Melbourne with Friends

We arrived in Melbourne Friday around 3 and our friend Missy came to pick us up.

I think this is Cocoa Beach

The Pineda Causeway Bridge

Anyone know the difference between and Causeway and Highway?

Bright Eyes anchored just outside the Eau Gallie Bridge

We dinghyed into Ballard Park, down the very scenic Eau Gallie River 

All off the stuff we brought ashore.  The dinghy deflates nicely and fits into a car trunk

The weekend was a mixture of running errands, getting paperwork done, and hanging out with Missy and Josh.  It's always a good time seeing them and we are appreciative that we could stay with them so long.

Missy and Christine

One of our errands was the final stage of provisioning.  We went to Super Walmart and had to carry $300 worth of groceries onto the boat, mostly canned goods!  Christine has been doing a great job of keeping track of all the food we have available.

We also got our Sunnys BBQ!

Our dinghy engine, named Black Betty, began having some trouble running because oil had leaked while it was stored on its side.  We had  to make a run to the store to buy oil so it would start and then had to run it for a awhile to get all the leaked oil out.  We also cleaned the spark plug and soon the dinghy engine, was running fine again. Or so we thought...

During one of the trips to the boat, I went alone while Christine ran to get us lunch.  I made it to the boat fine and dropped off groceries and threw in two bags of blankets we would be storing at Josh and Missys.  After I started up the dingy engine and let go of the boat the engine decided it wouldn't go past the "Restart" icon.  When I tried to give it more gas it just died.  The current was pretty strong as was the wind and after I restarted the engine I looked up and saw I was already a good 50 away from the boat going down the river toward the bridge.  The engine wasn't strong enough in the restart position to fight the current so I continued away from the boat more, I gave it gas and it died again. I restarted it, looked up and Bright Eyes was getting smaller.  O crap!  Of course the oars were left back at the house, my cell phone got ruined days ago, and i didn't have a vhf or anchor.

This pic was taken at a different time but I was floating on the other side of our boat between the boat and the bridge, closer to the bridge.

I eyed up the bridge in case I had to grab onto it but the engine was giving me just enough power to move northwest back toward land, as long as I kept the strong wind from blowing my bow around.  I eventually made it to another anchored boat between our boat and the bridge and tied off to it. There was no one aboard so I took that time to try to fix the engine, luckily I had kept the adjustable pliers in my pocket.  But to no avail after doing all the same troubleshooting as before it would not allow me to increase the throttle.

I decided I could make it to the land part of the bridge and from there I could just walk back.  I was worried about Christine and what she must be thinking when I was no where to be seen.  I was also hoping she'd be waiting at the bridge for me.  As I got closer to the bridge the waves calmed down and I was able to get really close to the west shore.  From there I could push past the surf and I eventually made it back around the corner to our dinghy landing in Ballard Park.  As I rounded the corned I saw Christine and we waved and it was a relief.

She watched me slowly fight the current and make my way back into safety.  She greeted me with a hug and kiss and McDonalds!  

Turns out she had seen me attempt to leave Bright Eyes in the dinghy and then drift outward.  Within a minute I was out of sight around the corner up river.  She knew I didn't have oars and the engine could be giving me trouble so she quickly called towboat to come rescue me!  Tow Boat tried giving her grief because she couldn't see me but she gave them the distressed/angry wife voice and they agreed to come.  But of course Tow Boat takes forever and in 45 minutes I had gotten back to land on my own so she called to cancel them. It was nice to know though that she had planned to save me :)

When we got back we took the dinghy engine to a shop and they said some oil had drained into the carborator and water had gotten into the fuel tank so there was a lot of grim to clean out.  It was worth the money to have a solid working engine again.  Our dinghy is the equivalent to the family car, so it's gotta be ready to roll!

Wednesday we said our goodbyes and went back to the boat to unpack all our provisions.  It was too late to leave that day so instead we dinghyed back to shore and brought our folding bikes.  We biked to Incredible Pets!  We heard they had monkeys and other cool animals so we really wanted to go.

They had really cool Cotton Headed Tamarins but we didn't get a pic, this is courtesy of Google

The rest of the pics we took

This bird said Bye Bye while the bird in the next cage said Hello

Sleeping Ferrets, awww

I think this was some kind of sloth

They had tons of snakes, all sizes

They said this tortoise will live to be 120 years old. It was huge

Frisky lizards

This was a spotted shark

Thursday we finally started moving again.  Only 4 more days till Miami!!!

Daytona Beach Has Baby Alligators

We finally left beautiful St Augustine Wednesday morning.  The trip to Daytona was pretty relaxed.  See

We found an anchorage and dinghied to the mainland side.  There was a really nice skate park which was fun to watch and then we walked downtown to the West Marine.  We are having drive shaft trouble again and need the correct bolts still.  Unfortunately West Marine couldn't help us.

The night was still young so we ventured over to the ocean side.  There was no public dinghy landing so we just pulled up to a vacant house for sale and asked the neighbors if then minded us crossing through the yard.  We walked by a really big and cool looking putt putt golf place.  It was too expensive for us but they had live baby alligators!  

A lot of them!

There were also turtles and fish living in there and we couldn't understand why the alligators weren't eating them all.

Next we walked the beach. It was dark tho and we stepped on a few dead jelly fish.

I bought some water shoes at the store and we saw really cute baby turtles.

That night the wind was blowing so hard that I kept getting up to make sure our anchor wasn't dragging.  While I was doing that I witnessed another boat trying to go up wind and getting pushed back into another boat.  There wasn't any damage but it was still scary with so many boats anchored together.  I finally just brought our hand held Garmin to bed with us so that I could periodically check it to see if we were drifting.

I love these diving birds

Thursday we woke without dragging one inch.  I love our over sized anchor.  We made it to Titusville and went to shore to look for parts but ended up just getting groceries.  We were wearing raggedy clothes and borrowed a shopping cart from Save-A-Lot to push our groceries down the street.  We looked and felt like real bums and couldn't help laughing at each other.

Friday we woke up to a thick fog.  Visibility was less than 1000 feet at some points.  Which was really scary when we had bridges to open.  We were talking to the bridge operator and requesting an opening before we could even see the bridge.  Then the bridge would just appear in front of us and start opening.  

The fog was gone by noon though and we tossed the anchor over behind the Eau Gallie Bridge in Melbourne around 3.  Mile Marker 914.

We will be staying at our good friends Josh and Missy's house in Melbourne for the next few days to get some rest and paperwork done like taxes.  Also it will be fun hanging out with them and getting some Sunny's BBQ!

St Augustine and the Atlantic

By the time we pulled up the anchor and fueled up in Fernandina Beach Sunday morning we were already sweating and quickly changed into summer clothes!  We had to brush the dust off our shorts and t-shirts but were so happy we have beat the cold!

We also decided to start using our single piece of exercise equipment, the Shake Weight.  It's hard and makes us look silly but its better than nothing.

The Independence 2

Most Awesome Ship Ever

Gettin fancy in the kitchen. Christine made our favorite, Green Bean Casserole.  We don't have an oven but the rice cooker is very versatile

Under our new short days rule we anchored just before Jacksonville.  We ran aground once and not much else exciting there. We made it to St Augustine Monday and could see the Atlantic coming into the city.  Mile Marker 778

We anchored and quickly went into town.  It cost us $10 to land our dinghy which we weren't happy about but it was worth it as the city was full of shops and fun to walk around.

We found a happy hour that sold us 4 beers and 2 slices of pizza for $1!  We ended up also buying a whole pizza but it was still a good deal.  There were a lot of ice cream shops, art galleries, and Cuban stores.  We ended up getting a bottle of hot sauce as our souvenir.

 We awoke Tuesday and decided to stay put.  We relaxed in the morning and went for a dinghy ride in the afternoon.  But not just any dinghy ride, a dinghy ride to the Atlantic Ocean!  As in the pic earlier we could see the Atlantic Ocean on our way in, and since St Augustine was inland we still wanted to go to a beach.  So we decided we would dinghy around the corner through a piece of the Atlantic Ocean to the front of the beach of the Anastasia State Park.

The water got choppier the further we went but it was never too bad and soon we were behind the real waves on our way to the beach.  The waves were only a couple feet and we rode one in all the way to shore. We pulled up the dinghy engine and beached Sawyer.  There wasn't much on this island, just sand, shells, dunes, and one disgruntled metal detector dude but it was still fun to have to beach under our feet.

Soon we had to get back before it got too dark and we noticed the tide came in and was trying to take Sawyer out to sea.  We ran as fast as we could back to the dinghy before it left without us.  Then the hard part, getting back out past the waves!  It took us a couple tries of getting knocked down by the waves and after we gave up trying to stay dry we ran the dinghy out into deeper water, started it up, hopped in and jetted off over the waves.  Luckily we keep a hand held bilge pump in the dinghy cuz the waves had put a lot of water in with us.  We took turns driving and pumping out water until we were back to our harbor. 

My cell phone got wet and no longer works but we were turning them off in a week anyway so it wasn't too big of a loss.

We passed this really cool sailboat on the way back in

As we approached our boat we ran into familiar faces,  Hans and Laura aboard Knotty Cat had just anchored!  We were a little embarrassed to be soaking wet from our recent Atlantic crossing but still stopped by to say hello.  We were leaving in the morning though so we went back to the boat for an early night.

We also met a personal milestone, we now have 1500 miles of sailing experience in our career.  We are still noobs tho.

Interview With A Cruiser, Newly Salted

Another cruiser, Livia, created this really cool site that interviews other cruisers: http://interviewwithacruiser.blogspot.com/

Then she started a second site that interviews new cruisers.  We were asked to participate and were glad to put in our two cents.  Here we are!
 http://newlysalted.blogspot.com/2011/02/bright-eyes-at-1-month.html