We returned to the boat on January 9.  We rented a car and spent three days provisioning the boat for our trip.  We filled the freezer with meat, the spaces behind the settee with canned goods and the space under the settee with beer, soda and wine.  

John assembled the deck box (that he had made at home over Christmas).  The deck box is for our life raft that we had in the aft cabin.  Now it’s out of the way.  We left the marina on Sunday, January 14 and anchored south of St. Augustine.

The following day we arrived in Daytona Beach where we decided to stay at a marina and have preventative maintenance work on the engine.  We wanted to retorque the head, have the valves adjusted and add new antifreeze.  For you NASCAR fans, we were told that the slip we were in is the one used by Jeff Gordan during the Daytona 500.  Apparently Jeff owns one of the condo’s adjacent to the marina.  Daytona has a great bus system.  We each got a three day pass for six dollars and were able to travel all over Daytona and the adjoining cities. After five days we moved on.  As race car season was approaching we had to give up our slip for the 100 footers who were coming for the races.  Apparently, the marina costs quadruple for race season. 

We continued our trip south and soon entered the Indian River where we have our favorite traveling companions, the dolphins.  They swim along next to the boat.  We had the same dolphin for over a half hour swimming with us.  We could tell it was the same animal as it had a distinctive notch in its fin.  We anchored in Cocoa Beach for the night and then moved on to Vero Beach where we joined Idunno.  The municipal marina maintains moorings but requires rafting so we rafted with Idunno and a third boat.  We will stay in Vero until the weather improves so we can plan our crossing.  Vero is a great place to wait as it has free bus service around town.