Day 9, 10, 11

 Day 9 

Dawned blustery with winds as high as 25 to 30 knots creating a somewhat bouncy Anchorage. We had purchased a fold up wagon yesterday to help with our grocery shopping and it really came in handy. I'm sure we'll get much use out of it in the course of this trip. We finally went ashore in the dinghy to purchase the mandatory souvenirs of St Augustine. We were also able to pick up our Amazon shipment of LED light bulbs for the boat and also the new wind vane. We had hoped to install the wind vane while at St Augustine however it was too windy to consider going up the mast. 

Day 10

We got up fairly early to get off of our mooring ball and motored from St Augustine to New Smyrna via ICW. We were lucky enough to find a nice quiet Anchorage in Rock House Creek to spend the night. It was a quiet night on the hook with a beautiful moonrise and lots of stars. And during the course of our trip from St Augustine to New Smyrna we were followed for a Time by a kayaker who eventually passed us even though we were going 6.5 knots. He was able to keep up that pace  for the better part of 30 to 40 minutes. The waterway behind New Smyrna was really beautiful with lots of gorgeous homes and fisherman. We've decided that fishing is definitely the state sport of Florida.

Day 11

We got off to a relatively late start at 8:15 having had a little difficulty raising our anchor. Not really sure what the problem was but we finally were able to resolve it. We had marked our anchor chain initially with some yellow paint which has unfortunately almost all worn off and we tried to reinforce that with some red zip ties which unfortunately have also pretty much completely worn off. That leaves us with only guessing how much anchor rode we have out when we are setting our anchor. We were only anchored in about 7 ft of water and probably have out about 60 ft of rode which is probably part of our problem getting the anchor up. We had a really gorgeous cruise from New Smyrna to Titusville passing across mosquito lagoon with no mosquitoes and seeing numerous manatees just off the channel. We also saw some pink spoonbills roosting in some of the islands along the way. We went through Haulover Canal and entered the Indian River which is truly an amazing River it's easily as wide as a harbor and yet only has a narrow channel through it with most of the surrounding depths in the three to 4'range with some as meager as one foot. We ended up pulling over to the side of the river just outside of the intercoastal waterway just shy of Bennett Memorial bridge-A1A  and anchored in 8 ft of water with three other sailboats to spend the night. It promises to be a bit bouncy and breezy this evening as well. Another beautiful day on the water. It was blustery a little bit choppy but absolutely beautiful.