We made it!!

Greetings from Titusville!

We have completed the final leg of our voyage to bring Starry Night to "home base".  Unbelievably, our trip meter read 2000 nautical miles - exactly - as we reached the channel marker to turn into the marina where we will berth for the month of January.  

Final trip meter reading 

(extra 3 miles due to circling around 

waiting for the marina manager to arrive)

Our 48 hour sail from Eleuthera to Stuart was pleasant and uneventful, and we made an overnight stop to visit my parents and enjoyed a fabulous home-cooked steak dinner at Chez Brohawn  :D 

We were actually unable to sail without assistance from the motors during the journey from Stuart to Port Canaveral since the winds were from the north,  which was a bit disappointing, but c'est la vie... we made it nonetheless. 

One of the big take-aways from our sailing adventure is that there is always a new challenge around the corner.  Some of them are minor...like finding out that our VHF radio transmits fine on channel 16 and 13, but not on 9.  After trying to hail the bridge tender to request a bridge opening but getting no answer,  I finally had to call on the phone.  He told me that he had been hailing us to find out if we needed an opening but that we never answered!  Minor, but frustrating!  

Other challenges, of course, are much more nerve-wracking. Once we arrived at the channel marker to the marina, we thought the challenges for this trip were behind us.  Little did we know, the final challenge would be be one of the most stressful!  

Upon arrival at channel marker 39, we called the manager of the marina as requested so that he could guide us into our slip.  He gave us detailed instructions about the path to take to our slip and told us not to get too close to the wall because it gets shallow there.  He told us to stay closer to the boats that were facing east as we entered. What he didn't tell us was that we needed to get close enough to those boats that I could reach out and touch them, and if we didn't we'd run aground because the water is only 1 foot deep! (Our draft is 4 ft.)

So we turned left after leaving what we thought was adequate margin from the wall and hit ground (albeit, very gently...I didn't know that we were aground until later).  And once in that position, there was almost no room to maneuver at all! Not only was the water shallow in every direction, but the path to our berth was exceedingly narrow.  Keep in mind that Starry Night is 44' long and 24' wide.  To top it off, the entire live-aboard community was looking on as Steve wrestled the boat into our slip. No pressure :-) It turns out that every person that ever entered this marina had the same trouble, and they come out to assist every new arrival. 

As they say, "all's well that ends well", and I'm happy to say that with the help of our new neighbors we are safely docked without touching another boat and no apparent damage to Starry Night. (We still need to check out the hull, but we touched ground so gently that I'm confident there's no damage.)

So what's next? We will stay here in the marina at least through January.  There are a lot of things that we still need to do to make Starry Night self-sufficient.  Although our current equipment was safe for our Caribbean transit and for two people to live aboard, there are quite a few things that we need to do to comfortably accommodate guests, have our dog on-board, and disconnect from the grid for longer periods without the need to stop at a marina for water. We need to replace some of our batteries and need more solar panels, among other things. 

We intend to stay in Florida at least until the end of March, although we're hoping to leave the marina in February and live "on the hook" (anchored offshore). We'll see how things go, though.  That's another key learning about boat life:  planning is absolutely essential, but you can be sure the plan is going to change.

For now, we're going to enjoy taking a little breather.  Our adventure-to-date has been absolutely awesome; we've been to 7 different countries, met wonderful people, learned a ton, and experienced beautiful wonders of nature. It's also been grueling, frustrating at times and a lot of hard work! This lifestyle requires attention to detail 24/7 and isn't for the faint of heart.  But that's what an adventure is after all...if it was easy, it wouldn't be an adventure :-)

Over and out for now ~

      

View from the marina of the Vehicle 

Assembly Building at Kennedy Space Center