ICW #7

We left St. Augustine Wed. Dec. 5th under sunny skies. This time I was determined we would not shoal. I kept my eyes glued to the charts and depths, reporting everything religiously to Vince and trusting he’d keep us on course. When we reached the marker where we had come to grief many days before, I was especially vigilant. But we still had to be very careful as the depths reported on the chart were much deeper than those that we were actually experiencing and the towboat operators had warned us of another area of shoaling just south of New Smyrna Beach. As we approached this trouble spot, slowing down and wondering what side of the channel to favour in order to avoid it, the decision was made for us. A fast powerboat flying down the waterway, careened by, turned, and slammed into the muddy shoal just a short distance away! Surely he suffered whiplash! Smiling with perverse satisfaction as his engines churned the water around him into chocolatey muck, I marvelled at retributive justice and this little bit of “luck” for us. Had he not selfishly plowed past, mindless of his choppy wake, it would be “we” and not “he” struggling to dislodge ourselves from the mud. This time at least, the gods were with us and we were able to safely motor around the now brown section of the channel that marked the shoal.

After that it was smooth sailing for the rest of the day through some particularly beautiful stretches of water. Here the ICW passes through a seemingly endless expanse of wide open water as it approaches the Haulover Bridge and Canal—a security zone used to ship equipment to the Nasa launch site. The day we were there the water was smooth as glass. A string of little islands had been formed when dredging was done to create this section of the waterway and they beckoned beguilingly to us with swaying palms and sandy beaches as we passed them by. Looking southward, just visible through a misty haze, we could see the huge Nasa complex and the space shuttle itself looming like a mirage on the horizon. As luck would have it, a launch had been scheduled for later in the day and we eagerly anticipated seeing it.

The night before, anchored out at Daytona, we had wondered why there were only a few boats here when there should’ve been many dozens. It was only after plotting our course later that evening and reading: “The Haulover Bridge is closed for three hours prior to a space launch.” that we put “two and two” together and realized that everyone had moved on to Titusville to secure the best possible anchorage from which to view the “shot”. Now we were here too! We pulled into the Harbour Basin and joined the collection of colourful transient boats bobbing in the water. Everyone tuned in to Channel 16 to listen to the Nasa updates. Suddenly we were informed that due to some unforeseen malfunction, the launch was being postponed—possibly for two days! Initially we felt a little down and disappointed, but that feeling quickly dissipated as, looking around us, we began to recognize many of the boats and friends we thought we had lost after spending so many days in St. Augustine. “Lorca” was lying at anchor not too far away and soon Steve was waving to us from his dinghy, looking more brown and disheveled than usual. We later learned that he too had experienced engine trouble outside St. Augustine but had also managed to catch up with the convoy. Betsy and Tom were here, along with “Hestia” and “Sojourn”. And when I spotted “Makai,” our old boat-buddy from Georgia, I was soon on the cell phone, talking to Eva, telling her all about the haul-out and catching up on their adventures. The next day the little group broke up once again. Some cruisers on no fixed agenda, chose to stay behind and wait for the launch. But we pushed on, heading further southward towards our eventual destination.