Daytona Beach 11/12 - 11/13

Christopher and I hung out here a few days to while away the time until heading south for Titusville and our rendezvous at Disney world with Maria and Diana.

With its huge hotels on the beach, Daytona is unlike what we are accustomed to in the northeast.  However, those from the coastal Carolinas will feel right at home.  Another sight I had not seen before was the automobile traffic on the beach.  Since the hotels are built right up to the high tide mark there are no dunes to be destroyed by the cars.  At low tide the surf line is far enough out that the cars can drive along the beach.  At this time of year no one lays on the beach other than in between the cars parked along the sea wall, so there is no worry that pedestrians will be run over by the cars.  This completely changes my sense of what the beach is all about.

While in Daytona I also did some grocery shopping and laundry.  And I bought what I believed to be the last boat spares before our trip to the Bahamas; namely the ever elusive fuel-water separator and filter elements.  While in Daytona I also bought a few containers of transmission fluid and fluid that allegedly cures minor leaks of same past the seals.

On Tuesday, 11/14, we made our trip down to Titusville.  My refilling of the transmission and addition of the mystery additive was all in vain.  The transmission continued to leak at a furious rate.

One of the manatees that live in and around the Titusville Municipal Marina.

This manatee photo comes to you courtesy of Diana.

Before heading off to Disney World I had to come to a resolution of the transmission problem.  After a little research I settled on a call to Marine Pro of Cocoa.  As promised they had someone on the boat by 10 AM on 11/15.  The previous evening Christopher and I had disassembled the galley so that the mechanic would have unfettered access to the transmission.  Inside of 90 minutes Marc had the transmission out and could show me where the seals had been spun in the case.  He broke the unsettling news to us that the transmission was not the same vintage as the engine.  The transmission was apparently a rebuild that had been attached to the new engine. 

After seeing Marc, from Marine Pro, on his way, Christopher and I drove to Disney World.  We stayed at Disney until Saturday morning when we drove back to Titusville.  We all had a great time.  A few photos are included here.

The characters in the above photos need no introduction.  At the Crystal Palace one is visited by all of the caharacters from Winnie the Pooh.
	Christopher and I are in heaven.  Isn't it everyman's dream to be entertained by a mermaid?  I've been waiting since our visit to Copenhagen in 1981 to actually meet a mermaid.
Donald Duck was kind enough to loan us this nautical chart for the rest of our voyage.

  Our departure from Disney was so late that the Enterprise Car Rental office was closed by the time we got back to Titusville.  Actually, it never occurred to me that they would close at noon on a Saturday.  I guess being from the big city gives one a false sense of how the world operates.  As it worked out, we were lucky to have the car. 

When we got on the boat we found a note from Marc.  The fact that the transmission was back in place made us wonder about the urgent request to call him.  His bad news started with a question: "When your shift lever is in forward at the helm, does your boat go forward?"  We could assure him that in the past it did so.  A brief test on the spot showed that it now wanted to go backwards when the shift was in the forward position.  This was not a total surprise to Marc.  He told me that the shift mechanism had been assembled backwards, but that he had reassembled the transmission the way it had been designed.  It was now Saturday afternoon and Marc was headed home.  Sooo, we lived on the boat until Monday morning with no running water and no kitchen sink, and with the galley cabinetry taking up almost all of the main salon.

After his arrival on Monday Marc worked out a solution to the shift problem.  In the end he concluded that our seals may have spun because the transmission had been running in reverse all the while the boat was going forward!  Those mariners among you may ask "How can this be? Your propeller is more than likely designed to be most efficient when spinning clockwise and driving the boat forward." The simple answer is that our Auto Prop is essentially indifferent to the direction it spins. The blades are hung so that the propeller is a right hand wheel when spinning clockwise and a left hand wheel when spinning counter-clockwise. Because the blades are of continuously variable pitch, the propeller is as efficient in reverse as in forward.

On Tuesday, 11/21, we finally got underway; pushing south again.  Our first destination was Eau Gallie.  This is fancy way of spelling "Oh, Golly".  We anchored behind dragon point for the night. This also happened to be the day yet another cold front came through.  This is colder than it has been since we were up on the Potomac. The next day we went on to Vero Beach.  In the morning I wore a sweatshirt, long pants, socks and gloves!

We've been in Vero Beach since Wednesday, 11/21.  On Thanksgiving Day we made a trip out to the beach for a swim.  We stopped at a playground where Diana made a couple of friends for an hour or two.  In the afternoon we were back on the boat for our feast on  Turkey and all the trimmings; green beans, cranberry, turkey, stuffing, sweet potato, pumpkin pie and salad.  Vero Beach is famous among ICW cruisers for the organized Thanksgiving Day dinner that they organize, but we passed it up for our family gathering. Diana wanted to know what each of us was giving thanks for.  She had the first and best answer of all: "All the good things happening to us on this trip."

Each day I have a routine for checking engine oil, bilge, antifreeze, etc.  Checking the bilge for both operation of the pumps and condition of the water is how I discovered the transmission leak, so you can see that the routine is necessary.  On Friday I happened to lift the float on one of the two bilge pumps only to find that it wasn't working.  In tracing the problem I happened to take out a section of the cabin sole under which the bilge hoses run.  Wouldn't you know it, one of them had a pin hole leak at its non-return (check) valve.  After fixing the float switch I began what turned into an all day ordeal.  A three hour round trip netted me a check valve that wasn't really what I wanted.  More than an hour of fussing eventually resulted in a replacement of the check valve.  Yet another problem solved.  This voyage has turned into a series of repairs and problem solving exercises.

If you are headed down the ICW like us, don't believe that your boat will be trouble free no matter how much time and effort you've put into it before hand.

It is now Saturday, 11/25.  We had planned to go on down to Stuart today, but the National Weather Service issued a hazardous weather advisory for our area; lots of thunder storms complete with extremely high winds and lightening.  Maybe tomorrow we'll move along.  For those of you trying to follow us on a map, we'll be going to Stuart, North Palm Beach, Boca Raton, Fort Lauderdale, then Miami.