We finally arrived in the south west anchorage at Cocoa Beach around 4 p.m. to discover this area had been hard hit by a storm a couple of weeks ago. There were 2 sunken boats in the anchorage and 10 boats washed ashore on the eastern side of the channel. We like to visit the quaint historic village of Cocoa Beach where there are numerous little cafes and an unbelievable hardware store that occupies 11 buildings. Unfortunately, the new town dock was severely damaged in the same storm and it was off limits. We did however climb through a hole in the fence for a quick trip to the hardware but we were warned to keep an eye out for police. We are fortunate to have good friends from home who spend the winter here and graciously offer to drive us around for a couple of days to complete our provisioning.

Doc's Bait and tackle shop is located on the north east side of the harbour and they kindly allowed us to tie our dinghy up for free. Provisioning for 4 months can be a daunting task but Bev had done a great job preparing our shopping lists and the captain remembered to bring enough bags for the Food Saver this time. Over the next two days we managed to complete all of our shopping although I was a little concerned that our waterline would disappear under all that weight. Luckily we could return to Bill and Cathy's condo to package and freeze all our meat, which does take a big load off our freezer. Although provisioning was our main focus we still managed to get in a good beach walk and spent some time chilling on the balcony watching the ocean waves. Fortunately, the winds were calm as it took 2 trips in a heavily loaded dinghy to get everything on board Dagny. Somehow we managed to find storage space for everything however, we may have trouble remembering
where some items are located.

Another advantage of stopping in Cocoa is it's proximity to Cape Canaveral and the space centre. We were lucky enough to see two night launches of the Space X rockets. I don't know how many candle power it could be, but night does become day briefly when it lifts off.

As always, we keep an eye on the weather and it was time to get moving. Bill and Cathy accepted our invitation to join us for the 48 mile run down the ICW to Vero Beach. Although it was a little cool the sun shone brightly all day for us as our guests got a glimpse of a typical day in the ditch.

Today's picture is of one of our provisioning trips.