Boarded by the Coast Guard! Yes, our first boarding ever by the CG. As we approached Ponce DeLeon inlet at New Smyrna Beach, a CG boat passed us and turned around and then hailed us on the VHF radio. They announced that they were putting a boarding party aboard our boat and to continue moving at idle speed. With that request / demand / statement we waited as the CG rubber boat approached our stern and deposited two Coasties aboard. They very politely stated that they were doing a random safety inspection/contraband and smuggling search and asked if we had weapons aboard. No problem with us as we knew there were no guns, no illegal aliens and no drugs aboard. During the next 25 minutes ,they searched every nook and cranny of Cool Change. They separated Colleen and me and asked probing questions to check our composure and demeanor. We passed and the inspection turned to safety equipment. They checked fire extinguishers. I had just up-sized those to exceed CG requirements. They checked to see if we were dumping sewage overboard, if we had proper documentation, the correct PFDs (life jackets), flares and signaling devices. They even went into great depth in checking our automatic inflating PFDs. It just so happens that I found that three of our four automatic inflating PFDs were non-functional about a month ago and had rearmed the inflating devices on each. I had alerted the CG, Boat US Safety Council, and the Boating Safety Council of the CG and our local Power Squadron safety examiners of an inherent safety flaw in this type of PFD. I am of the belief that people will lose their lives in trusting this poorly designed activation system. I cannot believe that the CG allowed this type of PFD to be certified. In fact, in our conversations, the boarding officer told me that a Coastie had recently lost his life when his PFD failed to inflate due to an undetected prior depletion of the CO2 charge in his vest. If you have a self-inflating PFD, you can find a lot of information online on how to check it before each use.
Now to our actual travels:
We left the mooring buoy in St. Augustine right at 8AM on Dec. 5th after an enjoyable visit to the old city. Our destination was to be Daytona Beach to anchor in the ICW adjacent to the municipal marina. As we progressed it became apparent that we would arrive in Daytona about 2 PM. If we anchored there we would traverse the Mosquito Lagoon to the Indian River passage while facing the setting sun the next afternoon. No way! We did that last year and could not see the markers to stay on the course that was dredged through the shallow waters there.
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| Ft. Matanzas at Marineland Pass |
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| Marineland Pass with Atlantic Ocean beyond |
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| Home & boat of friends Pidge and John on ICW near Palm Coast |
We decided to push on to New Smyrna for two more hours so that we would enter the Indian River about noon the next day. After the encounter with the CG, we proceeded past Ponce DeLeon Inlet and attempted to get into a charted anchorage in a side channel.
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| One BIG house! |
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| Tile murals on Daytona bridge |
We followed the directions in "Skipper Bob's Guide to Anchorages on the ICW" but ran aground in a sand bar twice before we gave up on the that spot. We traveled to another suggested anchorage and dropped our anchor very near marker 3 in Sheepshead Cut. We were close to private docks and a marker so we had to keep our anchor chain to 50 feet only. After observing that we held fast through a tide change, we were confident that the 50 feet of chain was going to hold us until the next morning. Though we had high winds and a light rain, we had a very peaceful night there.
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| Views from our Sheepshead Cut anchorage |
We departed Sheepshead Cut at 6:50 AM on Dec. 6th for our destination for December, Harbortown Marina in Merritt Island (Cocoa Beach). Colleen initiated the startup of all of the electronics and electrical checklist, then started and warmed up the engines. When ready, she pulled the anchor (it should be noted that we have an electric windlass that retrieves the anchor) as she motored toward it. She then used the shifters to rotate the boat and proceeded around marker 3 and motored into the ICW. This was her first complete de-anchoring alone and it was done perfectly. We traveled 5 hours and 50 miles to Harbortown Marina. The travel was so easy and uneventful that we pulled aside the ICW and dropped anchor for a leisurely lunch just south of the NASA causeway.
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Early morning on Mosquito Lagoon
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| Mosquito Lagoon - 15 miles of sameness |
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| Spoil island in the Indian River |
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| NASA verticle assembly building |
Repairs:
During our travels, the starboard fuel gauge continued to read full. This is the gauge that we had depended on for accuracy as the port gauge jumps all over and reads lower that the actual fuel level. We will need to pull both of these gauges for repair during our 30 day stay in Harbortown Marina.
Our continued performance problem due to prop fouling will require that we take the boat out of the water. We will change props and clean the algae growth from the hull to regain performance and fuel economy (if you can say economy with two diesel engines). In addition, a new problem has developed with the inverter / charger that produces 120 volt AC. Hopefully that repair will not be major. Our bow thruster that was remarkably helpful when we undockedneed to be corrected while here.
Settled in Harbortown:
We're preparing for Christmas by decorating the boat with lights. We've also purchased a small artificial tree and will be decorating it with lights and ornaments we accumulated last year (trying not to think of the six boxes of ornaments, etc. that we left sitting in the attic in North Carolina). We've enjoyed several meals with our local friends, Roger and Marcy and Marla and Al and hope to see some Orlando friends and family members while we're here. Right away we made a trip to Rockledge Gardens. This is an awesome plant nursery, so well landscaped and stocked that we both feel we should be paying admission just to walk through their grounds. They have every tropical plant you can imagine as well as a butterfly house and pots and garden furniture and a Christmas area.
The Weather!:
Last year it was so cold here! We felt we really had not moved many degrees warmer by coming south. The past several days have been just perfect - 70s and 80s during the day and cool nights for sleeping. So we're settled for a while. Drop by and see us if you get over this way - exit the Beachline at highway 3, north at the light and then right on the second road. Don't go over the bridge. Harbortown is about a mile and a half down on the left and we're in slip D14.
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