Daytona Beach

     We are now at St Augustine, FL. We spent a week in Daytona Beach to go to the Daytona 500 and the Nationwide COPD 300 NASCAR races.

     We left Ft Pierce and stopped twice before getting to Daytona. We anchored in the Halifax River just south of the Memorial Bascule Bridge. Not a bad spot. Protected but not much dinghy shore access. But it did get us to the beach and to the races.

     The races were a great new experience. On Saturday we went to the Nationwide race and had an engine and wheel assembly come through the fence and injure a few dozen spectators. Very unusual especially because the fence structure is so strong and the spectators are away from the fence. The Daytona 500 wasn't quite as exciting but it was much louder and faster. I also got to walk on the track, put our boat name on the start/finish line as well as the SAFER barrier and get a close look at the garage area and all the cars. You gotta be a fan to appreciate all that. We're fans but not fanatics like we are for UConn Women's Basketball.

     Some photos of the 300 or so I took:

Weather

  

  With a major blizzard hitting New England and affecting our friends and family in that area I thought I'd write about weather. I've spent the last three seasons teasing (just a bit) about the weather we experience in Florida while those back home are freezing or buried in snow. You know, complaining about a cold front dropping the temperature from 85 to 75 in the day and 65 to 55 at night. See, we suffer, too.

     This is our third winter down here and each has been different from the others. There are, however, some general patterns. When a winter cold front hits Connecticut it very often trails all the way down the east coast and passes through Florida. When we're in the Keys it's the very bottom tip of the front that reaches us and has very little force. The wind shifts to the north (not the northwest like at home) and brings cooler temps (about 10 degrees lower) for about two days. Then the wind starts to clock around to the SE or SW and it warms up. In central Florida these fronts bring the temps down to the mid-40s at night. Our first season in Ft Pierce saw a week of mid-30s at night. That was no fun.

     People who want to cross the Gulf Stream to the Bahamas wait for a Norther (a cold front) to pass through and wait a little more for the wind to get at least to SE, preferably S or SW, and head across. A wind with any N in it is no fun when it is going against the north flowing Stream. Very No Fun!. Wind is called the direction it is coming from and current is called the direction it is going. A north current and a north wind oppose each other. Also not fun.

     This year was a little unusual because Highs were setting up off the Carolina coasts and staying there. That brings warmer air to New England (a SW breeze) but NE to E wind on our side of the rotation. This makes for rougher sea conditions and more moisture in the air. Not neccessarily rain in those clouds but damper. That's why we would 'complain' about the air feeling cold when the temp dropped to 75. Or 65 at night. Yep, suffering.

     Southern Florida mainly stays warm all winter while central Florida can get fairly cold at times. This year has been warmer than usual. Our first year was cooler that normal and last year was pretty average with stable pattern changes. It made it easy to get to the Bahamas. This year was doable but a little trickier. We were not going anyway.

     We may have problems as we head north. A couple of our passages are north in fairly open water and north winds make them very uncomfortable. The Nuese River, Pamlico Sound and Albermarle Sound can be very nasty in Northers. Of cousre the offshore passages of New Jersey have to wait for southerly breezes, too.

     So it's not all blue skies and warm temperatures for us. Only about three months of the winter.

Miami Beach

    
     We are in Miami Beach at a new (to us) anchorage. Just south of the Venesian Causeway near Belle Island. It's reasonably protected but it's in a high traffic area. This means are lots of rocking due to big wakes.

     We left Marathon last Wednesday and had a somewhat rough but fast sail to the Channel 5 passage under the Overseas Highway. We exited Boot Key Harbor via Sister's Creek for the first time. It's a shallow short cut to Hawk Channel, open ocean except for the well offshore reef. Then it was back to the ICW with a stop at Key Largo.

We then went to No Name Harbor again. This is a great (but small) anchorage in Baggs State Park on the south end of Key Biscayne, just inside Cape Florida. We spent three nights there but one of those nights was a Saturday, which meant crowding and multiple boats playing very loud 'music'. Each boat plays different 'music' but it's all the same type:Cuban. Loud Cuban.

While we were there we took Cleo on a couple of dinghy rides to look at some very expensive homes in the next harbor north. She's kinda getting use to the dinghy but hated when we were going fast on plane.

     It was less than two hours to Miami Beach from No Name (actually Key Biscayne is part of Miami) and we went there on Sunday to spend two nights. We went on a dinghy cruise up the Collins Canal to the waterway just east of Collins Ave. Very interesting. We also got our bikes ashore for a tour of Miami Beach. We went all the way out to the Government Cut inlet. I had never been this far south in the South Beach area. Carol has worked in the area and we both have been to USPS Conferences at the Fountainbleu a few decades ago.

     So a new anchorage has worked out pretty good. Could be better if there was a (enforced) speed limit. Oh well.

     Next extended stop is at Ft Pierce with en route stops in Ft Lauderdale and West Palm Beach.

     Up the road is a stop at Daytona to watch the Daytona 500 in person. First NASCAR race for us. Tickets for two races (for each of us) are costing us near $700. We could go cheaper but this is likely a one-time thing so we got just under 'top of the line' seats.

     Can't wait.