The trip North

The trip north started uneventfully, the engine started, we got underway on time, and passed through our first drawbridge without a hitch. Scott was enjoying the trip immensely at this point, but as you can see from the photo, the weather was not exactly co-operating. The first part of the day went well until early afternoon. That is when the Engine from Hell started to give us grief. Our first indication was the overheat when the belt fell off. We pulled over to the side of the inter coastal waterway, anchored up, and proceeded with repairs. The lack of maintenance on the engine and the general rust build-up made this a bit problematic, but we got it back on and underway again.

We continued on until early evening, unable to find a marina that would take a boat with a 6 foot draft, we anchored up. We went just off the channel and had an quiet uneventful evening. After rigging up some temporary anchor lights (think Jed Clampett goes to the yacht club). I was bored and decided to inflate the dinghy. I don't know why, maybe it was an underlying feeling that we may need a liferaft.

The next day we got underway and made it until about noon, when the belt broke. This was OK as we had a spare on board. Although we found out the spare was 2 inches too short. After a bit of McGyvering with the rusty brackets and alternator mounts , we managed to get the belt that was too small into place and operational. At that point the wind started blowing out of the north (cold) and the torrential downpour started. At this point we had had enough, so it was time to find a suitable marina. We pulled into Mebourne Marina, found a nice slip and stayed for the evening. The bar and restaurant looked pretty good by this time. So we spent the evening eating and drinking.

The next day we got underway in a cold, windy, rain. Things went well until we reached Cocoa, FL at which point the new belt broke. This was a problem because we had no spares. We anchored at Cocoa Village. It was time to try out the dinghy. We test fired the little outboard prior to putting it on the dinghy and it started right up. We wrangled the dinghy and the outboard into the water. I left Scott in charge and headed for the parts store. Even though the motor had started, I soon found that it would not throttle up, and I was losing ground against the wind and was drifting away from shore. A quick look under the hood, and I solved the problem by running the throttle from under the motor cover. After a harrowing trip to the beach, I waited out in the rain for the NAPA guy to deliver the parts (I had a hard time convincing him to deliver the belts to a park in Cocoa). A wet trip back to the boat, more modifications to the engine to make the new belts work, and we were underway again. As we passed under the Hwy 528 bridge prior to entering the Barge canal, we happened to run across a new catamaran, that went by the old boat name (Ruahk). We had found the guy that sold us this fine craft! Understandably he would not answer calls on the VHF radio, I can't imagine why not? After a wait of about twenty minutes for another drawbridge on the Barge canal, we entered our first ever lock. After locking down about three feet, we passed under another drawbridge and finally arrived at Cape Marina.

Cape Marina is located at Port Canaveral, so we docked right across from the big boys. If we could only get that kind of service on board our vessel. The next morning we were awoken at 6 am by some kind of multi-lingual fire drill aboard the cruise ship. It was time to get the boat out of the water and get started on making it into what we want.