Homeward Bound--March 22



Caribbean Jack's at dawn



We tried to leave Daytona Loggerhead Marina on Sunday morning, March 20 at first light.  I practiced backing out of the slip in my dreams all night, just to be ready for my morning duties.

You’d think with the diver’s discovery of the line around the propeller and the loose zinc that Sevilla would be purring like a kitten.  Not.  In fact, the terrible rattling/shuddering noise started up again as I pushed the throttle forward up to 2,500 rpm.  Glen said, “I’m not even going to fool with it.”  So we turned her around and headed back the short distance to the outside dock where the two of us got her tied up.  On Sunday morning at 7:30, it’s not likely you’ll reach your diver by phone, but we tried.  He sleepily referred us to a mechanic he knew.

We were thinking of all the really awful things that could be happening:  more tranny trauma; cutlass bearing?  Worse?  Alas, no one was available to diagnose our problem.  So, we tried patience.  Glen finished reading Playing with Fire, the second in the Dragon Tattoo series.  I fixed cabbage, salad, mashed potatoes and blueberry muffins to go with the left over corned beef.  “Comfort food.”

Fortunately we were still on our “month” at Stuart Loggerhead which allows members to take as many as 7 days at their participating marinas, so we had days a few days left at Daytona.  It was a lovely facility with nice pool, hot tub, and swinging beach bar and restaurant on the premises.  Life was still good; it was the getting home part that got in the way.

On Monday, I had to get off the boat, so I went to mail a birthday card to Kazakhstan and took a long walk through the ICW side of Daytona Beach, strolling by the Salvation Army shelter, various motorcycle sales outlets, some nice cafés, antique stores, and greatly admiring the beautiful old post office building.  Downtown seemed to be coming back from the recession.  I stopped in a French café that had been open for only five months for a Cappuccino and quiche.  But there were several closed restaurants, and empty buildings for sale and lease.  There was definitely some “art deco” potential a la Miami Beach for a few of them.  The waterside park was lovely and the News Journal “Center” functioned as an arts campus for Daytona State College.

In the beautiful city library I spent a couple of hours rummaging around in the newspapers.  I read that the reason proprietors are hesitant to open up businesses downtown was that the homeless and down and out people hanging around there were driving off customers.  These business people complained that the nearby shelters were encouraging these”undesirables” to hang around downtown. They said Daytona, with a population of only 65,000, had the equivalent population of the very needy of a city many times its size.  Daytona had been a “magnet for homeless and struggling people over the past several decades.”

Actually, no one panhandled me; I saw no beggars, nor anyone sleeping on park benches that day.  Maybe everyone was at the beach, hitting on the Spring Breakers.  Don’t know.  But I also read that the state of Florida was cutting huge sums from the budget, especially from education and social services. Ironically, some of the most lucrative Florida businesses are for-profit pain clinics accused of illegally dispensing potent prescription drugs like oxycodone and hydrocodone. These”pill mills” flourish in strip malls, especially in South Florida, and those addicted to such pills probably constitute a large number of these street people who are hanging around Daytona Beach.  An estimated seven people a day in Florida die of prescription drug overdoses according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.  A planned state database for tracking the sale of prescription drugs has been halted by the Governor who stated it was an invasion of privacy. (Sources: the Miami Herald and the Daytona News-Journal)  Surely, a lot of that addiction was a cause of the misery of the down and outers in Daytona?

I stopped in at the Salvation Army “hotel” on my way back to the marina, thinking about all the extra food we had loaded on the boat for the trip to the Bahamas.  Could it be used by the shelter?  Of course, and the guys there were more than willing to drive over to the marina after work and pick up the boxes that we would leave at the Harbormaster’s office.  I had never been in a shelter like that before; in fact, I’m rarely around poor, down-and-out people at all.  Strange emotions welled up; especially, after seeing the fabulous homes and yachts of Florida, the opulence, the glamour, the expensive retail and the very upscale living.  And the contrast with the relative simplicity of the cruising couples we met, many of whom had sold their homes and belongings, and settled for small scale lives in small spaces on their relatively modest boats.  Again, the contrast with the lives of these poor souls who line up for a night’s sleep at the shelter, and a very early breakfast (5:30) before they’re turned out for the day.

St. Augustine's historic light house

I know I digress.  Who wants to read about unpleasant things in a sailing blog?  Suffice it to say, that the mechanic and diver both agreed that they could find nothing wrong with Sevilla—everything checked out fine.  Perhaps we should change the fuel filters?  Sure enough, Glen did so, and she was rarin’ to go.  We left on Tuesday morning, March 22, for the 52 mile ride up to St. Augustine.

Hope Spring is bringing you lovely thoughts.

Maureen and Glen

Daytona Beach

March 22, 2011