Monday, December 3 - Cocoa, Florida

Well, the boat is completely torn apart and the only place to sit is in the chair, so I might as well type up the blog entry. Mike has his head in the engine compartment and is systematically taking apart anything that could have anything to do with our overheating problem. The engine is under our stairway and the compartment is not large. We have already checked the easy things, like the sea water strainer, which was clean, checked the impeller, which looked fine and is relatively new. So, it was time to check the heat exchanger which is at the back of the engine, down low. This means Mike has to put a board on top of the engine and basically stand on his head to remove the hose clamps and disconnect hoses to get the thing out. Well, he got it out and it's pretty clean-no jelly fish or crud. Darn, that must not be the problem. Then he had to remove the alternator to check the thermostat, replaced the thermostat, although the old one looked good. Probably not the problem either. He also checked all hoses for any blockage and we won't mention that he dropped something in one of them which meant we had to take the thing out and empty it-just meaning it took longer than anticipated.

Luckily, Carl and Marilyn (Discovery) stopped by and invited us for supper with another couple from "Sojourner". Whew, I didn't know how we could cook anything in this mess.

Then, Mike put some antifreeze in the engine, as some was lost in the process above, and it was leaking out of the thermostat housing. Arrrrgh! It was off to the hardware (with the trash which we would leave in the trash can at the park-always take the opportunity to get the trash off of the boat) to get some permatex (a gasket making concoction of some sort) and of course, more antifreeze. Then Mike went to get water, which is not easy here-he took the pliers and mumbled something about "behind the privet hedge". . . When he got back, I worked on getting the water in the boat and he put the thermostat back together again and it was still leaking. Double arrrgh. Well, now it was 4:30 and time to get cleaned up to head over for dinner. Tomorrow we will try again. Oh, and I only heard two bad words today.

We had a wonderful dinner of salad and salmon on rice with peanut sauce. We also met Rick and Linda from "Sojourner" and had a lovely evening.

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Titusville to Cocoa - December 2

We left Titusville about 10am bound for Cocoa. When I turned on the engine, it turned over nicely but did not start. I tried 5 or 6 times, but stopped before I ran down the battery. The same thing had happened, to a lesser degree the yesterday. I gave it one last try a minute later and it came to life. Sadly, before we had gone a mile, our overheating buzzer sounded. Yesterday we were fine running at 1900 rpms but today all we could manage was 1000 before overheating. So we spent about 4 hours at 4 miles an hour. It was a perfect day in the 80's. I am thinking that the two problems are not related... hoping is more like it. I called Ken from "Second Wind" (sister ship) who knows much more that I about this engine and his position was that I needed to clean our heat exchanger. I will probably wait now until the morning because the engine is still hot and I have to lay on top of it to get to the exchanger.

For the last two days we have been traveling mostly in the Indian River which is a very large body of water between the beach and mainland Florida. At times it 2 miles wide and goes on a far as the eye can see north and south. The ICW here is a marked channel in the middle that is about 40 yards wide. The markers are about ½ mile apart so you just keep aiming for the next one. There is plenty of wild life. Today we saw a couple of osprey along with the pelicans that are becoming our favorite birds. Dolphins are rolling most of the time ... we are almost at the point where we are taking them for granted.

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Daytona to the Mangrove Swamp - Friday, November 30

Thursday was dark and dreary in Daytona ... warm but cloudy. Carl came over in the morning and after some deliberation, we decided to make a short run on a rising tide to get past the shoals at the Ponce Inlet. Sapphire and Discovery left at about 10:15 and enjoyed a non-eventful cruise to a small bay off the Indian River just south of New Smyrna Beach. Our anchorage was on the east side of the river and was bordered by a wall of mangroves. There were dolphins playing all afternoon.

Carl and Marilyn came over for snacks and drinks at about five and the snacks ended up being dinner...again. We had a few smallish shrimp that needed to be boiled and a little spiral cut ham that was not enough for lunch.... Which we cut up and baked on a Triscuits with a cheese topping. Marilyn brought a thin crust pizza with a pesto / cheese topping that was wonderful.

We read and watched an episode of the Soprano's before turning in.

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