We briefed James the night before on the plans for the next couple of days. One of the things you have to know about sailing though is plans are subject to change and one of the worst things you can have is a schedule.
As we were pulling anchor, we received a notification that the Margaritaville cruise ship was entering the inlet at 7:00 in the morning. We slowly made our way down the ICW channel to find one of the mega yachts getting ready to leave as well. I could not determine what the pilot boats were doing but soon learned they were floating the mega yachts anchor up from the floor. We pushed through only to find a tanker headed in that had not communicated their approach to the channel. I was already at 2150 RPMs on boat engines getting out of the channel, I hurried and veered off as quickly and safely as I could.
The sea state was pretty calm, we had 2 ft swells about every 6 seconds. As I watched the weather and radar during the day it became clearer that we really should try for an overnight sail to New Smyrna instead of stopping in Fort Pierce. There was a line a of thunderstorms that would be coming from Brunswick area our direction that would cause us to need to spend an extra day or maybe two. We were slowly breaking James in for what that evening would later be a rollie night passage. I think James got up once during the night, stuck his head out the door and decided to go back to bed. Bubba and I took shifts at the helm watching for freighters and cruise ships as we passed along Cape Canaveral. I don’t like this leg of the trip because it takes forever!
We had a beautiful sunset and moon rising. Overnight Bubba would slow us down a bit, so it was a more comfortable ride. When I went on shift, I turned both engines on as we needed to make up time and we needed to arrive the anchorage before the storm hit.
This line of thunderstorms would eventually turn from green to red and yellow as it reached a warmer climate. We anchored just off of the Ponce de Leon lighthouse and Sea Love Boatworks marina just in time for the storm to hit.
After a few games of Mexican train, a shower, and waiting for the rain to pass we made a run over to Down the Hatch for a late lunch.
There would be a few more games of Mexican Train that afternoon. James and Bubba would make their way back to Down the Hatch a little later on for James to get his seafood fix for the evening. I stayed back on the boat and chilled.
The next morning, we would be up bright an early to depart. Little did we know getting out of the inlet was going to be our biggest challenge yet as the forecasted seas were not quite what they were predicted to be, stay tuned for the next leg of this adventure.