Friday, May 1, 2026 continued… They took the straps off, then we backed out of the slip and headed south down the ICW. Thankfully we only had to wait 7-minutes for the first bridge to open.

As we feared, the ICW was busy on a Friday afternoon. Lots of speed boats zoomed by and several tiny boats came terrifyingly close to us, but now we’re jaded and don’t freak out when the boats get close like we used to. We were pleased to report that the ride to the Lake Worth inlet was uneventful.

Last time we’d left via this inlet, the veracity of the Gulf Stream made our autopilot freak out. So this time, Eric hand steered between channel and gulf stream and the transition was uneventful. He also sped up to 1750 RPM during the transition so we had more power against the current.

For the rest of the evening and most of the night, we made great speed in the Gulf Stream, doing 8-knots at 1600 RPM. By 0400, we had slowed down to our typical speed of 6-knots at 1600 RPM. It was a full moon, and we had great visibility during the night. It was on the windy side with 17-knots true wind speed hitting us on the beam. While it wasn’t calm seas, the direction of the waves made it a comfortable ride. The wind slowly calmed down in the early hours of the morning, but sea conditions actually started to get a little rougher — but it was still good overall.

Because of the broken sleep schedule, we generally do not sleep well while at sea. But none of us had slept well in the motel, and we were all super happy to be back in our own beds. That said, Eric was more wound up than normal because he was worried about finding problems. He had an especially hard time relaxing on this passage. 

We also noticed that the boat was vibrating differently than it did before the haul out. Per “Lugger” Bob Senter, part of the change was fixing the propellor; part of it was changing the engine hoses to a higher quality silicon. 

By 0930, the spacecraft launch facilities at Cape Canaveral were visible.

We entered the ICW at the Port Canaveral inlet around 0930. It definitely looked industrial. There were also some giant cruise ships there. It was a short ride up the ICW to our marina. Here was a shot looking west towards the marina (on the left)

And a shot taken at about the same location looking back west towards the mouth of the inlet.

We arrived to the Port Canaveral Yacht Club at 1030. We had been assigned to an end tie. We were surprised to be greeted by several people, who all helped us tie up. They told us they were having a regatta right now — hence so many people on the dock at the moment — and there would be a party this evening. Everyone was so friendly and welcoming! A storm was in the forecast for this evening, so Eric spent a lot of time tying up to ensure we’d be secure in the big winds.

Unfortunately, we had a problem with the power connection. We couldn’t run the battery charger – every time we did, the breaker popped. But, thank goodness, we could run the AC with no problems. We would have been very unhappy if we had to close all the windows and hatches for the forecasted rain without any AC. Fortunately, it was windy, so we ran the wind generator to supplement the power (and the solar panels, too, of course).

Normally, we like to go out to eat to celebrate a successful passage, but Eric and Christi were too tired to go out. We had lunch onboard, followed by naps. At 1500, we were woken up by frantic knocking on the hull. The marina told us that we needed to re-situate in our space to make room for a disabled catamaran. At this point it was raining a little bit; they were big drops of water, but there weren’t many drops. And the wind was starting to tick up. A slew of people came to help us manually move Kosmos back so there was more room on the dock for the catamaran to come in. Then they all helped the cat in.

By 1530 the wind had jumped up and was screaming — we were literally in a tornado watch. Ominous dark clouds rolled overhead. In the photo above, you could see them in the distance. Heavy rain did eventually come, and fortunately, no tornadoes formed.

We’d had big plans to spend the evening doing chores and to get settled in after being gone for two weeks, but we were just too tired. We were also too tired to go to the party. Instead, we had passage food for dinner and just laid low onboard.