Fire ze Rockets!

Fire ze Rockets!

Thursday December 17, 2020

The gray morning delivered a shower of rain before we set out.  Once we were getting underway the north wind was about 10 kts.  When the instruments were turned on, alarms started going off.  The notices seemed to indicate that we had “messages” from other vessels.  We thought we cancelled the alarm and set off.  Over the radio we heard an interchange between Coast Guard Range Control and the sailing vessel “Artemis”.  It seemed that the sailboat was in a restricted area due to an impending rocket launch.  In no uncertain terms the Coast Guard informed the captain that he should be making a heading of X at all speed in order to “clear the box”.  The implication was that the launch was being delayed on account of “Artemis” being within this restricted zone.  While this radio chatter was ongoing, our alarms kept going off every three or four minutes! 

To make matters worse, the bascule bridge that we needed to traverse was reported to remain closed during rocket launches.  Naturally, I was completely calm and Mike was even calmer!  We had no idea of where these restricted areas might be – our chart shows areas both within the ICW and offshore along this section of the coast.  We called the bascule bridge on the radio.  The bridge tender claimed to know nothing about any rocket launch and said there were no restrictions on opening at the present time, so that was good news.  We heard a Coast Guard “securité” call on the radio confirming a scheduled launch of a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket this morning.  Meanwhile alarms kept going off on our boat.  Finally, we called the Coast Guard who confirmed that there was no problem with the area we would be traversing – the restricted areas were offshore. Even better, Mike figured out how to turn off the annoying alarms. (It turns out that each of our two chart plotters and four multi-instrument displays has to be turned off independently). Just as we were about to go through the NASA Causeway Bridge our depth sounder seemed to malfunction. This problem was actually due to silt stirred up by a powerboat that passed us just before the bridge. However, we did start to ask ourselves if this was Friday the thirteenth.  Some mornings seem to have more than their fair share of excitement. According to the news the Falcon 9 rocket launch was scrubbed due to problems with sensor, rather than encroachment of an unsuspecting sailboat. Maybe it will go ahead tomorrow and we’ll see it from our anchorage.

We are currently anchored off Cocoa, Florida.  Later this afternoon the sun came out.  We took the dinghy to shore and had a walk.  A resident advised us that the overnight temperature is forecast to be 42 F.  Could be a cold night on Cotinga....

Gloria

28 21.142 N, 80 43.112 W

Dock piling reflection - Cocoa, Fl

Century plant (or maybe not!)

"Flat Freddy" - we spotted this poor unfortunate frog squashed between the forward tube of our dinghy and the inflatable floor ... sadly completely flattened.