Captain's Choice blog: Brrrrr

After traveling from Vero Beach to Cocoa in the wind we were glad to get into the marina on Tuesday and rinse all the salt spray off the boat. The "moderate chop" had Captain's Choice covered, which in turn had me covered from bumping up against her as we were docking. This marina has a beautiful boaters lounge and outside area on the 2nd floor, if it hadn't been so windy I am sure we would have gotten some good use of the patio as the view of the ICW was great from there. We met loopers Berrlin and Barb from Satisfied Frog when Sandra and John from Compass Rose had us and Sunset Delight over. Thank you!

Boy oh boy was it cold when we ventured out on Wednesday morning...who turned on the air conditioning? Actually I heard from the dock master that "winter has arrived" and the good thing is it will only last a couple of days. It was 47 with a feel like temp of 40 degrees. We had planned on leaving Cocoa but with the winds still howling and the temps we decided to stay one more night. Out came the jeans, warm jackets and yes gloves as we went to walk the town. Cocoa is known for the Travis hardware store, it is any handyman/women's dream come true. They claim to have just about anything and everything in their 7 building complex, with some buildings having multiple levels. While Mark was perusing the aisles of the hardware store, I made my way to the cute shops in town.

Later in the day we noticed some ash in the cockpit and we couldn't figure out where it was coming from. We cleaned it up and seconds later it was back. As we watched the news we found out there was a brush fire northwest of us and because we were downwind (even though the fire was 15 miles away) the ash traveled and was landing in the boats.

Since we were so close to Cape Canaveral we were checking the schedule for rocket launches that we could view. The SpaceX Falcon 9 with it's payload of a communication satellite for television broadcasts for Brazil was scheduled to lift off Monday morning when we were in Vero. Lucky for us due to the winds it was scrubbed and scheduled for Thursday at 1:35 a.m.. We set the alarm for 1:25, checked the website and saw it was delayed until 2 a.m.. We went up to the bridge all bundled up at 2 where we saw lift off. Even from about 12 miles away we had a great view as the rocket lifted and traveled through its trajectory. We were amazed that we could hear the roar of the rocket engines considering the distance and the winds were blowing in the opposite direction. It looked like it was traveling slowly as we watched it disappear like a faint star but it reached the speed of sound 15 seconds after lift-off! What a thrill and neither of us had any trouble falling back to sleep!

Brr, brr, brr as we got up and readied the boat Thursday morning for our travels to Daytona Beach. It was a crisp 47 again but the winds have subsided a little (15 mph instead of 25). Maybe we are moving north to quickly? We are suppose to be chasing 75...degrees that is! But we have visitors we are picking up on Saturday as my sister Maureen is returning along with my sister Kathy from Phoenix. They will be with us for a week as we travel from Daytona to Jacksonville to meet up with my sister Tish and her family. Luckily it looks like winter will end on schedule and spring will bring us some warmer temperatures.