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.

Jax or better

We are underway northbound in the Tolomato River, part of the ICW, headed for Jacksonville. We will be in town for a week or so, while Louise flies to California to attend to family matters. Jacksonville is a busier place than Titusville and we should not have the same trouble with a rideshare to the airport.

Monday morning, with a short day to Daytona, we had a lazy morning at Ponce Inlet Harbor waiting for a late-morning Falcon Heavy launch from Canaveral. It was overcast, so we did not have a lot of hope, and ultimately it was for naught, as they scrubbed the launch with just 26 seconds left on the countdown clock. They rescheduled for Wednesday.

I came across this mailbox walking around Porpoise Point. Adding the googly eyes makes the already whimsical manatee even more so.

Lingering for the launch put us against heavy current the whole way to Daytona and we slow-rolled the whole trip to conserve fuel. My log shows it took us 2.2 hours to go just nine nautical miles, for an average speed made good of just 4.1 knots. Under way we learned we had just missed our friends Dori and Bob aboard Liberdade, who left Daytona in the morning on their way south, and whizzed past us while we were still at Ponce. We were tied up at the Halifax River Yacht Club (map) a little before 1pm, likely in the slip Liberdade had vacated in the morning.

I've been having a lot of trouble starting the main engine lately, with the start battery voltage dropping precipitously. At first I attributed this to the fact that we are running the generator a lot less now that we have solar, and the start batteries only charge when the generator is running. But after fully charging them up a couple of times with no relief, I concluded the six-year-old batteries had reached end of life. Daytona was a good place to exchange them, and so as soon as the engine room cooled off a bit, I went down and opened up the start battery compartment.

Off The Hook, where we had dinner with Erin and Chris, as we passed on our way out. Erin had tuna that just came off the boat and was, I hear, the best ever.

My battery load tester immediately confirmed that one of the two batteries was completely done, and the other was marginal. I pulled them both out, hauled them upstairs and onto the dock, and then I strapped them down to our folding "schlepper" with a ratchet strap. Regular readers may recall this is exactly how these batteries arrived six years ago, in New Bedford, MA. Unlike then, when I had to hike the whole way to the store schlepping batteries, this time I walked one block and got on the county bus, which took me all the way to Walmart for a buck.

The Walmart Everstart Maxx marine starting batteries turned out to be exactly identical to the Autocraft/Die-Hard items from Advanced Auto that I traded in; all come from the same Clarios (formerly Johnson Controls) factory. That made them an easy drop-in fit after returning with them on a different bus that gave me an extra two blocks to walk. All things considered, quite easy there in Daytona.

New batteries arrived at the dock via a luggage schlepper. It looks a lot like the pic I took six years ago.

With the yacht club closed on Mondays, we walked a couple of blocks into town for dinner at McK's, an Irish pub with a decent menu and selection of drafts. Afterwards we strolled through the very nice Riverfront Esplanade, which I have to say has been very nicely kept by the private firm that operates it for the city. A little before 9pm we went out on deck to watch the Atlas-Centaur launch for the Amazon Leo Internet constellation, but heavy cloud cover gave us just a one-second glimpse as it passed through a gap. Still impressive.

Tuesday morning we each went for a walk, anticipating being trapped on the boat until Wednesday afternoon, topped up the water tank, and headed out into the ICW. I turned north a little bit ahead of a conga line of smaller but faster cruising boats. That turned into a problem when the Main Street Bridge tender wanted me to wait for all four following vessels to catch up before opening the bridge. We could see quite clearly that none of those boats needed a lift, and none of them was even monitoring the bridge channel. I had to get insistent with him; nothing in the bridge regulations allows tenders to make marine traffic wait for other traffic to catch up, and I did not want to station-keep for a full five minutes.

We could see the rocket for maybe a second but by the time I snapped this pic it was just the exhaust.

In short order we dodged a rusty steel barrel and, later, a 20' long dock piling, both drifting mid-channel, which I reported to the conga line. The piling I also called in to the Coast Guard. In due time the entire conga line passed us, only to have us catch back up at the LB Knox bridge. Meanwhile another boat that caught up to all of us passed us by sounding actual whistle signals, which I had to answer with the whistle. I can count on one hand the number of times I've had to do this. It turned out to be Victoria and Kevin in their lovely Burger Set Free; we met them in Charleston last year and we remember him saying he does not like to talk on the radio.

We arrived to the anchorage at Fort Matanzas around 3:30 to find the entire phalanx of boats that had passed us, including Set Free, anchored there. We went all the way down past the park service dock, past all the anchored boats, and dropped the hook just before the end of the Idle Speed zone (map). I grilled lamb chops for dinner, and we had a quiet night, with just the sound of the surf, which is quite loud here.

Looking forward to this some day. We will add it to our list of numbered restaurants that includes Pier 220, Tower 7, Marker 42, and Seasons 52.

We had thought about staying in the anchorage in the morning until the Falcon Heavy launch scheduled for 10:13. But there was again heavy cloud cover to the south, and, more importantly, we had some concern Louise might have to move her flights up a day or two. So instead we weighed anchor before the turn of the tide and continued north, with an option to continue all the way to Pablo Creek Bridge before the end of the day.

At launch time Louise took the helm so I could go up on the boat deck to see if I could catch a glimpse, but it was too overcast and all I could see was a smoke trail after the rocket was out of range. We made the 11am opening at the Bridge of Lions with plenty of current behind us. That same current was against us after we made the left turn at the inlet, and we climbed the hill to our usual anchorage off Vilano Beach (map), where we dropped the hook at 11:30, at least temporarily, to sort out whether we needed to pick up our pace.

They bulldozed the Magic Beach Motel since our last visit, but clearly they salvaged the classic historic sign, which I assume they will put back someplace when they are done.

If we chose to keep going it would be an uphill climb all day. I took another look at the charts and realized we could be all the way to our destination in Jacksonville by the end of today if we got an early start, and we decided there was no sense in bucking the tide all the way to Pablo Creek. We ended up settling in for the night. I wanted to go ashore and walk before dinner, but when I went to launch the dinghy I found the steering completely seized; it had been very stiff at the last stop.

It was fortuitous that I had decided to launch in the early afternoon rather than waiting until dinner time. I spent the next hour or so on deck taking apart the dinghy steering and reaming the rust out of the tilt tube. This is a regular exercise on these outboards, and I am mystified that no one sells a stainless steel replacement tube. I was finally on my way ashore just before 4pm.

These pieces of coquina are ubiquitous in this part of Florida. The perfectly round hole is naturally occuring.

My elation at having nice, one-finger steering was short-lived. On my way to the dinghy dock, which is around the other side of the fishing pier (the remains of an old drawbridge), I inadvertently snagged a barely visible fishing line. Trying to get untangled before I pulled a fishing rod off the pier the current sucked me under the pier (plenty of clearance), and I limped to the dock against a couple of knots. I marched up and gave the fisherman a ten-spot for his trouble, thankful I was not buying him a new rod and reel.

I needed my planned walk to overcome my jitters. I found the new Irish pub, Durty Neli's, now has food, but only Thursday through Sunday. And a new place called Anchor 28 is close to opening in the long-vacant restaurant space at the Holiday Inn Express. The classic Magic Beach Motel has been razed to make room for a new condo complex. And I walked all the way around Porpoise Point after passing the beachfront pavilion where the Casino once stood.

Best shot I could get from my vantage on the dock. I'm about half done removing the fishing line. And I have a few barnacles to deal with, some of which cut me while I was working.

After returning to the dock I lifted the engine out of the water to find perhaps 50' of fishing line wrapped around the prop. I spent the next ten minutes prone on the dock, cutting it away with my pocket knife. It was a struggle to keep the pieces from falling back into the water or blowing away; I kept tucking them in a hole in the gangway until I was finished, then marched them up to the trash.

I picked Louise up back at Vector and we returned ashore for brick oven pizza and draft beer at Surfside. We've given up on 180 Vilano, and this is the alternative. The pizza is decent, although the crust could be a bit crisper, and this particular example had a bit too much garlic on it. We made a quick stop at Publix on the way home, and decked the tender on arrival for an early start this morning. We had to weave our way through some racing sailboats, that were apparently using Vector as their leeward mark.

All the boats in the race were coming about just abeam of us. This was the only pic I got.

This morning, again thinking we might need to be all the way to downtown this evening, we weighed anchor on the flood at 8am and headed upriver. We had a fair tide most of the day, and we shot through the Pablo Creek Bridge at close to ten knots. As I wrap up typing we are anchored in a familiar spot off Blount Island (map), having determined that there is as yet no need to move flights up. We had a good run to the St. Johns but slowed down to three knots for the last 3.5 miles, pushing hard against max ebb on the river.

We'll do the rest of the trip to downtown Jacksonville in the morning, when we have the current behind us. That will give us a full day to settle in before Louise flies to California, and to make sure I am well situated for the duration, especially if she needs to extend her stay. It will also give us a chance to connect again with Erin and Chris, who are in Jacksonville getting their boat settled in at their home marina. You will next hear from me when we are wrapped up here and are again underway northward.

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.