Carpet bombed by pelicans

Sunday 12 Dec, St. Augustine to Cape Canaveral FL, cruising day 15: Pelicans do their dirty on us. Depart south for our next stop, Lake Worth in Palm Beach FL.

We wake to a foggy grey day. Are we still in St. Augustine, Florida? Did we move? This morning’s view feels more like Maine than Florida! The weather front that has just swept across USA, causing many Tornado deaths in Kentucky, is just about to reach us. But thankfully its ferocity has gone and all we get is 20 minutes of gusts and a light rain as it passes over us.

We have an easy morning, waiting for the rain to stop before departing. Oana made bread and a cake last evening and this morning a curry, ready to serve while we are underway.
Meanwhile, I have a bit of a clean-up job to do on deck. Last evening, we heard the all-too-familiar splatter above, like someone had just thrown a bucket of mud over the decks. Except it’s not mud, it’s pelican crap! We are familiar with seagull carpet bombing tactics, but I tell you what…what these pelicans lack in accuracy they certain make up for in volume and disgusting content. Pity, before today I had rather liked pelicans. Especially seeing them in flight just above the water. And when not flying they hold their beaks and heads down with a kind of pathetic apologetic look about them. Well guys, I’m not accepting your frinkin’ apologies today! You are out of order!
The muck is all over the aft of the boat. Clearly their target had been the cockpit. And the numerous splats range in colour from white to dark green and consistency from milk to diarrhea! As I wash it off with the deck hose, some of the yuckier components are reviled – fish bones and other partially digested fishy parts, including ½ fish tail. Geeez, passing that must have been painful!

And why are we leaving St. Augustine so soon? No, not because of the pelicans, but because there is reasonable wind forecasted on the back of this passing weather front, and from tomorrow and for the next several days there will be strong onshore winds and big seas, which will very likely affect our anchorage spot here. When we were last here in 2019 a similar event occurred, and we moved next to Pont Leon bridge to get shelter from swell coming through the entrance channel. But then we put ourselves into the strong tidal current and for each 6 hours in 12, when it was wind against tide, we swung back and forth in large chaotic arcs, riding over our anchor chain time and time again. This damaged the bottom paint and even took a couple of chunks out of the gelcoat. We really don’t like anchoring in wind against current situations ☹

As we sit and have our late breakfast, all snug in the cockpit tent, we watch as 2 fishing boats come in and tie up to mooring posts mid-channel. We cannot believe how many birds are both on and around the boats. The boat’s fishing arms are rigged out with nets dangling and every inch of rigging is covered with lines of perched birds, plus lots flying around and swimming on the water too. There must be 2000 birds at least, many of them pelicans. As we imagine what it must be like to crew those boats, we realise we got-off very lightly with our solitary bombing-run. Those boats and the crew must get covered in it. Awwww-yuk. The very thought!
Then, at the very moment the booms are winched back to vertical (so they can pass through the bridge) all the birds fly-off and gather on a nearby mud bank, like there was a signal or something. We guess it’s all a well-rehearsed daily procedure for them, like mealtime in a canteen.

At 2pm we lift the anchor and depart. Still very dull but no more rain, and a reasonable NE wind. The ride to the channel entrance is rather rolly, but once out and we make the right turn, the genoa gets poled-out to port and the motion settles down. We then have a nice downwind sail towards Cape Canaveral in 15-20kts of wind, doing ~8kts SOG. But by 9:30pm the wind drops to that exasperating level (~10knots) where you think it must be enough to sail, but it just isn’t. Not downwind that is. And when the boat speed drops below 5kts and the sails start banging around, the Volvo is called to duty. Sails get furled away and we are motoring. The forecast was for the wind to swing East and put us on a nice beam reach down the coast. But not to be.
Well, we can’t have it all our way with the forecast, we’ve had some pretty good luck so far.

By midnight we are coming up to Cape Canaveral, the NASA space launch site, which we have already sailed passed several times in the last 4 years. But it’s always interesting to see all the launch structures and look through the telescope to see what, if any, rockets are poised ready to lift-off. As a childhood Apollo fanatic, this place really has an awe about it for me. And the “shed” where those Saturn V rockets were constructed inside, built back in the 1960s, is still there, still in use and well lit up. Wouldn’t it be amazing if they had a launch just as we sailed passed? Or maybe not. The area we are sailing thought is marked on the chart as “danger zone, falling rocket debris”! Well, I’d chance it, to see a launch from this grandstand position. Wouldn’t you?