We’re at Palm Coast Marina, which is a small marina barely off the ICW. There are tons of small boats passing through because we’re at the mouth of an extensive canal system in a residential area. All that being said, it’s a no wake zone and extremely well protected. The tidal range here is about 1 foot! The facilities are nice and the brewery is literally less than ten minutes away by foot. The weather has been absolutely gorgeous. It’s not a bad place to get stuck for a while. If I were a complacent person, I could see myself getting “stuck” here for a long time!

Right away, Kyle took off the old fresh water cooling pump on the port engine, in case he needed to order more parts. He had to cut two hoses to get it off, so Monday he ordered hoses. It sounded like they’d be in on Tuesday. The new pump should get to NC on Monday or Tuesday, and then overnighted to us by Wednesday.

Throughout the week, we stopped at Moonrise Brewing…three times. We love trying local craft beer, and since we could walk there, it was an easy way to get out of the boat, stretch our legs, and support the local economy.

By the second trip, we discovered a beautiful public walking path along the ICW, so we didn’t even have to walk along a busy road to get to the brewery. Then we had a second place to go when we needed to get off the boat and stretch our legs.

Kyle spent the week tinkering with projects, like Kyle does. I don’t know if he’ll ever be able to just relax and enjoy himself. He cleaned out the engine rooms (a little water and alternator belt dust and suddenly the whole area is black streaks). He started wiring up a couple electrical things but they aren’t done yet. We did laundry.

I got a lot of work done too, which is important – in the last post I said I was seeing signs of depression. One of the big signs is lethargy. It’s hard to tell if I was couch potato-ing due to the rough conditions, or something else. I’m pleased to tell you that it was the rough conditions, and instead of depression I’m just suffering from low morale. A relaxing week and warm, sunny weather have just about cured that, too.

On Wednesday we took an Uber into town and got groceries for the first time since we left Charleston. We could have stocked up in St. Augustine but we had other challenges to deal with, plus we’re trying to get a feel for how long we can go in between grocery runs. You can tell it’s been a while since we’ve had fresh veggies on board, we stocked up!

The water pump arrived Wednesday, as planned, but still no hoses. Kyle called the company he ordered them from, but of course no one could provide tracking info. We hoped the hoses would arrive Thursday morning, that way Kyle could install the pump and we could spend Thursday night at an anchorage. No such luck, but they finally arrived Thursday afternoon.

While Kyle was working on the engine on Thursday, I was coordinating a visit – Kyle’s family friends from Boy Scouts were touring Florida and wanted to know where we’d be on Friday. Assuming things went fine with the engine, we could do a short motor down to Daytona Beach and meet up! The engine fired right up, so we started preparing to leave the dock. We arrived here last Friday, which makes it exactly a week that we’ve spent here.

Friday morning we were pretty lax about moving, since we had a short trip. Since we were so slow to leave, the dock behind us cleared out and gave us lots of room to maneuver. We paid our bill, filled the water tanks, and took off. It was an easy, beautiful trip. A 360° sun dog appeared in the clouds above the mast!

Our friends arrived at the anchorage at the same time we did, so they got to witness our anchoring procedures. The anchor didn’t set well, but it was good enough to hold us for a couple hours, so Kyle dropped the dinghy in the water and headed to shore.

It was such a nice (and random!) visit – this is the first time we’ve invited friends aboard to hang out. They couldn’t stay too long since they had more driving to do, but it was fun to catch up with them and give them a tour of the boat!

After they left, we pulled up the anchor and drove south for about 20 minutes to a more secure spot. We ate some dinner and settled in, but it wasn’t too long before we heard someone yell “Hello?”

Kyle popped his head out and found two people on paddle boards! We ended up hosting Tom and his son Isaac for a little tour and chat about catamaran life. Tom wants to buy a catamaran and cruise with his family, so he had lots of enthusiastic questions!

While Tom and I were chatting, Kyle asked Isaac what he thought about living on a boat. His response was “my dad has a lot of ideas…” We thought that was pretty funny.

The important thing is: we’re back! On the move, heading south!