The ICW Just Goes On Forever

Yesterday was another day spent motoring down the ICW, destination: Flagler Beach. Things on the personal side of my life have been evolving just a bit, and I suppose that is just one more step in the progression of things, so my trip to Flagler seems to have taken a on a different purpose and direction. No matter, here the ICW passes within a stone's throw of the ocean and the beach, so Spook and I are going to spend the day being beach bums. What a concept, going to the beach, in the end of January, and being WARM!



I am actually loving this, the being warm thing, and I have found that cold, and warm, are very relative things. Three weeks ago I was freezing my butt off in Charleston, 13 degrees outside in the morning when waking up, dreading another day of sailing and freezing. Today when I woke up it was 52 degrees, dew everywhere, and I was chilled. Gosh am I getting spoiled or what? Three weeks ago I would have given up alot to be in 52 degree warmth, heck, I probably would have been tempted to shower out on deck, and I would have thought I was in a heat wave. Today I am chilled, and realize what a wimp I am when it comes to temperature and climate. Maybe I need to move to Panama or Costa Rica, where I can be warm all year round, and, despite the small size of the retirement I get, I bet I could live fairly well. I wonder how far and how long a trip that would be....



So today is going to be a beach day, and then a boat work afternoon. I gave in and got a set of solar panels up at the Sailors Exchange, it nearly cleaned out the kitty, so today I am going to install them and put them to work. If they work like they are supposed to, I think they will eliminate the need to run the engine daily to charge batteries, and so hopefully what I spent on them will be offset by the diesel savings very shortly. Fingers are crossed, lets see if it works.



Last night when I finally ran out of day light, and figured I needed to anchor, I was really wondering how and where I was going to make landfall with Spook. On one side (the mainland or west side of the ICW) there was nothing but jungle and overgrowth, and on the other it was completely developed - houses, bulkheads, private docks and boat houses. Luckily for me, there was a really nice guy sitting out on his dock, and as I circled around looking for a reasonable place to drop anchor, he started waving at me, and yelled over asking how much water Arden drew. I yelled back "about 5 feet", and he directed me to a spot across the ICW not too far from his dock, and said I was welcome to put ashore at his place and let my dog off the boat and get a walk in. So Spook has marked one more spot on the map, and we have definitely made one more step south in our journey. So before I waste too much more daylight - we are heading to the beach - I think this just may be Spook's first time seeing the ocean, I'll have to give a report on just what she thought of it.