With the impressive Kennedy Space Center near our marina (Cape Marina), our visit to Cape Canaveral was marked by major events of the space shuttle program. From our marina's docks we saw the Atlantis space shuttle being carried atop of a 747 (piggy-back style) as it approached its landing strip at the Space Center the day we arrived. This was quite an awesome view of these two air/space crafts which had traveled for 2 days from California, making 2 stops to refuel as the quarter million pounds they weighed burned fuel at a fast rate. The morning before we departed for Charleston we sailed to the harbor in our sailing companion's boat, Beaudacious, to see the Atlantis shuttle launch. Unfortunately, the launch had been canceled in the middle of the night due to a fuel leak.
We stayed in Cape Canaveral for nearly 2 weeks while Kim went back to the US for some work meetings. With our friends Paul & Lynne from s/v Beaudacious Daniel and Maria visited the Kennedy Space Center one day and went to Disney World another day. Maria and Daniel also drove to Tampa to see their good friend Ampi who had quickly assembled a get together with some friends from the Rochester, NY area, now living in Tampa. Maria lived for 15 years in Rochester and met them all there. It was wonderful to see Ampi and the friends we had not seen in a while. Ampi's daughter and son also joined us with their respective families as well as Ampi's sister who also lives in Tampa.
Cape Marina was an interesting place. While a working marina with no frills, the wildlife we saw there was amazing. Dolphins swam around the boats, we saw a couple of turtles and, best of all, a family of 4-6 manatees seemed to live around the docks. One morning when we were leaving the marina we saw a mom and a child petting something and as we got close we realized it was a manatee drinking water out of a hose, with her body belly-up. We were able to pet it and it was so beautiful and gentle.
Cape Marina also had a group of interesting live-aboards. We were told that at one point in the '70s many hippies lived in their boats at this marina and there are still some who live there. There was a boat and a car painted the same way with peace signs all over. We took many pictures of this art work.
Soon after Kim returned and had a chance to visit the Kennedy Space Center, we prepared to leave Charleston to Beaufort, NC, a 280 nautical mile passage.
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We anchored in West Palm Beach for the night and navigated along the coast to Fort Pierce the next morning where we also anchored for just one night prior to making a 12-hour trip to Cape Canaveral before sunset. Nearly 400 miles long, the coast of Florida is about ½ the distance from Key West to our final destination in the Chesapeake Bay and Cape Canaveral was about 1/3 of the way. We were amazed at how long it would take us to get back home. But at the same time we wanted to see some places in the East coast of the US by water.
Our anchorages in West Palm Beach and Fort Pierce where just off the ICW and near entrances to the ocean. There were homes nearby but no dingy dock or way to hop on shore. Anchoring in the US is not as available as it is abroad so we have had to go into marinas, something we had hoped to avoid.
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We decide to leave Fort Lauderdale to West Palm Beach via the Inter Coastal Waterway (ICW) so that we could experience this amazing work of engineering by the US Army Corps of Engineers. Authorized by Congress in 1919 the ICW runs 3,000 miles along the Atlantic and Gulf coasts. However, after waiting to cross 17 bridges and only going 40 miles in nearly 10 hours, we decided we had "gained" enough experience on the ICW - we could barely even eat as we had to pay constant attention to all the traffic and coordinate crossing the bridges with the bridge tenders. We were glad to have ventured out in the ICW with our buddy boat Beaudacious which draws 8 feet and had many concerns about the depths. All went well and we arrived to Palm Beach safely.
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