June 30, 2016
We had moved Lorelei IV from Halifax Harbor Marina in
Daytona, to the Riverview Hotel Marina in New Smyrna Beach, at the beginning of
February, because we liked the beach town feel of New Smyrna better than the
big city feel of Daytona. We liked it so
well that I signed up for a second contract at Halifax Health Center, and we
bought a house in New Smyrna Beach. We
still want to travel around on the boat for at least another year or so, so we
rented the house out for now.
My second contract at Halifax ended on June 30th,
but since I was only working 3 days a week for the second contract, my
supervisor agreed to let me work the 27th-29th for my
last week. I had thought that we would
still be getting the last minute things done on June 30th, but Rob
worked hard on the boat while I was at work, so we decided to go ahead and
leave a day early.
The dock at Riverview is L-shaped, so slip 5 is in the
corner of the L, and slip 6 is in front of slip 5. We had been in slip 6, but when the sailboat behind
left at the end of March, the hotel (and marina) manager asked us to move back
to slip 5 so that they could put transient boats in slip 6 for easier docking
and departures. When we had arrived at
the marina back in February, we had been told that slip 6 was reserved
June-October, so we expected that a boat would be arriving at the beginning of
June. When it didn’t show up, the marina
staff told us that the owner had had some engine work that needed to be done
and would be coming after it was done. A
couple more weeks went by and then the boat finally arrived about a week before
we were to leave.
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| View of the Riverview Hotel Marina. Imagine that Lorelei IV, with her bow facing our, and the sailboat switch places. This gives you an idea of the close maneuvering required for our departure. |
The owner was from Orlando and said he would have the boat
moved out for us to make it easier for us, but since we were confident that we
had plenty of room to get out and were leaving at first light, we didn’t bother
him about it. Since slip 4 beside us was
empty, we got up early so that Rob could undo our lines and pull Lorelei over
into slip 4. From slip 4, I just had to
angle slightly toward the restaurant dock in order to clear the boat in slip 6,
and then Lorelei IV was back in the AICW and we were headed north!
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| Early morning departure |
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| AICW near Inlet Shores, FL, between New Smyrna Beach and Daytona |
There were 4 bridges on our route which were of any concern
with regard to whether or not we would require an opening. The Musson bridge at New Smyrna, which we had
already been through twice, always has at least 22 ft of clearance at low
steel, so we just cruised right through.
The Memorial bridge at Daytona would have been a potential to have
opened, but it is currently in the raised position, because work has started on
a new bridge with higher clearance at that location. The Main St bridge at Daytona has a typical
clearance of 22 ft with an extra 3 ft at center, so we just had to verify the
water level as we approached. Our only
required opening was the Bulow (Knox) bridge just south of Flagler, FL, since
it only has 15 ft of clearance. We
hailed the bridge tender on VHS ch 9 when we were close enough to start
thinking about reducing speed as we approached.
We were instructed that she would start to open only the east span when
we were just a bit closer, so we didn’t have to wait at all!
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| Goodbye, Daytona Beach! |
Since we had been docked since February, it took a while to
get back into the routine of cruising.
Rob squared away the fenders and lines first since we had put out extra
fenders on our starboard side just in case we had been wrong about easily
getting past the boat in slip 6 at Riverview Hotel Marina. He did engine checks more frequently at first,
then gradually lengthened them out since the various operational temperatures remained
in the expected ranges, and the engines were performing well.
Rob is good at planning our daily routes, and he generally
looks at 3 potential stops: a short
distance stop at 40-50 miles just in case we run slower than expected, a medium
distance stop of 70-80 miles which assumes we will average 7-8 mph, and a long
distance stop of around 100 miles just in case conditions are ideal and we run
faster than expected. He also looks at
the next day’s potential stops, because that might change which stop would
actually be the preferred one.
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| As we got closer to St Augustine, large tidal swings became apparent as evidenced by these long boat docks which looked tall at low tide. |
For today, Marineland (55 miles) was our short distance, St
Augustine (66.8 miles) was our medium distance, and Jacksonville (108 miles)
was our long distance. We reached St
Augustine at about 2:30 pm. Since
Jacksonville was another 40 miles, and our average speed had been around 8 mph
due to tidal effects, we would be looking at getting there around 7:30 pm if we
continued on. We also hadn’t gotten a
look at the Bridge of Lions at St Augustine with its reported clearance of 18
ft, so there was a chance that we would have an additional wait there.
We decided to go ahead and stop and pick up a mooring at the
St Augustine Municipal Marina. Since it
was fairly early, we still had time to visit the historic district which is
just across the street from the marina!
We could have waited for the free water taxi which comes around every 2
hours, but since its last run was at 6 pm, we decided to take our dinghy in
case we wanted to stay in town later.
Sasha was glad to finally get to shore! The marina has a nice grassy spot next to the
designated dog potty area, so she got to play a little Frisbee too! We walked over to the historic district and
found Mi Casa Café, a restaurant bar with outside seating for Sasha and a $2
Yuengling special for Rob. It was
threatening rain, so we sat at the bar instead of at one of the covered
tables. Sasha laid down right behind our
stools until the rain started, and then she found herself a cozy spot on the wooden
bar step in front of me.
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| Sasha sleeping on the bar step |
The people at the bar were a mix of regulars and tourists,
and we had a good time visiting with all of them, staying a bit later than we
had planned. Because of the rain, the
restaurant portion had closed early, so we found a pizza place selling New York
style pizza-by-the-slice. Since we had
Sasha with us, we ate our pizza on a bench outside, enjoying the coolness
brought by the recent rain and people-watching as other tourists passed by.
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