Day 206: Friday, March 29, 2013

Port to Port: Near Flagler Beach, Florida

Underway: 0:00 am      Motor Off: 0:00 pm      Miles Traveled: 0      Stayed At: Anchor

First Things First: First time catching a fish in the Atlantic Intracoastal.

Mile 809 to Mile 809: Today is a lazy day. We like our little cove so much we decided to stay an extra day. We have a bunch of little projects but nothing too strenuous. After having breakfast (again with the manatee) of scrambled eggs, fried red potatoes and grapefruit, I decided to take the depth sounder apart to see if there was something fixable – it failed yesterday and stopped reading depths. After poking around for a little while I found a major problem – the flexible connection from the circuit board to the screen has completely separated from the solder connection. We need a new depth finder. This one lasted a long time though – we bought it in 2002 for our big trip to NYC so we got our moneys worth I guess.

My next big project was to catch dinner. Several fishing boats have looped through the channel tossing lures so I figured I could do the same thing. After only about 5 minutes I caught my first fish – a spotted sea trout (thanks again Bill). Not big enough for dinner but a good start. After a bunch more casts and a couple follows I caught a beautiful, bright shiny fish called a ribbon fish or an Atlantic cutlassfish (Trichiurus lepturus) (I looked it up on Google). Its tail was a point and it had a iridescent full length fin along its back. Too skinny to eat but amazing to look at. I caught one more large trout right next to the boat but it flipped off before getting it into the boat. Bummer.

Cindy spent some time wiping off the walls inside while it was cool to keep ahead of the dust and mildew. The boat looks pretty good even though we have lived on her for more than 6 months. She is also trying to read like a crazy women before her library ebooks expire – tough duty. I spent the afternoon backing up computer files and camera chips.

We had another “not many times in a lifetime” show late morning. We were in the cabin working when Cindy heard a commotion outside. A huge swirl was spiraling near shore and we soon saw a half dozen dolphin put on a show chasing fish in our little cove. We speculate they herded some fish down the channel and trapped them at the dead end and went on a feeding frenzy. There was even a baby dolphin learning the ropes. Very cool. It was hard to choose where to point the camera but I got a nice sample of video to share.

CLICK HERE: Dolphin Feeding Frenzy

After finishing our projects, I decided to dinghy to shore to see what was over the tall sand dunes on the north side of the channel. We are always wondering what is around the next bend in the river or over the next hill. I expected the remnants of a failed housing development but found a beautiful semi-natural area with sand dunes, rutted roads where local kids drive their dune buggies and lots of pine and palm trees. The nearest house I found was probably 2 miles away. What a fun discovery. I found several large  burrows in the dunes which I thought might be tortoise burrows but later decided they were probably dens for armadillo – I saw one rooting around in the leaves under a tree on my walk. It was a perfect walk – warm sun, sand, beautiful scenery and wildlife. As Cindy’s T-shirt says – Life is Good.