St. Augustine to Daytona Beach

The run to Daytona Beach went very well.  We slipped off the St. Augustine Municipal Marina mooring ball at 0715 on a bright sunny but cold day (29 degrees as sunrise).  The tidal and river currents pushed us along at over 7 knots for several hours.  We followed another sailboat, Sea Foam, all the way to our final destination.  This made getting through some of the trouble spots easier as we could follow her lead and make corrections based on her adjustments to the channel.  We arrived at Daytona Beach at 1530, refueled and pumped out at the Halifax Harbor Marina and anchored just south of the Daytona Beach Memorial Bridge.  Carla made a wonderful dinner and we spent the evening reviewing our charts in preparation for tomorrow's run to Titusville and listening to the Democratic debate broadcast from my alma mater, the University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee.

Along the way we came across  a "village" of the "floating homeless".  About 20 boats were at anchor most of which obviously not actively cruising since they had no sails and many had more than one anchor out to keep them from swinging in the current and wind.

"Floating Homeless"

We also came across the notorious abandoned trimaran which ran aground near Fort Matanzas and interfered with navigation at a critical juncture on the Matanzas River.  We personally met two couples who ran aground and lost their rudders while trying to negotiate passage around the trimaran which was tied to and obstructing the view of a key aid to navigation.  One of these couples observed a government agency crew cut the line securing the trimaran to the bouy and letting it drift down stream.  We discovered the abandoned trimaran ashore 5 miles downstream from where it first ran aground.  Some other friends of ours met the owner of the trimaran when he was attempting to rent a truck so he could remove his personal items from the boat prior to abandoning it.  It is suspected he was a foreigner who had overstayed his visa and abandoned the boat to avoid problems with government authorities.

Abandoned Trimaran, Hazard to Navigation