Started: St. Augustine Municipal Marina, #26, 29°53.30′N 081°18.44′W

Anchored: Daytona/Seabreeze, 29°13.79′N 081°01.26′W

Log: 57.1 nm. Time: 8 ¼ hr. Engine: 9 hr. Fuel: 46 gal.

Did not get up in a big hurry. Didn't hustle to the fuel dock. Took our time taking on fuel and water. Washed the deck. A generally leisurely day.

We were planning on going just 20 or so miles to Fort Matanzas. Clearly, that's not what happened. We got a lot further than we originally planned. And it wasn't a pleasant trip. Mistakes were made.

We followed two other boars down the ICW.

When we got to the Crescent Beach Bridge, I put the hammer down so we could close up ranks and all get through together. It's the right way to use a bridge — bunch up and share the opening.

Once through, I checked our ETA in Daytona. If we kept up the pace that the lead boat was setting, we'd be in Daytona at about 17:00 with sunset at 17:58. Hopefully enough daylight to find an anchorage in the Seabreeze area just north of Daytona Beach proper.

The Seabreeze anchorages are scary. They're shallow. And most chart plotters get the tides wrong.

The Anchorage that's called SeaBreeze North (mile 828.9) is charted at 7'-8'. We may have found those depths.

The tidal swing here appears to be about 4'.

7' at high tide would be 3' at low tide. That would be a mess with a 6' keel. Red Ranger would hit bottom and then tip over and lay on her side. A very scary idea.

The deep part of Seabreeze North is in an area marked with underwater cables: do not anchor. Another boat was there. Anchoring guides show that folks do anchor in the cable area. We weren't happy with that idea.

If we'd tried to poke around in Seabreeze North at anything other than the peak of high tide, we'd have been aground. With the apparent tides of 4', we got out of there quickly.

It tuns out that the tide table used by my chart plotter is wrong. But we didn't figure that out until much later.

We tried Seabreeze South (mile 829.2) which is just south of the bridges. It's also shallow, but more like 8'-9'. The extra foot was a real comfort.

[Our depth sensor is 3' above the bottom of the keel and about 3' under the water line. When we see 8' of water under our sensor, it is really 11' of water. A small margin of safety.]

8' at high tide with a swing that appears to be 4' means we could be sitting in the mud at low tide. But our margin of safety means we'll just be close to sitting in the mud.

The chart plotters switch to the nearest tide station. Around here, that's a tide station in the ocean. Tides there are 4'. Tides in the river are closer to 1'. Maybe 2'.

So our panic about being in 7' of water with a 4' tide was unwarranted. It turns out that we would have been fine. And now we're better. And unlikely to sit on the bottom at low tide.

The Memorial Bridge opens at 8:15 and then on request after 8:45. If we get started way early, we could shoot through Main Street at 7:45 which would let us hit the 8:15 at Memorial.

We're waiting for word from some friends. We may hang around here. In which case, why hurry?

Or we may meet them in Titusville. In which case, we need to get moving. It's 47 miles, almost 8 hours if we can keep up a 6 kt pace tomorrow.

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