It's Florida, it must be warm....
by SV Crystal Blues 17 Dec 2017 03:27 UTC
The intra-coastal waterway at Titusville © Crystal Blues Digital
Chasing the sun, chasing the sun, still chasing the sun...
Rather than face the shallow depths and low bridges of the Intra-Coastal Waterway (ICW), we went to sea again at St. Augustine and struck south for Port Canaveral, seeking warmer weather again. This time we succeeded.
After an easy overnight passage we entered though an opening (bascule) bridge and the Port Canaveral Lock, to find ourselves back on the ICW. Great, now we have never more than 1.5 meters under the keel, usually less than 1 meter, for hours on end. We eased through the Canaveral Barge Canal heading due west, with a 1/2 meter under us crossing the Banana River, then turned north on the true ICW. We waited at the NASA causeway bridge for over an hour to respect the peak hour traffic and then moved the final 5 nautical miles north to Titusville, home to various odd sun worshipers, retirees, cruising sailors and astronauts.
Just off Titusville we anchored with half a meter under the keel, just off the ICW channel. Really not a lot of water to play with here, for a boat with a 2.1 meter draft, though the tidal rise and fall is only 10cm on each cycle. Finally it was warmer - we no longer needed four layers of clothing, just two would suffice. We enjoyed breakfast in the cockpit, for the first time in months. The birdlife was fantastic. Life was returning to normal.
This afternoon, just two nights later, we came out to sea again by the same route, and we're headed further south for West Palm Beach (Lake Worth Inlet), about 100 nautical miles south.
This article has been provided by the courtesy of SV Crystal Blues.