Glorious Days

Mosquito Lagoon
N 24 26.163 W 080 46.140

I think we made a good choice staying on the inside. Most of yesterday and today, we have been able to sail with main sail and spinnaker. It has been quiet and peaceful on the Indian River.

Yesterday at noontime, we stopped at Cocoa. We were able to tie up at the wall at Riverside Park and walk one block to down town.

I went to Travis Hardware (the old hardware store that resembles Wallace Armer in Schenectady). It was as great as expected. I was able to find all the odd things I had on my list in just a few minutes, with the help of one of the men working there. When it was time to pay, I told the story about Wallace Armer. That store had a trolley system for cash. You put the money in a little basket and the trolley took it up to the second floor where the bookkeeper sat. Your change and receipt would
be returned in the basket. The man at Travis hardware said, "Take this bill to Mary over there under the umbrella. We don't have a trolley but you can have Mary under the umbrella." Then Mary said, "In your dreams." I think they may have told that joke once or twice before.

Then Libby and I walked around the town and we found a nice wine store/deli to stop for lunch. We bought a frozen loaf of their pumpernickel bread to take back to the boat. Then we enjoyed a deli sandwich. Boy life is hard.

We anchored last night north of Titusville. We could see NASA and the space shuttle launch pad clearly, but there were no rockets launched last night -- too bad. I was tempted to say, we were near the world's only spaceport, but that's not true. There are several spaceports in this world. Just think.

There was a carnival going on in Titusville so we anchored 2 miles away. Good thing we did because even late at night, we could hear the loud music from 2 miles away. If we had been closer, we would have had a noisy night.

There are lots of dolphins in the Indian River and here in the Mosquito Lagoon. We see them swimming near us at least 10 times per day. That makes it fun. We saw two men and two boys fishing in a small boat. Some dolphins swam past them, and the boys tossed them some bait fish. The dolphins stopped, ate the fish, then lifted their heads out of the water and begged for more. What a great experience for those two boys.

Last year, we came through here with our friend Pete Vonie. The weather is much nicer this year. We just glide along, and there's no hurry about anything. At the end of the day, when we get tired, we just drop the hook. In calm weather, we don't have to seek out a sheltered anchorage.

The Mosquito Lagoon is also the place we visited on foot in 2005. We drove over to the Canaveral National Seashore from Disney World. After visiting the beach, we crossed the road and followed a trail through the jungle to Mosquito Lagoon. We had Jennifer, and John, and Cheryl, Nick, Sara, Katelyn and Victoria , Dave, Cathy, and Bobby

with us. The small girls delighted at finding horseshoe crab shells in the shallows of Mosquito Lagoon.