okay, so here's what happened.....

Friday,  sb on the icw....just south of new smyrna beach....ed decided he could break a cardinal rule.....heavy boat traffic and a dumb ass fisherman who thought he could fish in the channel made for a major conundrum......move just outside the channel or hold ground and make others move.....it's just a second,.... no problem.....  sadly, it was two seconds....which was one second too long....out of the channel the depth sounder went to 3.5 feet......nothing wrong with that, unless you need 4.5 feet of water to stay afloat.....so....we ran aground.....back off....nope.....power thru.....nope.....now we're really stuck........bad words don't help......call for tow....unfortunately, we were five miles into a ten mile no wake zone....so we waited for the tow....as he idled thru the no wake zone....tow boat us....just buy the insurance.....unlimited....glad we did.....didn't take much to pull us 0ff.....and we were on our way.... just two and a half hours later.....which, considering where we were I thought was pretty good.              

scared of my own shadow now....i was very careful.....the icw is not forgiving if you leave the channel...we entered the mosquito lagoon....no problem...wide open water...looks to be the size of lake Michigan...with a very narrow channel through it....supposedly a minimum of eight feet of water.... in the channel.....we only draw four and one half....no problem....unless the wind kicks up...two foot waves....if you have eight feet of water and two foot waves;;;;;; you have ten feet of water!!!  on the waves....you only have 6 feet of water with no waves.....if you draw four and one half feet you are majorly puckering when the depth gauge says 2.....of course, this assumes the channel has been dredged this century and really does have an eight foot channel.....did we hit bottom?  not sure....don't know enuf about boating....if we did we powered through it.....but having been stuck already today it was a very nerve wracking afternoon.....

we got in behind a big sailboat which i was sure drew more than 4.5....he said he drew six.....i told him not to get nervous....we were not pirates....but we were going to follow him.....closely....which we did until titusville.....very nice guy... he called us on the radio every time he saw bottom or saw shoaling.......but if he can do it so can we.....still......not a good feeling......

so he (Indigo - if anyone sees him buy him some booze and send us the bill!)  continued south and we pulled into a marina for the night...  we were going to take a ball but took a slip instead.....(ed) got off and kissed the deck.....goose poop doesn't taste that bad....but I was happy to have not sunk my home.......yet.....

since there is a boatyard here we have decided to be cautious and haul out to check for any damage..and I cannot wait to see what my brand new bottom paint looks like!!  of course, the yard isn't open on weekends, so hopefully we can get hauled on Monday.....and, double hopefully we'll find no significant damage.....

maybe it's time for an rv......or a pup tent in snake infested gator country.....