New Smyrna Beach

Thursday January 30, 2014
29 00 951 N
80 54 737 W

After yesterday's experience, I spent an hour last night trying to figure out how to maximize the tidal current for today. I even went to the trouble of constructing an excel work sheet with tide info, openings to the Atlantic (where the tide enters and exits), boat speed etc in order to decide the best time to leave. The result of my analysis was the best we could hope for was about 18 "good" miles and 30 "bad" miles. Deidre's comment was basically "Who cares? Let's leave after breakfast!"

I hopped (hobbled?) out of bed at about 7 AM and had a look at the forecast. It was cold, wet and windy outside and the forecast just indicated another day of the same. I got back into bed and told Deidre "Let's just stay here in bed all day". Her response was "Hell no, lets go South!". We were under way at 7:50 AM and for reasons I cannot possible understand we had a strong tidal current assisting us 90% of the day. We made such good time that we changed our target destination from Daytona Beach to New Smyrna Beach, and extra 15 miles or so. All in all, we did 80 SM.

It was cold, wet and windy all day, but the wind was on our stern (enough to blow the cover off the dinghy!) and we were warm enough in the wheel house. All went well till we tried to anchor and ran aground in 12' of water (according to the chart!). Took us 30 mins to get off, and re-anchor a bit further south. The anchor took two tries in sand, which surprised me. The wind is still up, but the forecast says it will fade over night. I hope so.

Enough to make you dizzy

The wind kept up and after midnight when the tide changed Tide Hiker had a hard time settling down. The wind would not allow it to turn into the current and stay there. The chain ended up under the boat making horrible noises. I got up and spent the night in the pilot house with the computers running. I will attach a photo showing the boat movements.