Day Four - Cocoa, Florida

The day started with a beautiful sunrise at the marina in New Smyrna Beach. After pumping out the holding tank, pulled out of the slip and headed south on the ICW, which was only a hundred yards or so from the dock. We passed a number of beautiful waterside homes and met little boat traffic. A few fishermen, but not many cruisers. The weather was a little cold for the locals, but it was warm enough for me to don my shorts and put the jeans away. We heard on the TV that the SpaceX launch scheduled for this morning was delayed until tomorrow. What luck for us as our next marina in Cocoa is right across from Cape Canaveral. We will definitely be looking skyward at 8:13am. As we neared Mosquito Lagoon, we passed many RV campgrounds. Martha particularly like the one that looks like a trolley. Mosquito Lagoon was a long open body of water that allowed us to open up and make some good time. I'm sure the diesel engines enjoyed the workout after all the no wake zone speed. We had to make a sharp right hand turn into the Haulover Canal that took us to the Indian River. 
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Once we got across the river it was a straight shot down the ICW with NASA and Cape Canaveral in the East. The Vehicle Assembly Building was a prominent landmark the whole way down. 

We arrived at the Cocoa Village Marina around 2:15pm and the dockhands helped us tie up. They really did a great job getting us set up. It is a very nice marina, despite having fixed docks. We much prefer floating docks, but they don't have tide fluctuations here, so the fixed docks aren't so bad.

There is a very nice shopping village about two blocks from the marina. We spent the afternoon in the shops and returned to the boat for dinner. The Travis Hardware Store is in the village of shops. It is a classic old-time hardware store, founded in 1885, that has everything of a hardware nature and more. Martha particularly like the huge open ended and adjustable wrenches hanging on the wall. She had to take a selfie with them. I'm sure the store carries the nuts and bolts that fit the wrenches. You may have to climb the old wooden ladders on rails to get to the bins, but they are probably there.

Martha took advantage of the nice onsite laundry to do some wash. Tomorrow, after we watch the SpaceX launch, we will head to Vero Beach. We don't have any reservations, but have a couple of options. The weather is supposed to be great, although a little cold for the locals.