Cape Canaveral

The weather remains perfect with sunny highs about 80 and lows about 60. The landscape has changed as the ICW is now following the wide Indian River.
There are still some spectacular homes to see, but now they are surrounded by yards and trees, rather than patio, stucco, and seawall.

On either side of the channel are spoil islands. They are created over years of dredging the channel and piling up the sand (the "spoils") on either side of the channel. Eventually trees grow, an island happens, and the locals have a great place to pull up their small boats to picnic and swim.

The number of palm trees are decreasing, and the deciduous trees are getting bigger. The water is brown with little tide and the landscape is very reminiscent of the upper Mississippi back home.

Florida has a big problem with derelict boats, some communities are better at cleaning them up than others. Many we see are half or fully sunken. As I write this, we are watching an episode on Dirty Jobs on raising derelict boats in Florida. TowBoatUS has raised up and is towing out a derelict boat and explaining all the environmental restrictions they have to follow when they do it. This is the biggest abandoned boat we've seen, must've been at least 100 feet long, let's hope it doesn't sink.

We decided to watch the the Discovery space shuttle launch from Harbortown Canaveral Marina, about 10 miles as the crow flies from the launch site. At just $.75/foot for overnight dockage, it's a refreshing change from the usual Florida prices. We turned down the Canaveral Barge Canal to get to this sleepy and friendly little marina. The Barge Canal leads east to the ocean and Cape Canaveral.

Loopers Jerry and Linda (Monk's Vineyard) and GLoopers (that's short for Gold Loopers) Michael and Jana (Second Star) were at the marina when we arrived. We had met them back on the Florida panhandle at Port St. Joe. We had social hour with them and were joined by Dick and Elle (Summer Wind) and Freddie, who owns a marina on the Potomac. Freddie was in Marathon when we were there promoting his marina, and Dick and Elle were recruiting us to join MTOA (Marine Trawlers Owners Association). Here we all are sitting around the pool with the marina in the background.

We set our alarms for 6 am and went up to the flybridge for the shuttle launch this morning. At liftoff, the sky to the northeast began to glow and then up she came over the tree tops. Pretty hard to capture on film, but here it is as we saw it, a big fireball rising into the dark sky.

Most impressive was the roar and the vibration as we could feel the deck of the boat shudder beneath our feet. As the sun came up, the plume turned a pretty pink, the shuttle long gone by this time. The locals said it was one of the best launches they had seen with the clear air and the loud roar.

After all the driving we did to get here, we decided to stay another night and get a little R and R. Believe it or not, driving the boat all day is tiring, especially for Steve because he has to pay constant attention in these unfamiliar waters. Today we did the usual marina stuff that we do: laundry, a bike ride, picked up some milk, and enjoyed the pool.

There is also a restaurant on site where we ate tonight and were very impressed with the delicious food and the price. Diesel is only $2.80/gallon here, so we'll fill up tomorrow before we head back out.