Manatees!

We saw many manatees yesterday (not just the ones on the Manatee Zone signs), in both the Indian River and Mosquito Lagoon.  They seem to travel in pairs or more, and you can’t see much of them above the water’s surface … the hump of their back, and then their fan shaped tail as they swim down. So, I had to cheat with this picture. I confess that I didn’t take it. I found it in cyberspace, so we could all get a better look at them. J   

They’re huge. Apparently the average adult male is about 10’ long and weighs in at 1,000lb. Though they look a little scary, they are harmless creatures, feeding on sea grasses in shallower waters. They are an endangered species. Many get wounded by watercraft and their props, which is why you see so many Manatee Zones posted along the ICW.

While sailing down the Mosquito Lagoon, we could see this huge building in the distance to the south. It was the Space Shuttle hangar at the Kennedy Space Center, visible from 20 miles away. 

Today at 2:38 PST, there is a relaunch scheduled for SpaceX ’s Falcon 9 rocket, which is to put a TV satellite into orbit. If it goes as planned (which didn’t happen on Monday), we should be able to see it from where we’re anchored.

Something else that we saw yesterday, and remains a puzzle to us, was this... trap markers??

Amazingly, yesterday we SAILED (without the motor on) for the length of Mosquito Lagoon and the Indian River, until we stopped in the town of Cocoa. It’s so much quieter without the engine running. We had good west winds, which gave us a broad reach all the way down, at 6-7 knots, with sails reefed. It was great. We chose to stop here at Cocoa to check out S.F. Travis & Co., a Hardware/Marine store complex which other cruisers have told us about. We’ll be here for Black Friday, so we may spend too much….

After today’s sail in the blustery conditions, Serenada needs a bath! She was covered in salt. Serenada wants it to rain again.

Florida snow

Yesterday's bloopers: