Cocoa to Titusville to New Smyrna Beach

Day #179; Loop Miles to Date = 2,150

OK...so when we last left you, we were deciding whether or not we were going to tour the Space Center on this trip or the next...and we decided to save this for the next time. There is a launch scheduled for this Friday the 8th, but we just couldn't convince ourselves to hang around Titusville waiting for it. So, we decided to press on...spending one night in Titusville (not much going on here near the marina) and then heading up the coast to New Smyrna Beach.

The trip from Cocoa to Titusville was breezy and quite choppy...the windshield wipers got a good workout as we were taking spray over the bow with regularity. But, it was a fairly short trip, so all in all, not so bad. The trip from Titusville to NSB was gentler, but slower. About a third of the trip was at slow speed due to a large population of manatees in the area. We did see a handful, but only one that we really had to dodge.

Manatees are really not usually very photogenic...much like you see here. This is about all you see most times...looks a bit like a rock doesn't it?

 

And then every so often, they come up for a quick breath of air and you see this. It is hard to tell from these pictures, but these things are huge...500- 600 lbs.

We found New Smyrna Beach City Marina to be VERY friendly, and really a nice stop. This is the smallest marina we have visited since way back on the Tenn-Tom, but we've really enjoyed it. The town is small, but nice...a couple of good restaurants and shops. And the beach part of town is also very "Florida" in a good beach town kind of way. We took an afternoon and grabbed a cab over to the beach and walked around for awhile and had a bite to eat. We forgot to take pictures, but the beach is much like Daytona...they allow cars to drive on the beach and park for the day. The sand is really hard packed, and the beach is quite large as you might imagine.

Random picture from our travel the past few days:

We decided that this guy was anchored here for the long haul. There were 3 dinghies and about 8 different anchor lines out. Interesting...

And now a shot that we forgot to include in an earlier installment...here is Jenny posing for the obligatory photo in our cockpit...from our visit with her in Coconut Grove!