{"id":967,"date":"2016-12-08T13:49:11","date_gmt":"2016-12-08T13:49:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/dreamtime-sailing.com\/?p=967"},"modified":"2016-12-08T13:49:11","modified_gmt":"2016-12-08T13:49:11","slug":"dolphins-and-manatees-means-a-lovely-day-until-a-thunk","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dreamtime-sailing.com\/?p=967","title":{"rendered":"Dolphins and manatees means a lovely day – until a thunk…"},"content":{"rendered":"

4 December 2016<\/p>\n

Due to forecasted strong southerly winds for the foreseeable future we have decided to make our way down the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW) for the rest of our trip to Ft. Pierce, Florida.<\/p>\n

The downside is that the trip will take an extra week or more.\u00a0 The upside is that we have our favorite restaurants at each of the expected ports of call.\u00a0 Today we will he arriving in Palm Coast for our burrito and margarita\/cerveza dinner.<\/p>\n

But first we untie from the mooring ball in St. Augustine, timing our departure with the Bridge of Lions opening at 0900.\u00a0 The rest of the bridges today are on request, so we won\u2019t have to rush or time anything else except the tides and currents for transiting the Matanzas Inlet\u00a0 with high tide which we were able to do with no issues or dramas.<\/p>\n

\"p1030158\"<\/a> We begin to see some of the carnage left behind by Hurricane Matthew which hit this area of Florida pretty hard in October. \u00a0Yesterday,\u00a0the water taxi driver had told us that during the storm at least 20 boats broke free from their moorings, during the surge the water was way above the seawall protecting the city. \u00a0The marina across the way was demolished.\u00a0 Boats were found down river, beached, de-masted and\/or sunk.\u00a0 As we motored down the canal we did indeed see a few beached boats, and many damaged private docks.\u00a0\"p1030162\"<\/p>\n

Once though the bridge we continued on the ICW and have our first dolphin sightings \u2014 yay! Hopefully this means a lovely day on the water.\u00a0 A short while later we spot a manatee – double yay!<\/p>\n

A few minutes after that we heard a \u201cthunk\u201d on the bottom of the boat \u2014 uh oh!\u00a0 We must have hit something, but there was nothing we saw in the water before or after the thud.\u00a0 We were in the middle of the channel, there shouldn\u2019t be any fish traps or obstructions.\u00a0 We thought it might have been a sunken log, but didn\u2019t see anything in the water.<\/p>\n

After a bit of time, Bob noticed the boat was not going as fast as it had been or that he thought it should be given the engine RPMs.\u00a0 He also felt like the steering wasn\u2019t feeling quite right.\u00a0 Bob said it felt like we were dragging something, but we couldn\u2019t see anything or any evidence of this.\u00a0 We hoped it was only the current slowing us down.<\/p>\n

However, better to be safe than sorry, once we arrived at Palm Coast Marina, we called a diver and arranged for him to come tomorrow morning to take a look at the bottom to be sure all is well before we continue on to Daytona Beach.<\/p>\n

With nothing more we could do, after cleaning up, we made good on our promise to ourselves and made the 10 minute walk to European Village and shared an awesome burrito at Burrito 101 \u2014 we highly recommend this place.<\/p>\n

Overall, the day was sunny, warm and beautiful.\u00a0 Other than the constant concern that the boat was not responding as usual and that the thud either caused some damage or something got caught up in the rudder, it was a lovely day.<\/p>\n

Cabin fans are on, we are wearing shorts, t-shirts and flip flops\/thongs \u2014 we are in Florida!!!!\u00a0 Yay for warmth.\u00a0 That one uncomfortable night off shore was worth it!!!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

4 December 2016 Due to forecasted strong southerly winds for the foreseeable future we have decided to make our way down the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW) for the rest of our trip to Ft. Pierce, Florida. The downside is that the trip will take an extra week or more.\u00a0 The upside is that we have our … Continue reading Dolphins and manatees means a lovely day – until a thunk…<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-967","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dreamtime-sailing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/967","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dreamtime-sailing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dreamtime-sailing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dreamtime-sailing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dreamtime-sailing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=967"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/dreamtime-sailing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/967\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":970,"href":"https:\/\/dreamtime-sailing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/967\/revisions\/970"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dreamtime-sailing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=967"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dreamtime-sailing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=967"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dreamtime-sailing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=967"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}