Monday 5/11  from Coco, FL to New Symrna, FL (New Symrna City Marina)

I’ve gotten into a pattern and after i untie and wrap the lines and put them away I take my coffee to the bow of the boat.  this is where i  collect my thoughts and give good glory to the morning… 

Jan, this crappy shot is Cape Canaveral in the distance — you probably know this but it’s located in Titusville - now a ghost town they say…but tours to the compound still occur every 2 hours or so.  We saw many tour buses crossing over the NASA bridge while we went under it.  It was a foggy morning but i could make out the huge NASA sign on the side of the building.  The building is SO large that it seemed to stay in view all day.  Harry was cruising through here years ago and stayed at Titusville marina and unbeknown to him there was a scheduled launch.  He said it lit up the night sky for miles around, describing it as un-f-ingbelievable!!

After Titusville we entered a very long stretch of a wide waterway beaming with wildlife.  I”m finding i’m much more entertained by the birds and the manatees and dolphins than i am of the humans.  Most humans are rather boring in comparison - I say this by observing their ‘nests’.  Most people homes are boring - and i've seen quite a few along the waterways...

Back to the wildlife - i saw something today that i’ve never seen and i can only call it a ‘ribbon’ of birds.  Maybe a hundred white sea birds took flight and flew in a formation that closely resembled geese but made it appear as if it was a white ribbon flittering in the wind.  It was SO beautiful - and my picture is a very weak attempt to share this.   

I also saw three rosebud spoonbills - if i ever saw hundreds of those guys forming pink ribbons i would surely faint away by the beauty of such a thing.

We were greeted by lovely dock hands at this marina.  A wife, her husband and another fella helped us in.  I lassooed my first stern piling today.  :)  And only on my third try.  It was tense docking just because of a strong current that was hitting our back end and not wanting to get into the gate, so to speak…

Once we dock we go to the marina office and pay of course but also to gather literature on where to eat and ask around about good places to dine.  This is one of my favorite parts…tonight it was decided hands down that we’d try Yellow Dog Eats - a gourmet BBQ place.  While taking it easy on the aft deck i got to watch a chartered fishing boat come in with all its goodies.  The picture tells the story but it was so fascinating to watch them come in, hang the fish up for pictures, watch the guys fillet the fish, throw scraps out to the awaiting pelicans, bag up the fillets, divvy them out to the 4 guys, who put them into their awaiting coolers and drive away.  We think the fish on both ends are groupers, then mahi dolphin (the green ones), a red snapper.  damn cool to see what they bring up out  of the waters.

This town just felt good to me.  I think it  started with a really attractive marina office (now these designing humans were not boring) and darling downtown streets.  On our way to dinner, right there in downtown was a VITAS office - I took a picture for my gal pals at VITAS.  I was proud, because i know the caring, hard work that goes on in that building.