Titusville - Alligator?

Ann often takes photos of clouds to use in her pastels. This is the bridge just north of Titusville.

The front came through in the morning, the same front headed north as the northeaster. It was nothing very big, at least not down here, just a few showers and little wind. It did delay our appointment with the diver due to change our zinc. When he finally arrived he asked whether we had seen the alligator?! It turns out that a 9 ft alligator had been spotted in the marina multiple times and hung out just beyond the next row of docks north of us. Now, we had been told in the past not to let Hoolie go in the water when there're alligators around but no one told us of this one until the diver inquired at the main office.

So after about a 45 minute delay (looking for the alligator?) he decided to dive anyway. He said he wasn't concerned about a 6 ft alligator but a 9 ft specimen was another story. I noticed that he made a very big splash when entering the water feet first from the 5 ft high dock and I wondered about the advice we had heard elsewhere about the sound of a big splash being a dinner call to an alligator. At the time they were talking about dogs splashing about but the diver certainly made a bigger splash than any dog every would.  He finished up quickly and with the old zinc in hand, was up on the dock in no time. His charge for replacing the zinc (I had bought the zinc earlier) was $40. We never saw the alligator the rest of the day.

There are lots of Ospreys about - masts make such good perches! 

With that big of excitement out of the way, we did boat chores the rest of the day and mulled over an anchorage on the way south for Wednesday. There are multiple possibilities but they depend on the details of the wind direction and strength so we'll chose an anchorage when we get a new forecast Wednesday morning.