Just Slogging South through Daytona Beach.

Weather was not so bad after all. The potential was there for terrible weather yesterday – looked like we were going from 87 to 47 degrees in about 5 hours!! Severe thunderstorms were predicted and the sky was threatening. Well the evening was pleasant with only 5 kts of wind in the morning. The temp was 47 degrees too.

No strong winds expected today or tonight so we pushed off about 8am and headed south. It is just a long slow passage to and from and across Daytona. Lots of beautiful homes and a lot of not so nice scenery. There are only 2 good anchorages after Daytona until you hit two marginal anchorages in the mosquito lagoon before Titusville. We hit the first anchorage at Rockhouse Creek just before New Smyrna. Luckily there were no boats there yet so I took the sweet spot – very rarely I get to do that but then again it was only 2:15pm. About an hour later 3 boats came in then another and another. The last was a Trawler from CT and surprisingly?? I don’t think so – he took the most inappropriate spot being too close to us and another boat. I got my air horn out. I won’t complain now but in the wee hours if he is too close – look out!!

The day was filled with anxiety. When we hit the Main Street bridge in Daytona he told us he could only lift one span. So look at the picture and imaging heading through with one span completely horizontal -- very anxious – sorry we didn’t get a picture of that but my hands were full!!

Then there was the Ponce DeLeon Inlet junction. Skipper Bob was full of warnings about this area and we were heading through at 2 hours before low tide – not good. I had also read that some cruisers reported a dredge there back in April -- well that was the case. Even though the floating can buoys looked pretty Mickey Mouse they identified a channel that had at least 14 feet of water all the way.. Use the Intracoastal path and not the inlet pass.



Tomorrow we will head to Titusville for a day or two. Depends on the predicted strength of the next cold front due here Tuesday.

Enjoy the pics of the anchorage here before and after the “invasion”.