Honest John's to Cocoa

This blog will chronicle our (Pat and Patty Anderson's) 

cruising adventures on the Great Loop!

DAY 7 - April 7, 2017

The wind was blowing pretty good and there were whitecaps out on the ICW, so we decided to stay put at Honest John's Fish Camp for another day! With a free dock, electricity, WiFi, water and good company, we were not in a hurry to leave anyway! Jonathan lent us his car and we drove to the Publix Supermarket up A1A. Since it was noon, we had a truly mediocre lunch at the China Wok in the same little strip mall as Publix. then did our grocery shopping. Since we had come that far, we went on to Melbourne Beach to both the Walmart and the Lowes in search of a small air conditioner that would run on a 1000 watt generator. No joy.

In the afternoon we enjoyed watching the manatees and dolphins - the water is so shallow in Mullet Creek that the dolphins don't actually jump, but they do break the surface, and it is fun watching them. Jonathan noted the manatees going like wildfire after a sow, and, well, it appears that the species will go on!

In the late afternoon and early evening, we sat on the dock with Jonathan, his brother Robert, their friend Dan and another friend, Amy who is an award winning 6th grade math teacher, and there was a lot of interesting conversation. We then had dinner, reviewed our C-Brat friends' recommendations on the C-Brat website for an air conditioner, did a little internet research, and decided on the air conditioner to buy. We also did a bit of planning for stops between Honest John's and St. Augustine. We figured we would take four days to get to St. Augustine, and decided the first stop would be Cocoa, the second would be New Smyrna Beach and the third would be TBD, but with the final run to St Augustine on the 11th. We had a plan!

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No miles!

DAY 8 - April 8, 2017

New Hat!

The morning was calm and beautiful, and it was clearly time to move on! We had breakfast, and I bought a bag of ice and my new Honest John's Fish Camp hat, which will be my official Great Loop hat! We made our reservations for St. Augustine Municipal Marina for April 11 and 12, confirmed that we could have our Amazon purchase sent to us at the marina, and ordered the air conditioner. Then we said our thank yous and goodbyes and cast off our lines! We gingerly made our way out of Mullet Creek from Honest John's to the ICW , threading the needle between the end of Grant Farm Island and a sand bar, all without grounding. We are getting to be old hands at running with the Honda 150 raised in 2.2 feet of water!

Our cruise was very pleasant on the ICW. A passing boat noticed our AGLCA burgee and hailed us as "fellow Loopers" on her radio communication advising us of her intention to pass us. We slowed down, she passed, and and we felt like we were really in the swing of things! We had wondered what happened when the numbers on the red and green markers went to zero. The answer is, they re-start a way down the line with higher numbers. But an odd thing happened too. The ICW channel, which had been clearly marked on both Coastal Explorer on the navigation laptop and Garnin Blue Chart on the iPad just disappeared, and was replaced by a line. My guess is that the ICW was wide and deep enough at that point not to need a strictly defined channel, but that is just a guess. Pretty soon the channel reappeared on our electronic charts. We are using autopilot quite a bit on the long straight stretches!

We were in Cocoa soon enough, and early enough in the day to look at the various options. One option was on the south side of the big bridge on the mainland side, which is Cocoa Village, where there is a free dock and a county park to land Baxter. The other option is on the north side of the bridge on the Merritt Island side, where there is another park. The north side option did not look very good for landing Baxter, so we went back to the south side. The free dock was full, and is limited to four hours anyway, so we decided to anchor as close as we could, but we could not find where we were supposed to land. About this time, we received a call from Flint and Leslie Firestone, who told us that, unfortunately, they were not going to be able to cruise with us this year. They did, however, explain to us where we were supposed to land, which is a boat ramp completely invisible from the water side until you know where it is and get in very close! This is in the Wenner County Park, where it is easy to land and walk to Cocoa Village.

We got anchored, I put the seats in the kayak and the skeg on, and we dropped the Sea Eagle in the water. We are still learning this puppy, but managed to get both of us and Baxter in without going swimming! It really is very stable, but it takes experience to have confidence in that! The skeg really helps! We paddled to the boat ramp at the the county park, pulled the kayak up on the grass, and walked into Cocoa Village. Cocoa Village is an interesting little place where it seems every other storefront is a pub! We headed to the ice cream parlor and sat on the benches outside in the sunshine with all the other customers eating ice cream!

After we got back on the boat, Patty outdid herself with dinner. It was sweet potato - garlic enchiladas with mole sauce, inspired by Bellingham's Boundary Bay Brewery's sweet potato enchiladas. It was just outstanding, We do not do too badly in the culinary department on this little boat!

The run from Honest John's to Cocoa was an easy 30 miles. Tomorrow the run to New Smyrna Beach is more like 50 miles. I made coffee tonight and put it in the thermos to help us save some time to get a fairly early start. That leaves 70 miles to St. Augustine, which we will split into two days, but tonight, we just don't know where we will split it!