Tuesday, December 21, 2010

Mosquito Lagoon - What A Lovely Name!

SHIP'S LOG:

If the water had been deeper, this would have been one hell of a boring day. There were several straight runs on a few miles apiece in which I could not turn off course. In addition, especially going through the Mosquito Lagoon, there was nothing to look at except water. At least in other places there was scenery but here there was none. And like I said, if the water had been deep, it would have been boring.

As it was, it was a day of tension and anxiety. The ICW Channel was narrow and the water was shallow and I literally spent the day staring at my depth sounder. It bounced around like I don't know what but it would jump a couple of feet up or down with seeming randomness. I had to helm the boat with one hand as the other rode the throttle the whole time. More than a dozen times I had to back of the throttle and slow way down, even stop sometimes, to figure out just where the water was. Often chartplotter and depthspounder and visual observation were all contradicting one another. It wasn't boring and it wasn't relaxing. Thank God it wasn't cold and it wasn't raining. It was a nasty stretch of water. To make matters worse, local fishermen "needed" to set up shop right in the middle of the channel. The seemed to take great offense at my passing. I was followed most of the way down to Titusville by a tug pushing a barge. There was no place for him to pass and no way for me to let him get by. He was not a happy tugboat captain.

The Haulover Canal which connects Mosquito Lagoon and the Indian River was pretty decent and much like the canal in North Carolina. Cut through rock it was deep and decently wide but a moments lack of attention and even TowBoat US couldn't help you.

As you are coming down the Lagoon, you can see the Vehicle Assembly Building at Cape Canaveral. Florida is pretty flat and this is one big building. I anchor south of the Titusville Swing Bridge and can see the build very clearly. The closer you get the bigger it gets.

The weather was quite nice today though i didn't really appreciate it until after I dropped the hook and had some wine. It must have been in the mid 70's and at 6pm it is still in the mid 60's. I really have no idea where to go next. I will leave that to the morning when I sit with coffee to plot out the next run. Who knows, I may just work on my tan for a day.