We left Port Canaveral at 7 am and arrived in New Smyrna Beach, FL, just south of Daytona Beach, at an anchorage off the ICW at 4:30. We came in the Ponce de Leon Inlet, which has some shoaling, but is fine if you stay in the channel. Rockhouse Creek is a very popular anchorage as it is so close to the ICW and the Atlantic, but tonight we are alone here. Just south of us is a 65 ft. fixed bridge, Harold Saxton, and just north of us is a 64 ft. fixed bridge, Port Orange. We can’t go on the ICW because we can’t get under the many fixed bridges, as they are almost all at the 65 ft height. Cutting our mast down, which we had planned on doing this year in Ft. Lauderdale, would have made traveling on the ICW when we wanted to avoid the ocean feasible.
The swells were a little uncomfortable as we exited through the Port Canaveral channel, but once we turned north, they calmed down and it was a pleasant, if very hot, sail today. Daisy was thankful to have her Chilly Dog Cool Vest to wear again. It’s amazing how much this cools her down.
There is a lighthouse just past the jetty at the inlet and the nearby beaches were crowded today. There were no storm clouds so people had a full day at the beach, unlike most days in Florida when the sky gets cloudy and afternoon storms develop. While the weather continues to be hot and humid, there are no storms in the forecast and only a 30% chance of rain all week. The summer forecasts in Florida always have at least a 30% chance of rain. One resident once told us they never expect rain until the forecast gets to at least a 50% chance. Another guy told us there are two temperatures in Florida, “hot” and “damn hot.”
Although it was 90 when we arrived, we didn’t turn on the AC. It takes almost one gallon of fuel an hour to run the generator for the AC, and we knew we might need to do that once the sun went down as there are lots of no-see-ums here. We have screens for the windows, but no-see-ums get through the tiniest of holes.