November 15. We were up and underway at a reasonable hour and on our way to Titusville.

There’s really not much going on in Titusville although there is a West Marine. Otherwise, it was nothing special and I was glad to be out of there the next morning. Although the Freedoms did have a potentially life ending / life changing experience.

The Freedoms came over to our boat for dinner. Christy made a Mexican extravaganza and during the evening the winds started to build tremendously. Deb was quite nervous about their boat in such unexpected conditions, so right after dinner they got into their dinghy and headed home to Freedom while Christy and I turned in for the night.

The next day we found out that things hadn’t gone exactly as the Freedoms had planned. After tying the dinghy to the boat, Deb was caught off balance in the wind driven swells and fell from the dinghy into the water.

The potential for tragedy was real as the winds were blowing 25 knots with a nasty chop and near pitch dark due to the lack of moon light. We were only anchored a hundred feet away and never heard her screaming. Fortunately for Deb, she’s worth more alive than dead, so Jim jumped in after her and hauled her to safety. The potential for one or even both of them to die was real. It was a freak thing that could have had tragic results. Fortunately, it all worked out, although Deb will probably need counseling………

November 16. We left Titusville at the relaxed hour of 10:00. We had a short 20 mile run to Cocoa Beach planned.

While hauling the anchor we were visited by a shark. We were at least 40 miles from the nearest inlet so seeing a shark was totally unexpected. It was a big guy of at least 6 feet swimming along the side of the boat as we got underway.

We are able to sail for the better part of the day as the winds were out of the north. Of course the north winds bring cold air so we had to deal with nighttime temperatures around 50 degrees.

Our stop for the night was to be in Cocoa Beach. We were able to get in real close to shore and anchor in the lee of the bridge. After anchoring we headed into town to do a little exploring. Town was really quite nice, there was an extraordinary hardware store although the barmaid at the pub we stopped into was a megabitch, she was by far the nastiest service person we had met so far and it’s the first time in my life I’ve ever left zero tip. When she dies the planet will be a nicer place.