Our beautiful tropical weather turned back to winter on Sunday. What a miserable day that was. I was back to long underwear, hat and gloves, and was still freezing! We anchored in Cocoa and stayed on board because it was too cold to ride in the dinghy. Bill had hoped something exciting would be happening for New Years Eve and we would stay another night.

In the morning we went into town for breakfast, our new favorite thing to do. We enjoyed breakfast but not much else in the town impressed us. No one seemed to know anything about any New Years Eve celebration or fireworks. We decided to move on. Luckily the weather was a lot better. Bill heard some unusual noise in the engine and when we went to check on it found that something he installed on the propeller shaft was loose. We pulled out of the channel and drifted while he fixed it. We finally anchored off of Eau Gaille near Melbourne. There was one other boat anchored in there. Our other goal for New Years Eve, besides seeing fireworks, was to be able to use our Papa John Pizza points for dinner. Both Cocoa and Eau Gaille had Papa Johns within the delivery area to the waterfront. We took the dinghy down and went to check out the town, stopping at the other cruising boat on our way in to say hello. We found Irene, the first singlehander woman we have met on our trip. We sat in the dinghy tied to her boat for a little while and next thing you know we’ve invited her to have pizza on board our boat to celebrate New Year’s Eve. It didn’t have anything to do with the apple pie she said she was about to bake… Eau Gaille was not that exciting a town either, but it does have a West Marine, which of course we visited. We went back to our boat and after a while ordered the pizza. We had a nice time with Irene who is from Holland, and Canada, and various places in the US including near where we lived in Philadelphia. After dinner, we went back to her beautiful boat for Dutch Apple Pie and tea. As I always do these days I started losing it at 9pm so we went back to our boat. We saw a bunch of fireworks all around us between 9pm and 10pm. Somehow I managed to stay up until the ball dropped at midnight. We went back out on deck and there were fireworks everywhere we looked, small towns up and down the river and especially off the beach which was to the east of us.

This morning we headed south again and are now anchored next to Wabasso Island. Today the weather was beautiful but it still isn’t quite warm enough. We had breakfast on deck this morning – I think that is a first for this trip. We were heading up a channel and Bill noted a sailboat anchored right off the ICW. Once we got closer we could see they were actually aground. Bill called out to them and asked if we could help. They asked us to help them by pulling their bow out. We had to enlist the help of a small power boat to get their line from them to us, but we did eventually get them floating again. They were very appreciative. A little while later we saw the house in the picture above going past us. We can honestly say that it is the first time we have ever had a wake from a house, complete with a white picket fence!

Later in the day we saw a tow boat towing a sailboat. That is a sight that always makes your stomach do a little flip flop. When they passed us the tow boat captain called us on the radio and both Bill and I were a little nervous about what he wanted. He just wanted to tell us our boat was beautiful and find out what kind of boat it was. Whew!! That was better than hearing him say we were heading into shallow water or something. We are very careful not to miss our marks. We do have towing insurance, we just hope not to have to use it!