New Smyrna to Titusville – 28 nautical miles sailed, 1 bridge, 1 mile in dinghy, 11 kilometres walked
At anchor last night, the boat was making some noises we’ve never heard before. You become hyper aware of this when you are living on a floating object you rely on for staying alive. At points during the night it sounded as if there were a sumo wrestler standing on the hatch of the v-berth dragging a chain across the deck then kicking the paddleboard then yanking on various lines. It must have been a combination of the strong winds, opposing currents, and shallow water, but suffice to say we didn’t have the most restful slumber.
By 8am we were on the water with 15-20 knots of wind pushing us along, and we saw the Daily Dolphin within minutes of departure. At points along the route the dredged channel was very narrow so we really had to be paying attention. 28 miles later we reached Titusville (located just across the bay from Cape Canaveral) in very strong winds and had a hell of a time getting attached to a ball in the mooring field outside of the Titusville Marina. I was at the helm and Ana was balanced precariously with a boat hook at the front of the boat trying to snag the heavy and marine growth encrusted pendant. She snagged it a few times but wasn’t able to get a rope through it before the bow was blown over by the wind. In the process, our new boat hook snapped in half and dropped into the ocean, joining the other new one that had blown overboard last week, so we were now back down to the old boat hook we started with, which was also broken at the end and held together by a thick wad of duct tape. We are going to have to start buying those things in six packs. Ana took the helm and I went up to the front and we were finally able to get it after three or four more tries.
After a quick lunch Ana gave her mom a call to say hello. I was reminded once again of the trials and tribulations of trying to learn the Portuguese language. I can understand quite a bit of Portuguese, particularly when Ana is speaking, and I heard her telling her mom where we were and that we were excited to see the planned SpaceX rocket launch tomorrow night. I was curious to learn the Portuguese word for rocket so I listened intently. When they finished their conversation I just had to ask.
“So let me check my Portuguese comprehension here,” I said to Ana. “Did I hear correctly that the Portuguese word for rocket is ‘that big thing that goes to the Moon and has little men inside of it’?”
“You heard right.”
“I’m never going to learn this language.”
We lowered the dinghy from the boat and surfed into the marina on the giant waves rolling across the mooring field. As we entered, one of the dockhands was waving at me furiously to slow down, which I did, then we coasted up one of the channels and got tied up at their dinghy dock. We went inside to check in and were told by the lovely staff that you need to move extremely slow in the marina as they have a number of manatees and dolphins that come here to give birth. The manatees are very slow moving so they need time to get out of the way of spinning boat propellors and boat keelsl. And dolphins…well, who could live with themselves if you ran over a baby dolphin. We were also told they regularly saw alligators in the marina too. Who needs the Tampa Zoo when you have the Titusville Marina?
Ana and I walked into the downtown area, passing a swamp alligator along the way, but most of the business were closed. The CVS pharmacy was open so we went in for a look. We found a killer deal on some items, but you needed to have one of their membership loyalty cards to get the sale price. The stack of loyalty cards we’ve picked up along the way from various stores in the many states we’ve travelled through had now surpassed the height of a can of Yuengling. So, I signed up for the CVS membership, making sure to use my dad’s email address in case they started spamming, and the nice man at the front who seemed positively thrilled for me, issued me two fresh new cards and tapped me twice on each shoulder with a striped broom handle to anoint me into the brotherhood. I paid for the four cans of tuna and two boxes of Grape Nuts, gave the cashier the secret handshake, then we left.
“How can you eat Grape Nuts? It tastes like rabbit food,” Ana said.
“You’ve eaten rabbit food?”
“You know what I mean. When I was a kid I remember seeing that cereal on the shelf. I loved grapes. I loved nuts. Sounded like the perfect cereal. So I begged my dad to buy it for us. It was disgusting. He ended up eating it so it wouldn’t go to waste and wasn’t too happy about it.”
“That experience you describe happened to every kid in Canada. I hated Grape Nuts too. But at some point in life I got my adult taste buds and started enjoy all the disgusting cereal.”
“At one point was that?”
“Same point I stopped liking Count Chocula, Fruity Pebbles, Lucky Charms, and Cinnamon Toast Crunch. I think I was 37.”
Our next discovery was a groovy 50’s themed ice cream shop so we stopped for a waffle cone and planned our next move. And the next move we planned was a 45 minute walk to the movie theatre to catch the 4:15 showing of Gladiator 2. Now, in my regular world, the thought of going to a Monday afternoon movie would be ludicrous, as I’d normally be checking email or talking to colleagues on the phone, but not this Monday. No sir. So we again found ourselves walking along highway 1A, with thousands of vehicles speeding past, most of them wondering what two able bodied adults were doing wandering the streets when they should be at work. I just smiled and waved at them all.
The movie was pretty good. Ana loved it. And I loved the classy reclining theatre seats. We stopped at a sports bar after the movie for $4 Margarita Mondays and a platter of phenomenal pulled pork nachos, which provided the needed caloric boost for the long walk back.
Once at the marina, we fired up the dinghy and every so slowly puttered towards the exit. As we were on our way out, I heard a blowing noise, exactly how the marina staff had described a manatee surfacing, and we looked back in the darkness to see a large shape just breaching the water’s surface, then disappeared. A manatee! I stopped the engine and we floated for a while to see if it would come back up. But it had disappeared.
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