Melbourne to Daytona Beach

 3/3/2022

Melbourne ladies crew team heading back to the dock

Melbourne to Daytona Beach

Long stretches today of wide open waterways

Tonight we are having dinner on the boat, courtesy of the stop we made at Doris Italian market in North Palm Beach, home made fettucine with meatballs and "gravy",  Yum.

It is getting lighter earlier in the morning and we actually left Melbourne by 8:00 AM,  a minor miracle.  We are going 91 miles today, which, on the ICW is a long way.  Most of it is open water, which is great, but there are some long stretches that are no wake zones, so those sections take forever.  

Beautiful day today
Looks like this boat took a beating before it went down
looks like Jaws got it

There was a SpaceX launch today at 9:35 and we had hoped to see it as we were passing by Cape Canaveral just about the right time.  No matter where we looked, we could not see it.  We heard the Coast Guard announcing the restricted zones (all in the ocean, not the ICW, thankfully) but we missed it.

At the fuel dock before moving to slip Halifax Harbor

When we were running today, close to the end of our day, we hit some very shallow water, we had gone the same way now 4 times (two times each way) and never had a problem, but Sandy was concerned about the very shallow water - in the channel - and we had a very soft contract with the sandy bottom.  Sandy eased over it and we were all good.  About 20 minutes later we heard a boat that we had been seeing for the last two days had the same problem, only much worse.  They were hard aground and had to call Sea Tow to get them off.  Nasty!!  Must be new shoaling but we were in the middle of the channel.

Parker was able to play ball!

about 15 mile stretch of no wake zone

New Smyrna Beach, Statue of Liberty

We got fuel again at Halifax Harbor so by the time we actually got to our slip it was close to 3:30.  It seems like not much of a long day but it is like when you go to the beach and are outside all day, somehow it is so tiring!  Anyway, tomorrow we go to St Augustine, not that far, and we have reservations for Friday, Saturday and Sunday, so we can eliminate weekends on the ICW.  The ocean will be rough this weekend so we are not planning to go outside for a bit.