Nautical Miles Travelled: 64
Total Trip Miles: 1128

Simple stuff for simple people during the trip from Daytona Beach to Melbourne. We had a solid 24 kts of wind pushing us directly back on to the T-dock when we departed in the morning. A few weeks ago we may have considered this a challenge, but after day-in day-out living on this boat journey, we pulled some evasive manuevers off the dock with eyes still glassy from just waking up. The guy at the dock who I made friends with the night before hailed us on the radio asked me to switch to a more private channel and said, "I wish everyone would pull away from the dock like they had a set of balls, sure would make my job a lot easier!" HA, it is a bit uncomfortable to jam throttles forward with multi-million dollar yachts just feet away from your boat. More often than not it is a lot safer to make your moves decisive like your a seasoned pro... So we headed out down a narrow exit channel and back into the intracoastal. We were headed downwind so we unleashed the gennaker sail and pulled about 8 knots. People must not put big sails out very often in the ICW because other boats going by kept calling on the radio and commenting on how much they liked our "big pretty sail." Like I said from there it was a simple day, grillin food, drinkin beers, opening bridges on request and meandering through the waterway. You really have to pay attention every minute though since the waterway is only about 9 feet deep and drops off to about 3 feet or less, 20 yards off the side of the boat. There is just enough room for 2 boats to pass. It's deceiving since it looks like it's a mile wide! Thank god for chartplotters. We saw some really picturesque places along the way. Islands plastered with thousands of pelicans, little inlets with manatees swimming around and of course families of dolphins every half hour or so swimming along with our boat. We had to decide whether to shoot for a stretch goal of Melbourne or just stop in the Cocoa area. We were racing the sun and intending to anchor for the night. Staying true with our style on this trip we went for Melbourne. About 30 minutes after sundown, still dim lit, as we were pulling into the anchorage it started to downpour and get windy. At this point we just look at eachother and laugh. I really would not know how to anchor on a calm day anymore with adequate sunlight! We found a great spot on the leeward side of the land and dropped anchor, which set very nicely. We broke out the booze and rigged up some cocktails with dinner (Southwest Chicken from my Mom's Sedona cooking guide and Parmesean Risotto). With the trip drawing to a close we find we are consuming a lot more...wonder why? We must have ate and drank ourselves unconscious because we woke up after passing out on the couch for an hour or so. When we looked to see how late it was we laughed as the clock was just turning to 9:30 pm. The boat barely moved an inch all night and we got a great nights sleep at anchor for a change! BTW, Rach is yelling from the helm for me to write that she also saw a bald eagle! I have never seen and adult so enamored with wildlife sightings...she keeps a log of all her daily creature sightings.

Looks like we've got one more day on the ICW until we reach Rach's parents in Port St. Lucie. We're still trying to figure out where to keep the boat, but in true style, we'll figure that one out on the fly too...