Southbound 2020 – #18: Daytona Beach, FL to Titusville, FL

By RobinNovember 10, 2020 ( 3 )

Travel Summary

Conditions: Partly cloudy and muggy with some downpours, 73° to start, Clouds and Sun, 80° to finish. East winds 15-20 kts, choppy on the ICW

Distance traveled: 42.4 nautical miles

Time underway: 6 hours 22 minutes

Average Speed: 6.7 kts

Max Speed: 8.9 kts

We stayed in Daytona Beach from Thursday, Nov. 5 until today, Tuesday, Nov. 10.

The original plan was to leave Daytona on Friday morning. We almost left, however, the Captains had a meeting that morning and were not especially in agreement, apparently one was in a hurry (he has a family event that he didn’t want to miss) and the other was a little concerned over the weather that was upcoming. The weather on Friday wasn’t really that bad, but the next few days showed Hurricane/Tropical Depression/Tropical Storm Eta causing trouble and we weren’t exactly sure if we would have a place to tie up in case of decreasing weather conditions. In boating, having a fixed schedule isn’t really a good thing. One of the captains found a marina in Titusville that would take us on their fuel dock but we had to come in late so as not to block the fuel dock for other boaters wanting fuel and then we had to leave the dock first thing in the morning. Since the forecast was not looking good, if something went wrong, we would have had to hang out on their fuel dock for a few days.

Another captains meeting, and a conversation with the dockmaster in Titusville (who advised us that being on his fuel dock with the winds that were forecast would not be a good idea), he suggested we stay right where we were for now. The dockmaster at Daytona said we could stay as long as we needed. Since Eta’s path had been unpredictable from the start, the prudent decision was made to stay put and not move further south.

Fortunately for us, we had the bikes and Daytona was a cool little town to explore.

We have also enjoyed the restaurants, Caribbean Jack’s Restaurant, McK’s Irish Tavern, Ronin Sushi, and Halifax River Yacht Club. (A great place to stop if you belong to another Yacht Club. Their hospitality was exceptional.)

We got to relax in the sun for a bit on the dock and enjoyed the comings and goings on the water. Paid a visit to Favorite Child who was docked at the yacht club, and got caught in one of the downpours!

John worked on his ever-growing boat maintenance/repair list. One being, the 15-kw generator that hasn’t wanted to stay running, thought it was the impeller, which partly it was, so that was replaced. Now it appears as though the mechanical seal is bad and we’ll have to rebuild the pump when we get to Vero (If we ever make it, lol. John said it felt like ground hog day! Every day he checked the weather, the winds seemed to show a good day kept being pushed three days out.)

Sunday night was a rough night sleeping, or not sleeping, the winds from Eta howled (25-30 kts with gusts to 45 kts), the rain poured and the waves bounced us a bit, we had lots of lines and fenders out but it was still a bit nerve-racking. Monday’s weather was the same as Sunday night. (Ground hog day!) We hung out on the boat!

There were actually three sailboats and a trawler, we could see from our boat, that were anchored out during the worst of the storm. I am not sure I would have handled that well, I prefer the comfort of being tied to a dock.

So, here we are Tuesday, the winds are much more favorable so southward we go! We left Suntex Daytona Beach Marina at about 9:30 am heading for the Titusville Marina fuel dock.

The going today was very slow, some shallow spots, downpours, and getting caught behind a trawler that was much slower than us, if you can believe that!

Today was the first time we saw pelicans, and we saw a lot of dolphins and even managed to get a picture.