Some unexpected sights

On this trip down and up the coast, I didn't see many of the things I expected to see, but I'm also seeing many things I didn't expect to see. I didn't see little remote cays in the Bahamas with sandy beaches, but so what. I did see a Titan submarine near the Florida-Georgia line, I saw the sun rise over the Atlantic and set over the Gulf of Mexico in the same day, and today, to add to the list of unexpected sights, we saw a Delta 4 rocket take off at Cape Canaveral.

I apologize if that seemed to come a little out of the blue. I failed to mention in my post yesterday that Titusville is just across the Indian River from Cape Canaveral. Many of you might have known that already, but to me the many cities along Florida's east coast just form one major urban conglomeration, so I only knew of Cape Canaveral, and was oblivious to what cities were nearby.

We knew about the launch yesterday, which was when it was originally scheduled, but it was postponed to today due to stormy weather. Yesterday's storm was, by the way, quite a storm by my reckoning, quite a show in itself. But when we didn't know the launch would be rescheduled for today we were kind of disappointed to hear of the postponement, because we thought we would miss the launch altogether.  "How hard can it be", Captain Ken said, "to conduct a launch in a thunderstorm? It's not like it's rocket science."

After the storm, God's promise appeared in the sky and never do I think I saw such a strongly defined rainbow. If a pot of gold could be found at the end of rainbows, I might have been convinced to go journey to the end of this one since its bottom was so clear to see from where I stood.

Then, after a boisterous night with trains passing through Titusville every few hours, we spent some hours getting provisions at Publix, and then adjusting the lines on the boat to keep it from hitting the wooden sidings on the dock. Afterwards, we were ready to see the launch.


 We took a walk to the bridge where we could get the best view. There were people all around, even some people partying at a live concert at the foot of the bridge. A beautiful sunset on the side opposite of Cape Canaveral, and a full moon right above the base, added to the ethereal atmosphere of the whole celestial show tonight.

Sunset over Titusville with boats anchored on the Indian River

Cape Canaveral to the north and the full moon to the south

Video of launch:

So we cruised the waterway expecting to experience the adventures and thrills of life on the sea, and here we are watching rockets take off into the sky. So goes life. You expect one thing and it doesn't happen, but the things that do happen wind up being even more phenomenal, coincidental and serendipitous. What are the odds that we just happened to be in Titusville the night of a launch? The timing for us was very providential, but perhaps just as provident, and appropriate, was the fact that this Delta rocket kicked off, or I should say launched off, Memorial Day weekend. What better way to salute our veterans than by watching a massive piece of American ingenuity light up the sky? Not to mention, the rocket was bringing into space a military satellite, and one for Boeing.

So after another long day, we're hitting the sack and then getting up at "0 dark hundred" as Captain Ken said, to travel about 80 miles to Factory Creek. From there we'll go to St. Augustine, then Cumberland Island, then Jekyll Sound, Vernon View, Upper Rock Creek, Charleston, Minim Creek and finally North Myrtle Beach. Or at least that is what's planned, although as you can see what actually happens on this trip is often far from what was planned.

Florida mixed with rare treats and troubles

The state of Florida is beautiful, especially the coast. That's why so many people live here. That's also why they have so many restrictions on the waterway. There are no wake zones within no wake zones. There are private communities that create their own waterways off of the ICW, which are perfect places to anchor, but transients aren't allowed to anchor there, and the ICW needs dredging in numerous places. Today we often encountered five feet of water under our boat, which draws about three feet and ten inches.

Despite these obstacles though, we traveled 95 miles today, the farthest we've traveled yet in one day. We passed Daytona Beach and Cape Canaveral, but could't catch a glimpse of the speedway and only saw the NASA assembly building from a far off distance. Our departure point today was a small creek called Factory Creek that we got lucky finding right beside a Sea Ray factory in between St. Augustine and Palm Coast. Tomorrow we should reach Palm Shores and the next day we should come to Palm Beach. A few days back we passed Isle of Palms. Getting these towns mixed up has been common for us.

While anchored in Factory Creek we had no Internet signal from our phone's hotspots, which was strange because it was in the middle of  suburban area. We left that anchorage at sunrise and cruised down the waterway to about five or ten miles south of Cocoa, which is historically the birthplace of surfing in the U.S. That kind of follows a trend because we also passed the birthplaces of auto racing in Daytona Beach, and of the U.S. space program in Cape Canaveral, and yesterday we passed the first city established in the U.S. when passing St. Augustine.

It was tough finding an anchorage tonight because our route ended on the Indian River, which is long and wide and has just about no tributaries or creeks running off it. We're now anchored on the east side of the mile-wide river, about 200 yards from the shore, where peacocks have been screaming all evening. It's not annoying though. We've encountered plenty of terns, pelicans and cormorants, and even a few ospreys, egrets, and blue herons, but this is the first encounter we've had with peacocks on the trip.