Kennedy Space Center

Be prepared for a non-sailing tale. We probably wouldn't have done it on our own, but when Betty and John voiced interest in taking a day to visit the Kennedy Space Center, we decided it sounded like a good idea. How true! We were wowed two years ago when we arrived in St. Augustine in November and experienced our first lift-off of a space shuttle, Endeavor was on its way to the International Space Station and we watched from 100 miles away from the municipal pier in Salt Run, but it didn't begin to prepare us for the awe-inspiring day we spent at KSC.

We lucked out in that it was mid-week and a cool cloudy day, the parking lot was almost empty and the crowds non-existent. We managed to schedule ourselves really well and got to see all we wanted to see without having to wait in long lines or anything. We finally left around 5:30 pm and got back in time to enjoy a delicious salmon dinner aboard Andiamo. We will probably stay another day here in Titusville (can't pass up the "third night free" special they are offering) and get a few more "chores" done before we join our other Catalina crews further south. ~~~_/)~~~M&D The misty morning added a sense of mystique to the VAB (vehicle assembly building) at the Kennedy Space Center as we arrived for our day of discovery. The VAB is the largest single story building (although it is 52 stories high, it is only "one" story inside) in the world, or so KSC claims. It was only the first of the "scale" problems we encountered today! Also pictured are two launch pads, 39B lower left is being dismantled and rebuilt to launch future space flights while 39A to the right of B is where the last two shuttle missions will be launched. The large marble globe sports major constellations and rotates on a water fountain. The crawler transporter (lower right) weighs in at 6 million pounds, but when it is transporting the rocket boosters, external fuel tank and shuttle, the total weight is 18 million pounds, and it moves along at .9 miles per hour! The second stop on our tour of the KSC took us to the Apollo/Saturn V
center, a tribute to the Apollo missions that took us to the moon. Once again the scale blew our minds. You start out trying to comprehend the size of the stage one rocket booster and what seems like a half mile later you are looking at the capsule that actually held three astronauts on the way into the history books! Those of us who can remember those immortal words "The eagle has landed." are doubly impressed by the enormity of it all. The moon rover was fun to see, but no where near as impressive as the whole picture! The rest of the day was taken up with a tour of the shuttle Endeavor,
boy would I like to have the storage capacity of its cargo bay, and waiting in line to experience the simulated lift-off of a space shuttle. We also watched two amazing IMAX movies, one about the building of the space station and another about the Hubble Space telescope. The questions left unanswered by both are endless! I had to include a picture of moon boots, because who doesn't remember having a pair of goofy boots sometime in the last 20 years, well at least I had a pair (probably still do somewhere in our basement!) It just seemed appropriate, as we crossed the causeway leading away from KSC that we should see a dramatic sunset. A great way to end a great day.

Daytona Beach to Titusville Municipal Marina

Here we are again at a marina! ...but with good reason, tomorrow we have rented a car with John and Betty and are heading over to take a tour of Kennedy Space Center.  We printed out our tickets after ordering them on line and are ready to go!

We had a very quiet day on the water.  The wind was non existent and so was the traffic.  We followed a fairly slow trawler most of the day and were only passed by two antsy power boats.  The trip took us out of the built-up area surrounding Daytona, and very soon we were surrounded by nothing but scrub pines, scruffy palms and lots of sea birds.  It is always amazing to cross these expanses of water where the channel is narrow (but sufficiently deep) and the surrounding waters for miles and miles are less than 2 or 3 feet deep.  We watched one dolphin apparently "grazing in the shallows" because his fin was above the surface for ten minutes or so as he seemed to be "rutching" (a good Pennsylvania Dutch term) along on the bottom.  We had hoped to see the fishing phenomenon outlined in the cruising guide where a bunch of pelicans circle up, flap their wings on the water to corral fish for others that would then dive bomb and feed on them, but no such luck.

We arrived at the Titusville Municipal Marina around 3pm, took on some fuel and tied up next to Andiamo for the next two nights.  It was our turn to cook --- I tried to take credit for last night's dinner ashore, but no such luck!  We have experienced three short rain showers and are expecting more throughout the night, but are hoping for fair skies for our trip to Cape Canaveral. ~~~_/)~~~M&D
Our early departure was accompanied by a brief sprinkle as we slipped lines, handed off bathroom keys to a dockhand with a long-handled basket on the fuel dock and headed out the entrance channel to the ICW. The skies remained questionable as we headed through the first bridge south of our marina, with occasional brilliant spots of sunshine on some of the high-rises of Daytona Beach.
The rest of the day passed quietly, no rain, spotty sunshine and lots of expansive vistas as we traversed Halifax River, Ponce de Leon Cut, Mosquito Lagoon, Haulover Canal, the Indian River and a creek or two on our way to Titusville, just north of Cape Canaveral. We also watched someone messing with a daytime flare, thus the pink smoke. Can't pass through all that expanse of uninhabited waterways without a few shots of waterfowl and the ubiquitous dolphins. I tried to get a decent picture of the white pelicans that are found in the Mosquito Lagoon and Indian River, but they are shier than their cousins the brown pelican, so the shots of them are stretching the capabilities of my little point and shoot. They are amazingly BIG and quite WHITE! We also spied a few lovely little islands (most likely the product of the dredging spoils for the ICW) like this one which afforded a couple a quiet getaway for the day.

Palm Coast Marina to Halifax Harbor Marina, Daytona Beach

We seem to be marina hopping at this point. Palm Coast was because the write-ups in our guides about the cement factory creek where we anchored two years ago were not too favorable. Tonight we wanted a marina so we could visit with Pegg's dad, Al, and his new bride Ann. We called them (reaching Al) when we were approaching Daytona Beach and invited them aboard for a drink. Shortly after that Ann called to say dinner was going to be at their house!

The trip to Daytona was a short one and we were tied up at the T head on J dock by 1:40pm. The North wind we had on Monday was gone, but with the sun playing hide and seek all day, it wasn't any warmer on the water. Once tied up, it did warm up quite a bit and Dan didn't mind getting damp as he continued his battle with the white spots left by all the bird droppings. I hiked to West Marine to get more Boat Soap, scrubbies and something called FSR, a caustic gel that seemed to help.

Ann and Al arrived at 5pm for drinks and a tour of both boats (At this point we are traveling with just Andiamo. I didn't ask which they like better!) and around 6pm we headed to their house in Pelican Bay (a very nice gated golfing community.) Dinner was delicious and the dinner table conversations very lively and covered diverse topics. We remembered two years ago when we stopped in Daytona with Jay and Pegg and had dinner with Ann and Al at Ann's house when they had just started dating. Now they are looking forward to their second anniversary! ~~~_/)~~~M&D

I chose birds over "McMansions" today as we made our way further south. I couldn't resist including the lone chair with no evidence of civilization anywhere near it because it reminded me of my youth on the Shrewsbury River where we would often picnic at "Chair Cove" on one of the spoils islands that dot the channel there. Every time we would nose our boat into the reeds near the cove we would find a chair there, it could be an old stuffed arm chair, a wooden kitchen one or maybe a folding beach chair, anyways it brought back great memories seeing this lone chair.

We bid St. Augustine Adieu and head south

Our departure wasn't an early one, what with all the hoop-la surrounding Jay's 70th birthday and all the grunge work necessary to get the boat back in shape after letting it go to the birds for a month. It is AMAZING how much guano can be deposited on one 40' boat. Dan even planned ahead and bought a power washer before leaving home! The power washer was no match for the mess, but with lots of help and lots of elbow grease, we don't look half bad. Unfortunately Nathan, who went up the mast on Sunday to repair the bird damaged wind vane said we should be watching out below as the spreaders are still caked with poop! It was great fun having all of Jay's kids here for the birthday and we were able to keep Darcy, his daughter that lives in Colorado a surprise until the very end.

December was lousy for just about everyone on the East Coast, so we were glad to see a string of very warm days when we arrived back in Florida last week. We did need warmer clothes today as we headed off as the North wind blew chilly and cold. The sun was bright tho, and Dan continued his battle with guano as we motored on toward Palm Coast. An early departure would have allowed us to get to Daytona, but we hadn't done any provisioning and needed to make an early morning run to Publix to fill the fridge. We left Conch House at 10:30 and made the 11:00 opening of the Bridge of Lions.

The trip was easy and uneventful, except when we arrived at the Palm Coast Marina, we had to plow our way through mud to get into the slip as the water was lower than usual (and it wasn't low tide yet!) Our departure tomorrow will be dependent on our ability to get out of the slip. We had dinner aboard Andiamo and then back to Brunelle to work on retrieving photos that I inadvertently erased from my SD card. Of course Sam knew just what to do and talked me through retrieving them! Thanks, Sam!

~~~_/)~~~M&D

We thought we had won the battle after two days of continuous cleaning the deck, cabin top, cockpit, dinghy etc of BIRD POOP until we took Jay's family for a sail on Saturday and discovered the wind vane for the electronic wind instrument had been broken off (probably by one of our pelican buddies.) Luckily we were able to get a replacement vane while nephew Nathan was still available to head aloft.


Andiamo (left) and Brunelle (right) are ready to head out of The Conch House Marina in Salt Run (the Vilano Bridge is in the background) on their way south to meet up with Sevilla and Pekabu III on Monday morning.

Grandma Peddie watches us as we head past the Castillo San Marco on our way to the Bridge of Lions. (photo courtesy of Jay)

We watched these kites for a few miles as we wound our way down the Matanzas River, ....longest tail I've ever seen on a kite! The remains of Fort Matanzas is on the right.

HOLIDAY GREETINGS!

Tis the season to communicate with friends and family, and although we had been blogging our sailing progress this fall, we dropped the ball so to speak when we moved ashore in St. Augustine for Thanksgiving with Jay and Pegg and then drove north with Andiamo's John and Betty for a month in the bitter cold of PA! Two events were already on the schedule as we headed north, first - the CCYC Christmas party in Annapolis which was a great success with 22 boats represented and much levity and a spirited gift exchange - just who did end up with those decorative sailboat plates?!?

Second was Blissmas which we scheduled to coincide with Martha's entry into Medicare. What Martha didn't know was Dan had organized a surprise gathering at our favorite Italian Restaurant to save me from having to cook on my birthday. The surprise was hard to pull off as Dan couldn't figure out how to keep me from planning dinner for our family of 22, so I got to be involved with the final preparations for the gala event. One of the highlight of evening was the "vonBlissmas" singers (6 grandchildren and 1 grandnephew) performing "Happy Birthday!"

We have taken care of haircuts, doctor and car care appointments, and are visiting with each of our East Coast families before we head south on the 28-29th to put Brunelle back in shape for the rest of our southern trek. (The water system is currently apart in preparation for a new faucet set-up in the galley - I'm sure there will be more to report on that when we get back!) We wish everyone a VERY MERRY CHRISTMAS AND A HAPPY NEW YEAR!

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  !      ~~~_/)~~~     !      M&D

We missed sending a Christmas greeting in 2008 because we took our first trip south to the Bahamas on Brunelle and although we came home for a month at Christmas time, Martha had both knees replaced for her birthday and didn't get around to writing.

Here comes another good excuse! December 2009 the Bliss family, Grandma Peddie, Jay & Pegg, Dan & Martha and Barb all went to Chile for three weeks. We visited with our Chilean "son" Mauricio (lower right) and his family in Santiago. Mauricio had spent his senior year with us in 1992. We also visited the Clemo family in Concepcion. Patrick (who was Dan's best friend 55 years ago) made sure we saw all the wonders of Chile. He is pictured with us at his country home in Renaico (upper left). Jay, Dan, and Barb pose outside their old home on Pedro de Valdivia. It was truly a trip of a lifetime. Peddie (at 91) was thrilled to be back and kept remembering people and places. We hated to tell her that most of those people were probably gone! Luckily Patrick's mother, Joan, was alive a well and she and Peddie had a wonderful time together. We all enjoyed being welcomed so lovingly by all the Clemo families, Patrick, Beverly, Maureen and Jackie and their spouses.

By missing 2008 and 2009, we missed reporting that Danny (DB) married Natasha during Camp PaHaGaCo 2009. This picture is from Camp 2010, but it does show the whole fam damily. I'll try to group by families: Jess & Sam holding Ben(2), Oliver (2 mos.) is being held by Julie), John & Brandi, Popov & Grand Mar with Grace (5) on her lap, her twin sister, Alice (5) is in Katherine's lap. Behind Katherine is her husband Ryan with Kinsey (2) on his shoulders and Zoe sitting next to Kath. Julie's husband, Michael is balancing the twins' sister, Clare on the back of Zoe's chair. Newlyweds, DB and Natasha are on the right.

Monday in St. Augustine

A day to regroup. We decided to leave the mooring and take a slip for a day so we could hose down all the salt we picked up transiting the inlet and to work on figuring out why our GPS and autopilot choose to cut out every so often - - - like yesterday from just before the race ended until we pulled into the slip this morning.
Jay rode his bike over and he and Dan spent several hours and several calls to Raymarine customer service before they got it straightened out - - - WE HOPE. It works now anyways. I was busy writing yesterday's blog and manning the control panel as the switches were on and off about 40 times or more! Jay left around two and Dan got back to his original task, washing down the boat. I walked across the bridge with Maureen and Glen to Jay's house, left Glen preparing dinner, and Maureen and I went shopping. Everyone convened at Jay & Pegg's for spicy chicken tacos a la Glen. What a treat! Pete and Kathy leave tomorrow to fly home for Thanksgiving, and the rest of us will start prepping for Thanksgiving at Jay & Pegg's.
~~~_/)~~~M&D
After taking a slip for one day at the St. Augustine Municipal Marina, we watched these busy herons and crane fish off the docks. They didn't care how close we came.

THE RACE

We were determined to make the start of the Commodore's Cup race on time this year, because two years ago we were late to the start. Jay and I went to the 10 o'clock skipper's meeting and picked up course info, scratch sheet and dinner info. We were back aboard and crews disseminated (boys+Jay on Sevilla, girls on Brunelle) in time to make the 11:30 bridge opening. Unfortunately we were rushed enough that I forgot to turn on the on-line GPS and the SPOT tracking. I would have liked to be able to see just how we tacked and the distance we actually traveled over the 6 mile course. When we headed out, we were discouraged that our rating was much lower than Sevilla's (higher is better) and were worried whether we would be able to maintain the difference necessary to beat them on corrected time. We figured we had to give them 30 seconds per mile, or a total of 3 minutes over the 6 mile course.
Once outside the rough waters of the inlet, we raised the main and shut down the engine and realized most of the wind we encountered on the way out was engine driven. We barely had enough speed on to tack! We slowly made our way over to the starting area and studied the line to determine the best approach. When it was our turn (the spinnaker class started 10 minutes before us) we lined ourselves up and were closing in on the line when we heard a horn. We hardened up and thought we were a little late, but charged ahead. We were just settling in to the groove when we heard another horn....THE HORN, oops, we had started on the 1 minute to go horn! When we finally realized we were over early, we tacked around and re-crossed the line .....last. We tacked away from the rest of the fleet fairly early to avoid "dirty air" from the boat in front of us and seemed to be on our own.
Turns out it was a good move because we arrived at the windward mark miles ahead of everyone in our class except for a Hunter 50 (water ballast, 8' draft, sleek looking thing!) who wasn't listed on the scratch sheet, so we didn't know how we stood with them. The rest of the race was two reaching legs, and the wind had picked up a little by then, so we finished around 3:30, less than 2 minutes behind the Hunter 50. We all cheered and were ready to head in when the radio squawked at us - it was the race committee asking us to go pick up the windward mark. OOOOKay we'll go. We fired up the engine and headed east. As we approached the mark we noticed there was one boat rounding in and two more coming up behind us headed for it! We called the committee boat and they verified that there just might be a few more boats, just wait there. Well we circled for almost an hour and contemplated just how we would tackle our chore once the boats had rounded.
Finally around 5:00 the last boat rounded. We positioned Kathy sitting on the rail with one boat hook and Betty on the cockpit coaming with another and Maureen right behind her ready to grab whatever came her way. It took two passes, but on the second one, Kathy hooked the line under the thing and Betty was able to transfer one of the big rings on the corner to Maureen, she hung on for dear life, but it wasn't budging. With the engine in neutral, there was no need for me to remain at the wheel, so I jumped over Maureen and grabbed one of the rings on the outboard corner of this pyramidal monster and heaved. We got it over the lifelines and it took up the whole cockpit! Maureen spent the next half hour wrestling with it trying to deflate it while the rest of us worked on hauling in the miles and miles of anchorline! Once we finally got it aboard, I started up the engine and it took most of the trip in to get all of it under control, air out, lines coiled. WHAT a great crew!!
It was fully dark except for the full moon when we came through the Bridge of Lions at the 6:00 opening and crept through the mooring field to our mooring. Dan was waiting there at the mooring buoy to lend a hand. I shut down the engine at 6:15, and by 6:30 we were all in dinghies heading for the dock on our way the the trophy dinner. It was in full swing when we arrived as it started at 6:00! There was still enough good food for us and we were still chowing down when they started announcing the results. We still weren't sure if we had succeeded in beating the Hunter 50 on corrected time, so it was a long wait as they started with 7th place! When they announced Hunter's Child in 2nd place, we knew we had won! An exciting day for all, but far more satisfying for the girls!

~~~_/)~~~M&D

While the girls had to return and re-cross the starting line (we were over early) Sevilla sailed off to the north with lots of testosterone and too many "cooks" so they finished on hour after we did!

We finally tamed the thing and delivered it to Jay to return to the Yacht Club.

GIRLS RULE!! Our crack female crew won first place in the non-spinnaker class of the Commodore's Cup (7 boats in our class) held by the St. Augustine YC offshore on Sunday.
Top left clockwise: Betty checking out the starting line, Kathy took the helm all the way out through the rock-n-roll inlet. Maureen and Martha check the set of the sails. Sunset as we powered back in after being sent by the RC to retrieve the windward mark...we had over an hour wait out in the slop for the last two boats to round the mark! Maureen wrestles with the BIG YELLOW THING while Betty works on pulling the crappy 80 feet on anchor line aboard. CENTER: THE WINNERS!

Here is the official St. Augustine Yacht Club picture depicting Margo, the Rear Commodore of Sail presenting the crew of Brunelle with the 1st place plaque.