Cocoa, Fl to New Smyrna Beach, Fl

Miles Traveled 52.9

Total Miles Traveled 2700

Day 207

We left Cocoa Village Marina this morning heading north on the Indian River, after a stop at Titusville, Fl for fuel, our first encounter was the NASA Railroad bridge. 

For nearly three decades, the NASA Railroad at Kennedy Space Center in Florida kept the space shuttle's solid rocket boosters on track. The mighty boosters flew in pairs and generated a combined 5.3 million pounds of thrust at ignition, pushing the shuttle assembly past the grip of Earth's gravity during the critical first two minutes of flight. Stacked within each of the 15-story-tall, reusable boosters are four solid rocket motor segments packed with a hard, rubbery cocktail of propellants.  Getting the 12-foot-wide, 150-ton segments to the launch site was only possible by rail. The segments were loaded by manufacturer ATK at a plant in Promontory, Utah, then shipped in customized train cars on a seven-day trip to Kennedy. 

A few miles past the NASA Bridge, we entered the Haulover Canal.  Native Americans, explorers and settlers hauled or carried canoes and small boats over this narrow strip of land between Mosquito Lagoon and the Indian River. Eventually it became known as the “haulover.” Connecting both bodies of water had long challenged early settlers of this area. Spaniards visited as early as 1605 and slid boats over the ground covered with mulberry tree bark. Early settlers used rollers and skids to drag schooners across. Fort Ann was established nearby in 1837, during the 2nd Seminole War (1835-1842), to protect the haulover from Indians and carry military supplies from the lagoon to the river. In 1852, contractor G.E. Hawes dug the first canal using slave labor. It was 3 feet (0.91 m) deep, 14 feet (4.3 m) wide, and completed in time for the 3rd Seminole War (1856-1858). Steamboat and cargo ships used the passage until the railroad arrived in 1885. By 1887, the Florida Coast Line Canal and Transportation Company dug a new and deeper canal, a short distance from the original. The Intracoastal Waterway incorporated the Haulover Canal as a federal project in 1927 to be maintained by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Since then the channel has been dug wider and deeper, and a basin added for launching boats. 

The canal is a no wake zone and manatees can be seen here most of the time.   We saw several manatees during our crossing, but not long enough to get a picture in the brackish water.

After passing through the canal, we came up behind a catamaran, “Cat Daddy” from Texas.  When I called him on the radio to pass him, he said he had been waiting five months the meet us, he is a looper and had been following our blog since he started from Brownsville, Texas in September.  I told him where we were planning to anchor and he arrived shortly after us.  He came over to our boat in his dinghy and we compared notes on where we have been and our plans going forward.

We had a great visit until the noseums attacked.  If you don’t know what noseums are, they are a tiny speck of an insect that bites like a mosquito but you can’t see what bit you. 

The entertainment of the evening was this Jeep/Boat cruising up the ICW.  Glad we had the camera ready because I’m not sure anyone would believe us.