We went to bed to the sound of rain and we woke up to the sound of rain. There was even the threat of a thunderstorm this morning. We discovered yesterday that the marina where we tied up our dinghy had a fuel dock that was easy to get into. Having purchased fuel in marinas that weren’t that easy we decided it was a good time to fill up. We had to time our purchase properly though. Bill wanted to return half the things we bought at West Marine yesterday. He figured the marina would probably let us leave the boat there for a short time. He was right – they couldn’t believe any boat came into buy fuel on a rainy Saturday at the end of December! West Marine didn’t open until 9am so we didn’t get the early start we needed to get where we hoped to get today. There was a long gap between possible anchorages so we ended up stopping for the night at 3:30pm.

We lucked out and the weather turned much better, you might even be able to say it was warm. Bill commented on how today felt completely different, much more tropical. The wildlife seemed more abundant, and the air had an island feel to it. We saw a lot of dolphins today, but have still not been able to get a decent picture of one. We are also on a manatee hunt now. Everywhere you look there are signs warning you to look out for them and not run them over, but we haven’t seen any yet.

When we got near the place we were going to anchor Bill told me to turn left at the green marker number 17. I looked and there was nothing there. Usually we anchor in a side river or creek, when we are desperate sometimes just on the side of the ICW that is out of the channel. This was the first time we were going to anchor in “big water”. It was almost like anchoring on the ocean. There wasn’t any protection from the wind, and the wind was pretty strong. We could tell it would be an interesting night. It is beautiful though. We watched the sunset but Bill found the better picture was the one taken in the opposite direction. The picture above is of the earth’s shadow rising as the sun was setting. That is the dark area just above the horizon. It also shows you our view! It’s looking east, of course. The land on the horizon, about a mile and a half away, is just a couple of hundred feet wide. On the other side of that is the Atlantic Ocean. We can even see the Vehicle Assembly Building at the Kennedy Space Center way in the distance to the south. Hopefully we will get a better view of that as we get closer.