Our dock neighbor here is a long vessel with a steel hull. The dock hand shared that it was damaged in the last round of storms. She has a steel hull and has equivalent of “hail dimples” on her sides. The boat was pushed up against the dock with the round ball fenders in between. Apparently the fenders were too inflated and actually caused concave dents in the hull. That is a lot of ball fenders! 

We head out on a slack tide around 8:30am. Our destination is Halifax Harbor Marina in Daytona Beach. Our plan is to stay two days. 

Discourteous boaters are encountered every day. Today a prime example is two fisherman in a boat anchored IN the ICW. This is the equivalent of having a picnic on a road! They know us bigger boats will go around. However, even if we reduce speed to idle we throw off a heck of a wave for these little boats to handle. Whoever is not at the helm watches out the back to make sure no one went overboard. It is called responsible boating. Many would say “surf’s up dude, deal with it!”.  The other major offense we see is smaller boats going at max speed and zooming around us not paying any attention to the “rules of the road”. It is so very dangerous. I know fishing is a passionate sport but … really?!

We are only a couple miles from Daytona Beach, near Ponce Inlet and we encounter several dredging barges. These vessels are impressive. They scoop up the bottom and push it through a long tube to make areas of the channel deeper. However they appear to have our path blocked. We proceed past and attempt to go around. Fortunately a SeaTow (kinda like AAA and tow truck combo) boat flags us down and we chat on the VHF radio. Turns out we would have run aground if we had proceeded much further. He offered to lead the way back to the ICW. We follow, staying close behind. Another example of great timing!  Alan has this rare talent of always being able to park near the front door wherever we go. I think this scenario is the boating equivalent – LOL, good, it will hopefully keep us out of trouble. 

Docking at Halifax Harbor Marina is smooth. We hook up our electric cable to a pedestal providing 50amp power but it doesn’t work. We stay on our generator overnight to provide electricity. We move to a different slip the next day so we can plug in and give our generator a rest.

Alan loves to take me out to breakfast. I find an interesting selection called the Monkey Morning Café within walking distance. Upon arrival we notice a Parental Advisory (for explicit content) sticker in the window. Uh-oh, what kind of place is this… We didn’t walk there and work up an appetite to back away now so we forge ahead, we are on an adventure, right?  First thing we notice is the AC/DC song ”It’s a Long Way to the Top” featuring bagpipes blaring on the radio. Alice Cooper and other hard rock singers from the 80’s were on their playlist. Some songs had dicey lyrics. They served alcoholic drinks and only breakfast/lunch. Food was good and service even better, in fact exceptional. The owner and his wife (Michelle whose nickname is Monkey) were working the dining area shoulder to shoulder with their team. He was shaking hands and greeting customers as if welcoming them to their living room. I called him over and shared how impressed we were. He said he doesn’t advertise. With their food, service and fun atmosphere they won’t need to and I did something rare, I posted a positive review!