New Smyrna, Florida

Our plan for today is to get to New Smyrna, a place whose founding history we had learned about in St. Augustine.

New Smyrna was founded by about 1300 Minorcans (an island off of Spain), Greeks and a few Italians who were recruited by a British doctor in the mid-1700's  to create an "instant" colony -- no one had attempted to settle so many people in one place before. The vision was that these predominantly fisher/farmer people would grow hemp, indigo and sugar cane and produce rum as indentured servants. The colony collapsed because of insect-born diseases, Indian attacks and poor pay and mistreatment by the British owners and overseers. After 10 years of hardship, the surviving 600 settlers marched to St. Augustine and became members of that community -- many of their descendants still live there today. The St. Photios National Shrine which we had visited in St. Augustine told us this story and was created to commemorate the New Smyrna Colony Greeks,  the first Greek Orthodox in the New World.

Our route would take us by Flagler and Daytona Florida, the former named after a man intimately tied to Florida's history and what it has become today, the latter home to the famous car race and equally infamous "Spring Break" shenanigans.

Henry Flagler was a turn of the century tycoon, one of the founder's of Standard Oil. His interest in Florida started when he and his first wife spent time in Jacksonville on the advice of her doctor to help with her consumption. Over time, he became enamored with the idea of Florida becoming an "American Riviera", retired from the Oil industry and focused his energy and talents building many resorts and hotels down its East Coast -- he also built the Florida East Coast railway to connect it all -- initially intending to have the terminus at West Palm, he eventually extended the railway to Miami and ultimately, Key West. He is considered the "Father of Miami" and his name appears on statues, buildings and institutions all over the state.

Our trip was long but fortunately, we had the current with us all the way and we didn't have to wait on any of the 3 bascule bridges we traversed (all "open on request"). The only notable difficulty was carefully picking or way through shallow shoals near the Ponce De Leon inlet, and even that only cost us a few minutes -- in all we covered over 45 miles or so, one of our longer days.

Scenes along the way:

Piling forest in the morning light

No shortage of lovely homes along the Intercoastal

An all too familiar scene in Florida, this was the fist mobile home community we saw on the Intercoastal

No, I am not a wind-vane !

Storks we startled off a tree

Crabbing along the Intercoastal

Passing by Flagler Beach

Storm clouds over Daytona -- we were gone before it broke

We arrived at our anchorage in New Smyrna by mid-afternoon -- the clouds were gathering and it appeared like a thunderstorm might be brewing. The anchorage was large, but there were some permanently moored boats in it, leaving us little room outside of the Intercoastal to fit our boat.  There was an empty mooring, which I thought about picking up, but decided that having to move during a storm was not worth the chance. We dropped our hook a good distance away from this mooring,but ended up a couple of boat lengths away from it because we dragged a good distance before the anchor bit -- no worry, I figured, even in the very unlikely scenario where we dragged into the mooring during a storm, an empty mooring couldn't do much harm.

Of course, things are never that simple. Shortly after we settled into our quiet time on deck, a boat showed up and picked up the mooring, cutting the effective distance between us to perhaps 1-2 boat lengths -- still reasonable but upping the stakes if we were to drag into it during the storm.

About an hour later the anticipated storm happened -- it was a big one, strong wind gusts pushed the boat around, thunder and lightning surrounded us and multiple "can't see your hand in front of your face" downpours. Given the close proximity of the other boat, I opted to turn on the engine and stay at the helm just in case we did end up dragging during the storm -- we didn't -- our anchor never budged.

Thoroughly soaked, happy nothing amiss had happened and still smarting a bit from the reminder how strong storms can get, we quietly pulled up our anchor and moved a few more boat lengths away just in case we got another storm overnight.