Although it would certainly be understandable to take a day off after an offshore passage, we actually felt like getting going today, and so we did. We started by washing all the salt off of Symphony and then sending Evelyn up the mast to re-secure the speaker horn for our hailer/fog signal. It was fine when we left the Bahamas but dangling by it's wire when we arrived at Port Canaveral. I suspect we snagged it with a halyard sometime during the night.

As it turns out, the broken hailer horn was the only lasting damage done during the passage: Although we thought the radar had failed, that turns out not to be the case. One of the "improvements" I made to Symphony's electrical system while in the Bahamas was to install a heavily isolated/filtered power supply to protect the electronics from power transients on the main supply. I miscalculated however, when I put the autopilot on that supply: When the autopilot needs to drive the rudder hard, the drive motor gulps a big chunk of current...enough to create a transient voltage drop on the supposedly protected supply. So, when the autopilot pushed hard on the rudder, some of the other electronics, like the radar, reset or just shutdown. As the passage went on, the waves got bigger and the spurious resets got more frequent...not a comforting trend! The good news is that the problem is easily corrected and that our radar/chartplotter seems to be working fine, now. This was especially welcome news because having that display at the helm is SO nice for keeping track of the intricacies of the ICW!

So, boat clean and hailer no longer dangling, we set off late this morning. First off out of the marina we passed through a bascule bridge and then entered a lock. Yes, a lock: The Canaveral canal has a lock so that the tides don't affect the Mosquito or Indian Rivers. Well, we've traveled the length of the Saint Lawrence Seaway and passed through all of it's locks, passed through the historic locks of the Richelieu River, locked in and out of the marina at Quebec City, transited more locks on the Champlain canal and the Hudson river, and a couple more in the dismal swamp...How different could this one be? Mechanically, it was no different, but it was absolutely unique in that this one had more manatees than boats in it! It was the best viewing we've had of manatees, right up next to us as we waited in the lock! In fact, when the lock had opened and we were ready to go, we had to crawl out super sloooowwwly because there were a couple of manatees right in front of us.

Once we reached the ICW, the wind was from the southwest and gusting over 20 knots so we put out our headsail and motorsailed at slightly above idle speed. In the lulls, the engine kept us moving at 5 knots or so, but the gusts had us doing better than 7 knots! In this way, we proceeded up the Indian River passing many small islands that were filled with birds, an especially welcome sight after two months in the Bahamas where there are very few birds. One of the islands even had some flamingos!

We crossed from the Indian river to Mosquito Lagoon via the Haulover canal where we got to spend an exciting few minutes: The bridge had some sort of malfunction and couldn't open as we approached! The bridgetender gave us a quick radio call saying we'd have to standby...at this point, we had 20 knots of wind and a knot of current pushing us towards the bridge, so turning around was a little stimulating within the confines of the canal. Once we were facing into the wind and current, holding our position was easy and, after about 5 minutes, the bridgetender had corrected the problem and we proceeded through.

Many things have changed in the past few months: The leaves are all out, flowers are blooming, it's not cold, manatees are more active and there are a lot of birds. There are a lot people too! After two months in the out islands of the Bahamas, having our first day back be a gorgeous Saturday in Florida really maximized our marine culture shock!

(29 00.756'N 80 54.776'W)