No alarms this morning as we had a very short day ahead of us to reach Daytona Beach, FL… nice to sleep in an extra hour. We departed shortly after 0800 and headed north up the ICW.

One bridge to deal with that had a restricted opening schedule… opening on the hour and 20 after and before the hour… every 20 minutes. We arrived to the George Musson Memorial Bridge a couple of minutes early and waited with one other boat for the 0820 opening.

Departing ahead of us were three other MTOA trawlers… Sanctuary, C-Life and Sa-Shay… I could see them ahead of and they had taken an alternate route leaving the ICW and heading out toward the Ponce Inlet… I had always wanted to try this route… today was the day. The trawler that I had waited with at the bridge took the ICW about and was approximately 1/4 mile ahead of us… would be a good test to see which route was actually faster. There was plenty of water depth the entire route and when we rejoined the ICW north of the Ponce Inlet… I was now a good mile ahead of the other trawler… the alternate route was definitely a shorter alternative to the ICW.

We arrived to Daytona Beach at approximately 1030 and docked at the Halifax Harbor Marina slip J-17. Our position at the marina N29°12.173’, W081°00.826’. We traveled today for 2 hours and 25 minutes covering 13.81 nautical miles averaging 5.7 knots.