Life on the ICW

Titusville, FL to Daytona Beach, FL

Days on Cruise:  4

Statute Miles Today:  48.8

Time Underway:  4 hrs, 23 mins

Cumulative Miles:  142

We’re starting to identify a “rhythm” that feels right to us, knowing everyone is different and what works for us is not what would work for all cruisers.  We wake up 6 – 6:30 am, have coffee while checking email, the news and weather forecast for the day, eat breakfast, then take off.  We’re cruising about 50 miles/day on average, or 6 hours, and think cruising no more than 2-3 days in a row is good before taking time off to relax, see the sights and play.  We’ll see how long this pattern holds up.

We left Titusville and continued cruising up the Indian River (which we’ve been on since the very beginning, except during our shake-down cruise to the Keys) and finally said goodbye to the Indian River when we entered the Haulover Canal, taking us into Mosquito Lagoon, which fortunately did not live up to its’ name. 

A side note: rivers here are not like rivers we’re accustomed to. Those that are part of the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway are brackish water, not fresh, because they’re connected to the Atlantic Ocean by inlets. So they’re also tidal, have no headlands or discernible river deltas.  They seem, to us, more like extensions of the ocean than actual rivers.  But at one time they were more conventional rivers before many of them, along with lakes and lagoons, became connected by man to create the ICW.

The photo below show’s tonight’s anchorage just south of the Memorial Bridge at the south end of Daytona Beach.  There is only one other boat here tonight, a sailboat.

Below is the Haulover Canal. It’s a mile long, about 200 feet wide, 12 feet deep and has been used for centuries, first by Native Americans and later by the military, to “haul” canoes or military cargo from the Indian River to Mosquito Lagoon, both huge bodies of water.  Everything to the right is Merritt Island or a designated Security Area, land that is part of the Kennedy Space Center or adjacent water.  Many sailboats who normally cruise the Atlantic come through an inlet to the ICW in this section to avoid going 25 miles offshore in the Atlantic to meet the requirements of the post-9/11 Security Zone around the Space Center.  We saw LOTS of sailboats today. The Haulover Canal is now on the National Historic Register.

We continue to find boats that interest or amuse us along the way. These folks were having a great time!

Look how shallow the water is where these folks are fishing!

Below is the lighthouse at Ponce de Leon inlet.

The scenery is very different here compared to southern Florida.  We find it pretty, more rural and less developed, and with far less boat traffic. Some parts of the ICW today were extremely narrow, surrounded by lowland marsh; others were wide bodies of water with shallow sandbars everywhere except in the dredged channel. We saw zillions of dolphins, manatees, pelicans and eagles today. We’re enjoying “living the life”!