Wednesday, Nov 16, 2011 Titusville anchorage

  As we were preparing to leave, one large sailboat motored past and yelled at Ken that the anchorage got shallower every year.  There were numerous boats anchored without any sign of crew, and one sailboat was listing at low tide.  We were happy to leave and took off about 7:20am.

  Going around Ponce Inlet 'Vulcan' was hailing Blue Planet, but they didn’t respond so I answered the hail.  The skipper proceeded to say how he went aground on that same shoal when leaving St. Augustine and we were joking about needing to read instructions.  Then on to George Musson Memorial Bridge where it opens every 20 minutes, only I’d forgotten about that and thought it was on request, so we had to putter around for nearly 20 minutes.

  Motored on through Mosquito Lagoon and the Haulover Canal Bascule Bridge where numerous little fishing boats were anchored.  Coming up in the spring of 2009 we’d seen wild flamingoes on the island, but none this fall.  We love all the birds.  The terns soar around then will flutter just above the water before they make a straight dive in and out.  The brown pelicans plunge into the water with a belly flop which looks like it could hurt until I read they have air pockets in their breasts that they inflate before the dive.

  On into the Indian River and the anchorage at Titusville.  The marina had put in a mooring field that takes up some of the anchorage area, but there is plenty of room north of it. We anchored by a boat that looked like it had been abandoned with torn sailcovers.

It was a beautiful, hot, sunny day and a beautiful evening.