Location: New Smyrna Beach
Today was a long day of traveling. Dad and I fell behind the rest after stopping in Titusville quickly to pick up a boat part that we had shipped there. It was exceedingly windy making it hard to get on and off the dock. The wind wasn't helping us catch up either, since it was blowing right on our nose. By midday Dad and I were short tacking along the ICW to try and gain some speed, because motoring slowly right into the wind is not fun. The channel was about one hundred feet wide and the depth outside the channel did not support boat traffic making our short tacking exceedingly tricky. We might have grazed some sand once or twice. The inside of the channel wasn't too deep either so when a huge powerboat passed us at full speed the turf from hole 18 was laid waste in its wake - that's what it looked like anyway, as if we were sailing on someone's lawn. As we steered through the jungle of upturned grass I noticed the engine temperature spike to above 200 degrees and no water was issuing out of the telltale, not a good sign. Dad frantically turned the engine off and opened the engine room hatch, it smelled like the baking of pavement in the summer heat. All I could think was "another engine problem, we'll never make it home." Dad was clearly upset at this set back. We turned the boat around and began to head back to Titusville. After thirty minutes of downwind sailing we had made it pretty close to the harbor entrance at Titusville. We tried the engine just in case and low and behold the temperature gauges returned to normal and the seawater that cools the engine flowed out of the telltale again, a.k.a. success. We were saved! A piece of turf that the powerboat had drug up must have blocked up the intake valve that takes seawater into the heat exchanger which in turn cools off the engine. I think I could fix a car now with all the nerd knowledge I've gained about engines from Dad. After that the day got better, I saw a ton of manatees swimming through the canals and two flamingos.
We stayed an extra day in New Smyrna, fearing more rain and thunderstorms. Dad and I found a hole in the wall bar with a great husband/wife couple singing and playing the guitar, the place was packed. Dad also had fun showing me a shell gas station that looked like it was frozen in time. The meter still said twenty three cents a gallon and it had a propeller to show customers that gas was flowing from the pump to their car. In the morning we hope to make it to Palm Springs to meet up with our friends, Tom and Cathy.
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