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July 25, 2005
N28.3 W80.4 Cape Canaveral, Florida
We left Ft. Lauderdale a couple of days ago. Anchored in Ft. Pierce. We met a couple in a cool beach bar in Georgetown, Bahamas. The bar is basically a hut on the beach, and the only way to get to it is by boat, so everyone arrives in bathing suits and bare feet. You can order anything to eat, as long as it’s a fish burger. Anyway, we sit down at the bar and the guy next to Chis says, “what are you drinking” and orders me a beer. Super friendly. His wife is chatty, and seems to know everyone in the bar, even though they had just arrived. Both are in their late 40s/early 50s, over weight, comfortable in their skin, and happy with life. Here’s the funny part: he works at a nuclear power plant in Ft. Pierce. AND they just moved back into their house, as it was destroyed by a hurricane 8 months ago.
When the hurricane hit, she woke up because water was dripping from the ceiling on to her head, in bed. She told her husband that they had better get up, and he said, “honey, just cuddle up closer to me; my side of the bed is dry.” Luckily, she said, they had a place to move into—her father’s house, vacant because he had just died. How convenient. They were characters in a movie. Very Homer Simpson.
As we sail north, out of hurricane alley, we are quite limited by the depth of our keel, which is 7 ft. 3 in. deep. We decided that, because the timing is right, we should try to be in Cape Canaveral for the launch of the space shuttle. It just so happens that the ONLY place that we can stay over night between Ft. Lauderdale and Cape Canaveral, is Ft. Pierce. Homer Simpson town. Because of our depth, we had to anchor just outside the Coast Guard station, just outside the channel. We felt very out of place.
Ft. Pierce is a mélange of residential block housing and industrial industry with the added attraction of nuclear power generation. And the water is the colour of tea to boot.
Needless to say, we slept lightly.
We lifted anchor at 6:30 AM the next day, and motor sailed north, into northerly winds and swells. Very unusual weather. After 12 hours, we arrived at Cape Canaveral, where we were instructed by the harbour pilot to wait (in the 30 knot winds and northerly swells, next to a HUGE tug pushing a HUGE fuel barge, next to rust bucket barge, next to a HUGE dredger. Oh ya, and the marina where we had a reservation, would not answer our calls on the radio.
After 3 cruise ships departed, we were allowed to enter the harbour. We have since learned that, since Sept. 11th, boat traffic is strictly controlled, due to the cruise ships, commercial trade, and naval operations.
As you can imagine, Platina is too long and too deep to easily fit into the marina, so we are at the end of the fuel dock. Lots of (friendly) boaters from the marina have dropped by to see the “big beautiful boat”. The good news is that we are in a GREAT location to watch the shuttle launch tomorrow morning. Cool.
Posted by dave at July 25, 2005 09:21 PM