Ta-Dah!!!
Made it across The Pond one more time, the weather co-operated this time to make a rather pleasant cruise.
Made it across The Pond one more time, the weather co-operated this time to make a rather pleasant cruise.
We left the Abacos at sunrise and an hour later discovered about 20 other boats making the same crossing we were. Not too many headed for the Northern Florida inlets, like us, but headed south for a much shorter crossing. Some of our fellow crossers are pictured at the side-bar called "Doug wants to see more boats". The wind kinda died off, so we hoisted our cruising 'Chute (a very light air sail), then noticed a few others did too, colourful, huh? The sun set as we headed off Grand Bahama Bank into deeper water. Ahh, the water! I shall never forget the beautiful, beautiful colours of the water: Abaco Green, Sea of Abaco Turquiose, Gulf Stream Noxcema-Jar-Blue, no kidding. That night, I saw another piece of meteorite burning up alongside, then remembered that the Kennedy Space Centre is only 62 miles away...it was space junk! Saw a few freighters and three cruise ships. The Cruiseships were really something, you could see a live concert happening on the top deck, and if your eyes were too weak to make the performers out, there was live video on a gigantic screen that I could see from our cockpit! There was actually enough ship traffic to keep us "entertained all night long!
We arrived at Cape canaveral at 4am, so we stood off to make Canaveral Inlet in daylight. Had a rather exciting session of "who's on first!?" type of maneovers with one of the world-famous Disney cruise ships while drifting into the inlet channel. Oh well. It was my watch, so I got the hell out of there and I'm the wiser for it.
Some of you have heard us whine about not wanting to transit through Florida, but we take most of it back! We are rather glad to be back in civilization, with its fresh produce, wide sidewalks and enough of a population base to make for good cultural experiences. The Abacos were nice, relaxing and warm, but we did get to missing some of what we're used to.
So we took a marina, paid something like $0.65/foot at Cape Marina for the cheap wall, took a good mile walk to Customs (aka Homeland Security), cleared in in a matter of minutes, then celebrated with a fantastic lunch at a place called The Grill. I heartily recommend the catch of the day, nno matter what it is. Even if you don't like fish!!! The fish was all caught that morning by the owner. As a matter of fact, he's got a boat-cam with live feed of how the morning trawl is going, TV screen up on the outside wall of the restaurant so you know what to have for lunch latter. (?!) We liked it so much, we went back for another walk that night to catch live music. Anyone ever heard of The Horn-Dogs? Well they're great! They paired up with a talented rock trio and produced very different, but quite good bar-tunes. Imagine Guns & Roses a la trombone...
Next day, we motored up the ICW to New Smyrna, landed on the free wall (yahoo!) and stayed two days while we re-provisioned our boat stores and indulged in more walking. Gosh! It's so nice to have good, wide sidewalks! Much of the USA that we've seen so far features sidewalks wide enough for one person. We ended up waiting out a cold front there, glad we did because the wind speeds were quite high further up the ICW.
Today, I'm writing from the public library at Daytona Beach. We anchored off downtown, sort of, landed the dingy at a wee park and took a good stroll into town. It's very pleasant here, at the very beginning of tourist season. The shelves on our favorite stores are all stocked, new season of cruising guides are out, the Canada Geese are starting to make the trip North. It's funny to see them going from here to there! We also saw robins, bluejays and red-winged black-birds in the Abacos. Great fun!
Some of you have heard us whine about not wanting to transit through Florida, but we take most of it back! We are rather glad to be back in civilization, with its fresh produce, wide sidewalks and enough of a population base to make for good cultural experiences. The Abacos were nice, relaxing and warm, but we did get to missing some of what we're used to.
So we took a marina, paid something like $0.65/foot at Cape Marina for the cheap wall, took a good mile walk to Customs (aka Homeland Security), cleared in in a matter of minutes, then celebrated with a fantastic lunch at a place called The Grill. I heartily recommend the catch of the day, nno matter what it is. Even if you don't like fish!!! The fish was all caught that morning by the owner. As a matter of fact, he's got a boat-cam with live feed of how the morning trawl is going, TV screen up on the outside wall of the restaurant so you know what to have for lunch latter. (?!) We liked it so much, we went back for another walk that night to catch live music. Anyone ever heard of The Horn-Dogs? Well they're great! They paired up with a talented rock trio and produced very different, but quite good bar-tunes. Imagine Guns & Roses a la trombone...
Next day, we motored up the ICW to New Smyrna, landed on the free wall (yahoo!) and stayed two days while we re-provisioned our boat stores and indulged in more walking. Gosh! It's so nice to have good, wide sidewalks! Much of the USA that we've seen so far features sidewalks wide enough for one person. We ended up waiting out a cold front there, glad we did because the wind speeds were quite high further up the ICW.
Today, I'm writing from the public library at Daytona Beach. We anchored off downtown, sort of, landed the dingy at a wee park and took a good stroll into town. It's very pleasant here, at the very beginning of tourist season. The shelves on our favorite stores are all stocked, new season of cruising guides are out, the Canada Geese are starting to make the trip North. It's funny to see them going from here to there! We also saw robins, bluejays and red-winged black-birds in the Abacos. Great fun!
The Pictures: The Spanishy-looking ones are of St. Augustine, a town we hope to spend more time in in the fall. The Whale-like thing is a manatee, floating on it's back to catch some fish-gut-water being rinsed off a fish-cleaning station at Cape Marina. What a life! The last two piks depict US Coast Guard escorting a sub out from Canaveral Inlet (the same CG crew later inspected us, had a good time with these 20 year olds...they were astounded that anything made/born in 1952 should still exist...especially a wooden boat) and the general feel of the sport-fishing industry of Florida...these people are mad keen on deep sea fishing!
So all is well, I will post some photos the next time we get wi-fi on the boat. Be good!
So all is well, I will post some photos the next time we get wi-fi on the boat. Be good!
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