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The Southward Migration

More and more we are spending the day traveling with other cruising boats.  A couple of days after St. Augustine, we shared an anchorage with 3 others, then met up with 10 more boats on our way to a bridge opening!

We were able to sail the whole way from St. Augustine, FL to Cocoa, FL.  Our only problem was a bridge at Haulover Canal.  We picked up on the radio that the bridge was having a mechanical problem and was closed.  It is located on an open stretch and there were heavy winds.  The Coast Guard said it would be a few hours.  We anchored.  Five minutes later the Bridge Tender came on the radio and said she was going to open it in 3 minutes because there were so many boats waiting and her mechanic wasn’t going to be there for a while.  (So apparently it was a pedestrian gate motor problem).  We hauled up anchor as quickly as possible and barely made the bridge.  Boats who had turned away to go back went as fast as they could to make the opening.  We went through, hearing another Coast Guard notice that the bridge was closed.  About 15 minutes later she opened the bridge again.  We hope this communication error didn’t cause problems for anyone because turning back meant miles to a good anchorage!

The past few days the weather has warmed up and we are in mangroves now.

We tied up to the public dock in Cocoa, FL and they were having a craft fair.  It was pretty typical crafty stuff.  For dinner we had some curly fries and burgers!

Now that we are close to our “jumping off point” of Peanut Island, FL we have been working on our provisioning.  We have about 300 cans of food onboard.  All cans are labeled with sharpie and paper taken off to prevent bugs. 

My favorite essential is Tomato Paste because I can make pasta sauce with it by adding olive oil and spices, and pizza sauce by adding water and spices.   My biggest disappointment were two cans of Manwich I bought.  It is a sauce, not ground beef mixture—probably every one else knew that, lol.

We are anchored south of Cocoa Beach nearby lots of grocery stores. The boat is getting crammed full of food and supplies as everything will be more expensive in the islands. We are also catching up on some projects while we wait here to see Grant’s Aunt and our friends Kelly and Joe! Today, in the warm, sunny 78 degree weather we took hot sunshowers in the cockpit of our tiny sailboat, enjoying the same view as the multi-million dollar houses as dolphin fished all around the boat.