Cocoa, Florida

We awoke to a sunnier, less threatening day weather wise -- while Thunderstorms were still a possibility, the sky seemed much more optimistic than the forecast.

Our destination today is Cocoa, Florida -- billed as a slice of old Florida, we were hoping to find some sign of NASA's heyday when many of the astronauts played there -- indeed, supposedly many of them kept a "Cape Cookie" (i.e., a girl-friend) in the town . A short trip, we figured we'd spend the afternoon taking an exercise walk and seeing the town.

We got up, had breakfast, dropped the mooring and took off, our usual morning routine. However, as I accelerated away from the mooring, the engine exhaust sounded funny --  it looked normal with both water and exhaust coming out, but it had a hollow, throaty sound, indicating that perhaps there wasn't enough water flowing through the engine.  Not wanting any problems later that day, I turned the boat around and we put her back on the mooring to investigate. Sure enough, the intake strainer and hose, were clogged with eel grass -- I had noticed some patches on the surface around the boat the last day or so (first time on the trip), but hadn't thought much about them -- obviously I would need to pay more careful attention going forward. After clearing the grass and reassembling the strainer, we started the engine and it sounded fine -- another bullet dodged.

I just liked the curve of this Titusville bridge !

Leaving Titusville, literally in our wake

The trip to Cocoa included a drive by of NASA's Kennedy Space Center on Merritt Island, marked by the prominent Vehicle Assembly Building, one of the largest buildings by volume on the planet -- it didn't look all that impressive as we were a fair distance away.  We also saw lots of dolphins along the way -- some days they are everywhere we look, others nowhere to be found.

NASA's Vehicle Assembly Building

I liked the reflection of the clouds in the calm water

This was a 20 mile or so trip -- we were on the hook before noon, had lunch on board and then dropped the dinghy to go in, take an exercise walk and see what we could see.

The dinghy ride in was a bit of a hassle; the guidebook indicated that the town had a municipal dinghy dock -- usually these are floating docks but this one was only a few small dilapidated finger docks with no cleats and no ladders -- not the easiest to get on and off.  The guidebook had also mentioned that an adjacent marina had a dinghy dock that we might use, so we motored over there, only to find that it too was just finger docks (but with cleats and ladders). We tied up  but then shortly discovered that we couldn't get out of the marina -- it had become a private marina and access to the street was through a key locked door -- oh well! Retracing our steps back to the dinghy. we motored over to the municipal dock once again -- this time tying up and climbing up and out of the dinghy to get up to the finger dock -- well, we did say we wanted some exercise, didn't we?

All the time this was going on, the sky was threatening and we could hear thunder continuously off in the distance -- threatening, but yet the sun was out and blazing hot where we were.

Cocoa is a slice of old Florida -- its main street is a patchwork of shops and restaurants in old buildings on a curving street with head-in parking -- quaint but short. After quickly touring the mainstreet area (and having an ice cream), we took about an hour walk around. Once you get away from the town center, housing is mostly old Florida ranch's intermixed with commercial buildings -- zoning was clearly an afterthought. At one point when we thought a downpour was going to start, we ducked into a furniture consignment shop to avoid the rain and cool off a bit -- that, and a visit to the local Mega Bird Store ("Florida's largest place for birds" -- an unbelievably noisy place with bird squalor everywhere) were the "highlights" of our visit !

Main street looking east

Main Street looking west

Sue with friends

Goofy me

Having tuckered ourselves out, we circled back to the dinghy and headed back to the boat. Despite all the dramatic dark clouds and ominous distant thunder, we never got rained on -- too bad, it might have helped some with the heat :-) We had an almost full moon this evening -- very bright!

We used the sun to dry out laundry which had gotten drenched when I left a window open during an earlier squall !

Moon-rise over Merritt Island

You can see the moon's details ("the man in the moon") in this one !