After returning from our RV adventure to Fort Myers for Christmas we spent yesterday regrouping and preparing to leave today.

We left the dock this morning just before sunrise at 0700.. tide was dropping with high tide was at 0534... no depth reading at the dock but once 100 feet or so away from the dock we started seeing 7 to 8 feet. The canal heading back to the ICW had a few shallow spots where the depth sounder stopped working... we made it to the ICW with no bumps.

Plans today were to go to New Smyrna and dock at one of the city docks arriving around 1400... however, we found ourselves running 7.6 to 8.2 knots most of the day... a very favorable current... only slowing down once we reached New Smyrna where we lost our boost in speed.

We arrived to the City Docks well before 1400 and also found them both filled with boats... no space for us to dock... it was early so we continued on deciding on anchoring around 1400. We had to run a little longer to find a decent anchorage stopping at 1445 between daymark 19 and 20 in Mosquito Lagoon... Active Captain anchorage named Mosquito Lagooon 1 at N28°49.827', W080°48.169'. We traveled today for 7.75 hours covering 52.66 nautical miles averaging 6.8 knots.

The anchorage is really out in the middle of nowhere... the sky tonight should be spectacular as long as there are no clouds.

Lily and Herman were very happy to be anchored...

Layover in Palm Coast while we rented and drove an RV to Fort Myers for Christmas with Family

Yesterday morning after waking to very windy conditions... we started we thinking our cruise plan... the weather was really improving for the 4 to 5 days... Small Craft Advisory had been issued for several days with winds 20 knots plus... we can move in these conditions without issue but we had a real issue being able to safely get out of the slip we were in at Marineland Marina... with wind direction and the amount of space for back out and turn SAILS in the fairway... it was just not safe for us... we opted to stay another day at the marina.

This was going to make it impossible to make it the Florida West Coast before Christmas... it was time for plan B... which we did not yet have... We have a lot of friends in Palm Coast and they reached out to us offering dock space for SAILS... OK Plan B was starting... Dock Space was available... but we still wanted to get to the Florida West Coast before Christmas... car rental and hotel room was next part of Plan B... cars were available but terribly expensive... I guess due the date we needed to rent were spanning over Christmas day... hotel in Punta Gorda was not an issue... was able to locate a dog friendly hotel for a reasonable rate... then we had an idea... maybe we could rent an RV and have both a car and accommodations with a single rental... did some research and found that an RV was about the same cost or less than rental car and hotel room... Plan B was finalized... leave boat in Palm Coast at friends home dock, rent RV drive to Punta Gorda spend Christmas Eve and Christmas Day with family and return to Palm Coast after Christmas and have a more leisurely cruise to the West Coast on the boat.

Well, when we actually dove into the RV rental we found that everyone must also have a Plan B that involved renting an RV... We spent all day attempting to book a reservation for an RV... every RV we found said available and we would contact them to inquire abut rental and received the same response maybe 6 times... "So sorry... our RV was just booked for the dates you need... blah, blah, blah" The process to book an RV is so slow and you can only do one at a time or you risk double booking... yesterday at 2230 we received our 6th "not available" message... we went to bed disappointed... plan B was not coming together easily.

0600 today I was awake and back on the RV rental websites scouring for an available RV... found three more that we had not tried yesterday... I broke the rules and tried to book all three at the same time hoping that one would come through and I could withdraw our request for the other one... the RV owners have 24 hours to respond to a request making it a slow process... some replay quickly within an hour or two and others not so quickly... we were out of time so I took the chance and tried to book two simultaneously... they were on different venues... one was on RVShare.com and two were on Outdoorsy.com... both request submitted around 0700... now we waited... 0730 received a response back from one of the Outdoorsy.com RV's... not available for our dates... Very frustrating as you enter the dates desired when you search for available RV's and then you get the "not available for your dates"...

1030 no response back from the other two requests... Winds were down to 10 to 15 knots... safe to move SAILS from Marineland Marina to Palm Coast private dock... as forecast was for winds to increase this afternoon... 1100 we were clear and underway... we had about 5 nautical miles to go to the new dock... we had just reached the ICW and heading south and my phone beeped... it was a message from the RVShare request we had sent... we had lost connection to the marina WiFi... it was now pouring down rain... winds had picked up... not best time to be able to switch to Boat WiFi... normally I do this before we leave the dock but with such a short distance to go I had not switched over... I tried to access the message from my phone but it wanted me to logon... did not know the password as I had used my laptop browser to set the accounts up and it automatically creates a very cryptic - strong password... nothing you can remember... would have to wait until we arrived to checked via the laptop.... hopefully it was good news.

Few minutes later my phone beeped again... another message... but this one was from the Outdoorsy.com RV we had requested to book... now all we could think was we had TWO RV's booked...

We arrived to our destination a few minutes later...as soon as we were secure I switched over to boat Wifi and logged on RVshare.com... message was confirming our booking... we had an RV... YAY! But did we have TWO RV's... I logged on to Outdoorsy.com and check the message... it was not a confirmation of booking but rather a question from the RV owner...
I replied to their question and also told them I was withdrawing our booking request.... so Plan B had come together... SAILS will be at a friends home where she would be secure and safe... and we had a confirmation for an RV.

SAILS is secure in Palm Coast till after Christmas. Our position is N29°35.470', W081°12.448'. We traveled today for 45 minutes covering 5.4 nautical miles averaging 7.2 knots.