marina reservation, and with a very calm day, we stopped the dinghy mid-lift so I could scrape some barnacles we had accumulated in the Lake Worth Lagoon before setting it on deck. As I was making my log entry and starting the engine to get underway, we noted that we had not run the generator since arriving, for the first time ever for a two-night stay. I'll need to gather some figures and do a post here on how our new solar is working out, now that we have some actual experience.

Also at Bugnutty. I decided that pee is fungible; I left some that I bought elsewhere, but took some of what I bought with me.

Adverse current made it a full three hour cruise to Titusville, but it was nearly dead calm when we arrived at 2pm, making it easy to back into our slip (map). The short finger pier had a weird arrangement of fat pilings with vertical cleats, and while leaning over the gunwale to catch the midships piling and cleat, Louise let out a yelp. Evidently she pulled a muscle or maybe even bruised a rib, and now a full week later she is still in a great deal of pain and with some limited mobility.

This matching railing section welded in place where the dinghy dock ramp used to be speaks volumes about the future of the dinghy dock.

The main engine oil was due for change, which is best done with the engine still warm, and the marina had an oil recycling station. So after giving the engine room an hour or so to cool down to something less hellish, I went down and changed the oil and filter. I cleaned things up just enough to be able to start up in an emergency, leaving most of the cleanup for the next day.

Ol' cap'n Ed is spinning in his grave. His transient dock has now been closed longer than it was open.

The calm had it excessively hot outside, and we opted to leave the scooters on deck until the cool of the evening. The closest joint in walking distance, ironically, is Pier 220 out on the causeway, where we dine pretty much every time we anchor here. But the food is good and they always have a few beers on tap. After dinner we offloaded the scooters, tricky with a very narrow finger pier encroached upon by big pilings. We knew it would be way too windy to want to offload them Monday.

Sunrise over Cocoa Beach and Merritt Island. I was up before dawn to catch the Blue Origin New Glenn launch.

A week at this marina was less expensive than the five days we actually needed, and we were very glad to have a full extra day to settle in and get things done before our flight Tuesday morning. With a full week booked, we had our mail forwarded here and we both had numerous Amazon and other orders en route to the marina, a good address for deliveries. Monday was mail call, and I also cleaned up the engine room and recycled the used oil and filters. I deployed our mylar bird deterrents for our absence, and we rode out to Walgreens, where I needed to pick up a script before we left. We ate at Kelsey's Pizzeria right next door, which was quite good. We had our bags packed and the boat all secured before we turned in early for an early morning flight.

I only saw the actual rocket, with its distinctive methane exhaust, for a couple of seconds in binoculars. This trail was the best photo I could capture. The launch was a success but a downstream failure left the payload in the wrong orbit and it will be destroyed.

Tuesday was the big day, and we were up early enough to have a full cup of coffee in us before our pre-scheduled Uber pickup. I opened the Uber app ten minutes before pickup, and was relieved to see it predicting arrival at the Orlando airport seven minutes ahead of schedule, although with no driver yet assigned. We buttoned everything up, I put on my sport coat, and we started walking down the dock toward the pickup point at the marina office.

Vector tucked in at Titusville Marina.

We were almost to the end of the dock when my phone buzzed, just two minutes from the scheduled pickup time. It was Uber, telling me our ride was canceled. The screen said "we're sorry to have let you down" or something like that; in hindsight I am sorry I did not take a screen shot, but frankly, I was just stunned. We kept walking toward the office.

This unloved aluminum 100-footer at the end of our dock was rocking and rolling all Monday in the 25kt winds. That explains the 16 huge fenders, and even so we could see dents in the hull matching the dock pilings.

I immediately pulled up Lyft, which tried valiantly for about 12 minutes to find us a ride (stand by, we're working on it). Louise, meanwhile, pulled Uber up on her phone, but all the options they were giving her were 40 minutes out. After Lyft finally gave up and declined, I went back to Uber on my phone, and this time they said we could have a driver in 15 minutes. For $250, vs. the $80 I had pre-booked. With no other options I clicked through; there are no taxi or limo services in Titusville open at 4:30am.

Space Shuttle monument, Space View Park.

The arrival time kept getting later, and as the minutes ticked away we did the math: The TSA line at 5:30, our planned arrival, is about ten minutes, but by 6:15 it's a half hour, and even doing the OJ Simpson (if it's even politically correct to still say that, or if any of our readers remember it), there was no way we were going to make the gate before they closed the aircraft door. I clicked "cancel" on the $250 Uber ride just two minutes before his arrival. Dejected and frustrated, we walked back to the boat.

Apollo Monument.

I spent the next fifteen minutes on the phone with American Airlines. Our tickets were non-refundable, but fully changeable, and with the wedding not until Wednesday evening I held out a glimmer of hope. However, there is only one daily flight from Miami to Santiago de los Caballeros, and Wednesday's flight was already sold out. The agent at the American call center went out of her way to explore all the options, but there was just no way to get there by Wednesday evening. Reluctantly, I asked her to cancel our reservations, and each of us now has a flight credit that we have to use within a year.

Gemini Monument, Gemini Park.

I broke the news to our friends, who were very understanding and supportive. And then I went and ranted about it on social media. There's really nothing else I could do; Uber's TOS does not allow any remedy. Call it a hard lesson learned: the kinds of places that are far enough from major metro areas to have decent marina rates may also be far enough that the gig economy does not function well. We've pre-booked Uber rides for early morning flights maybe a dozen times with no issues, most recently in Lantana and Lake Worth beach, and we'd become complacent. For this occasion, with no backup flight options and a 45-minute ride from the boonies, I should have booked an actual limo service.

Mercury Monument.

And there we were, at 5:30am, looking at another five nights in Titusville. We likely could have converted our stay to the two nights we'd already spent, and continued moving along. But it would not have saved a lot of money, and we still had packages scheduled to arrive throughout the week from Amazon and other vendors. We just chalked it up to first-world yacht problems and girded ourselves for a week at the Titusville Marina. At least we already had the scooters on the ground.

Hardware Store Brewing.

We did made good use of the next five days, at least. I went and visited with friends Bob and Ann on their sailboat. And one of my Amazon deliveries contained the parts I needed to replace the failed check valve in the fuel transfer system, and having them in hand let me see they were inadequate (Amazon plumbing parts are always a crap shoot) in plenty of time to re-order what I needed from McMaster-Carr. The check valve is now replaced, and I managed to do it with a minimal amount of diesel spilled.

New check valve in place.

Another Amazon purchase was a new vacuum gauge for the generator fuel filter, but after I got the old one out I was able to get it working again and so I just re-installed it. The new one is on its way back. A new battery arrived for the crane scale and that's now working again (I had to jury-rig it to weigh our fire bottle); this was an item that Amazon would not deliver to a locker and so we needed a marina or similar address.

Breakfast of champions. We were using the box for storage but it outlived its usefulness and I had to snap this photo on its way to recycling.

I replaced all the mild steel screws on our otherwise weatherproof aluminum deck chairs with stainless items, and in a last-minute scramble, the cheap junk we've been using for a monitor on the chart computer quit entirely two days before our planned departure, and I was able to get a replacement overnight and installed it yesterday. It was a different "brand" but turned out to be entirely identical to the one it replaced. At least I can read it with my polarized glasses on.

There's not much to this monitor, and certainly nothing repairable inside.

I ordered a travel router so that we can use our Starlink, which right now is integrated into the very chatty boat-wide network, on the pay-per-GB offshore plan without every device in the boat sending traffic over it and running up the bill. This was on my "next offshore trip" shopping list, but it moved up due to the chaos in the router market caused by the current administration's ban on foreign-made routers. I spent some time setting that up and testing it with our gear.

Playalinda Beach with Launch Complex 39B in the background. One of the least crowded but nicest beaches in the state.

Lots of minor projects and general boat maintenance rounded out the list. I also rode over to the urgent care one morning, when my persistent cough had cross the two-week mark. While it had seemed to me to be an endless follow-on from the crud I got on the plane ride to Newark, the clinic felt it was likely allergies, and they prescribed some meds to get me back on course.

"I didn't bring a suit" is no excuse. Kudos to the NPS.

On the dining front we had our post-cancellation consolation dinner at long-time favorite El Leoncito, and we tried the Hardware Store Brewery, with lots of nice drafts but basically just cold sandwiches on the dinner menu, located in a former hardware store right downtown. We also tried upscale Italian venue Vine & Olive, which was decent, although next time we will sit in the more pleasant bar area, and last night we ended up right back at Pier 220 when friends Erin & Chris aboard Barefeet, fresh from the Bahamas, came through town and dropped the hook. We all had a mad scramble to beat some incoming rain after dinner.

All the parking areas have these nice access boardwalks. It's inside a national park so you need a pass or to pay the entrance fee.

I tried to walk a little each day, and yesterday, with all the projects behind me and feeling a little better, I rode my scooter out past the Kennedy Space Center to Playalinda Beach within the Canaveral National Seashore. On my way back I stopped off at Hardware Store Brewery to fill my growler before returning home to board the scooters.

The brew pub is a real locals hangout, and locals here are in the rocket business. This model of the Space Launch System (new moon rocket) is prominent.

Yesterday we also had a visit from the pump-out boat, and I recommissioned the fuel transfer system after having given the pipe dope plenty of time to cure. By the end of the evening we had the boat in seaworthy trim and we were all set to get underway this morning.

I snapped this so I could have a look at the rebuilt dock in New Smyrna Beach later when I was not driving. I inadvertently captured the incoming storm that was about to unleash on the weekend crowd.

Update: We are anchored in a familiar spot in Inlet Harbor, near the Ponce de Leon inlet (map). I had to stop typing as we got closer to New Smyrna Beach and the associated weekend traffic. We had a fair current for the last third of the Mosquito Lagoon, and by pushing a little we were able to make the 2pm opening of the George Musson Bridge, just as the heavens opened and the wind picked up to 25 knots. The sudden (but not unexpected) storm had dozens of small boats racing past us for cover, having been out enjoying the sandbars or maybe the offshore fishing. When we passed the boat ramp a short time later there were a dozen boats waiting for the ramp.

These die-hards were still on the sand bar when we dropped the hook. They're the smart ones, who knew if they bailed that they would not make it back before the storm passed.

We arrived to find Barefeet already here, and we made plans to meet Erin and Chris ashore for dinner at Off The Hook, which has a courtesy dock. Dinner was very good, as was the company, and while they will leave us in the dust tomorrow, we will see them again in Jacksonville in about a week. Tomorrow we should be at the Halifax River Yacht Club in Daytona.

Sunset from our anchorage, mostly obscured by a storm over Sanford. That's Barefeet off to the right.

The universe sometimes has a way of forcing you to put things in perspective. While I was typing this post we got word that one of our friends lost the tip of his finger to a freak accident while docking their boat. Fortunately they were mostly docked and so he was rushed to the hospital where they've sewed it back on, and I understand the prognosis is good. It makes all of our first-world yacht problems seem insignificant by comparison and reminds us that good health is our biggest blessing. Our hearts are with him as he recovers.