Depart: Titusville City Marina 11:00
Arrive: Bethune Point Park Anchorage, Daytona Beach, 4:25
Distance: 41 nm
We slept late today. I guess we had too much excitement yesterday and needed to recover. Later, while Clark was finishing his departure preparations, I slipped away for a quick visit with Jim and Joann on Namaste Too before leaving the marina. I guess I took too long because eventually my captain came looking for me. It was time to go.
In a couple of days we need to travel (by car) to New Jersey to take care of "at home" things like dentist appointments and driver license renewals. While Clark drove the boat today, I started making a list of assorted things we need to bring along on the trip home that I might forget like our EZ Pass device for the toll roads.
While piloting the boat, Clark found one of his favorite photo ops. He did not request my help, so Auto Pilot must have helped him out on this one.
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| Looking down the tracks |
As part of today's trip we traveled down Haul Out Canal where we saw busy Saturday boating fun in progress. Boaters enjoyed water sports, fishing, and beaches. It looked like so much fun, but I kept wondering if they found bugs to be problematic as they played in the water.
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| Picnic Site with Kayaks |
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| Fishing Boat (one of very many) |
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| Another group of kayaks |
We heard a boater call a bridge up ahead to find out the vertical clearance provided. He said he needed 23 feet of clearance. The bridge tender refused to tell him saying, "I am not authorized to read the number board. You must do that yourself." After reading the number board, the boater said, "24 feet. I'm good and do not need an opening."
Clark's chart data told him that the bridge clearance is listed as 28 feet. We also need 23' of clearance. Just before we got to the bridge, a sailboat had passed through. The bridge closed as we approached.
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| Sailboat passing through bridge. Closed before we got there. |
The number board for the bridge said 22' when we arrived. Knowing that if the bridge height had not been sufficient for the last boater, we would see a wreck, we passed under the closed bridge. We had at least two feet of clearance overhead.
After we exited the canal, we saw some hurricane damage along the waterway.
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| Lopsided building and dock |
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| Really messed up dock and ramp |
One thing about the ICW that we find frustrating are long stretches of slow speed, no wake zones. We had one today that Clark calculated took us 40 minutes to travel. He was irritated because a fast boat zoomed by him only to slow down in front of him. Clark said he had to then go slower than normal in a slow-speed zone because the other boat had a different hull speed than Sunset Delight.
When we finally completed the slow speed zone, we found a frenzy of weekend boaters zipping this way and that and sometimes in circles. They cut in front of us, sped past us, and generally made us wonder how they managed to stay out of accidents. I know some boaters who refuse to go out on weekends. Today's bunch of crazies supported that choice.
Along the way today we heard and saw a boat up ahead that had an unusual appearance. Clark recognized it as a Hovercraft. Something we have not encountered before.
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| Odd-looking vessel |
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| Hovercraft Vessel |
We dropped anchor at Bethune Point Park near Daytona Beach. Clark had read that free WiFi is available here. We did not find it. He did, however, find a WiFi connection via xFinity. The WiFi was so good here that we had a very successful Facetime session with our Idaho son and family, and I managed to blog all night long after dinner with hardly a hiccup.
Clark said he was not impressed with tonight's sunset. It looked pretty impressive to me.
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| Sunset at Daytona Beach, Florida |
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