9/21/15: Daytona Beach Anchorage – Melbourne Beach Anchorage – 76.5 NM

It was another beautiful day on the Florida ICW. We anchored at a new (for us) spot at the Melbourne bridge just north of the Melbourne City Marina.

When we pulled in there was a guy & girl operating a Flyboard. It was great entertainment:

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

 A Flyboard is a type of water jetpack attached to a personal water craft (PWC) which supplies propulsion to drive the Flyboard through air and water to perform a sport known as flyboarding. A Flyboard rider stands on a board connected by a long hose to a watercraft. Water is forced under pressure to a pair of boots with jet nozzles underneath which provide thrust for the rider to fly up to 15 m (49 ft) in the air or to dive headlong through the water down to 2.5 m (8 ft).

The next morning we pulled anchor at sunrise to continue south.

9/20/15: Beach Marina, Jacksonville Beach, Fl – Daytona Beach Anchorage = 72.3 NM

When we left Green Cove on Tuesday 9/15 the weather looked good. Two hours into our trip the wind picked up to around 15- 20 Knots and there were a few rain showers. Our plans to anchor out at St. Augustine changed to docking at Beach Marina, Jacksonville Beach, Fl.  The weather prediction went from bad to worse keeping us at the dock for 5 days.

On Sunday 9/20 the weather had cleared and we threw off the dock lines. We don’t typically like to travel on the weekends because of local boat traffic but forged ahead.

Apparently it was ‘take your dog out on the water day’.

Two dogs - I hope they can swin

Dog on Paddleboard 

Just a man and his dog fishing.

We made it a long day and continued onto our favorite anchorage in Daytona Beach. All in all the day turned out to be a great day on the water.

The anchorage served both a beautiful sunset and sunrise.

Sunset at Daytona Beach Anchorage

Sunrise at Daytona Beach Anchorage

Tomorrow we will continue south. 

9/15/15: Green Cove Springs, Fl – Beach Marina, Jacksonville, Fl.  48 NM

This morning we threw off the dock lines and are headed south. We will miss our home port of Green Cove Springs but the water calls us.

We first arrived at Green Cove on May 14 with intentions of spending only a few days then heading north to North Carolina.  But as the saying goes “Boat plans are written in sand.”  We had some work done at Holland Marina in Green Cove and when it was done we just never got a good extended weather forecast.  So we opted to stay and play some on the St. Johns River. Tricia & Hobby aboard Kristin Noelle joined us & we cruised all the way down the St. Johns to Sanford enjoying every minute of quiet anchorages and smooth waters.

Of course we pulled back into Tom Holland Marina to get a few more things done. After close inspection we decided to replace out motor mounts and our house batteries. Ouch to the pocket but necessary.

This is 4 of the 6 new batteries we installed.

New motor mounts.

 A big shout-out to Tom Holland Marina for always providing excellent service at a reasonable price. Again his crew fixed all our problems that other marinas either just flat out failed to fix or made worse. Sure wish he had a 2nd Marina on the west coast of Florida.