Bethune Park in Daytona - At anchor

 

Two dinghy docks!

It was a nice day to travel with full sun and warm winds. We passed through the two shallow areas at Ponce de Leon with no problems. The first one, by R18, had 7.8 MLLW and the second shallow area by R2 showed 7.6 MLLW, just follow the bob423 track for good water. 

Hoolie does enjoy his dinghy rides!

There are several places where the ICW turns are not obvious to those not familiar with the passage. At Ponce de Leon we had a powerboat pass us and headed north by R18 as if to go out the Ponce de Leon inlet. We proceeded to take a sharp turn to port to pass R18 and continue on the ICW. 

Pretty soon, we looked back and saw the powerboat slow down, turn around, and then proceeded to make the turn by R18. They never did speed up to pass us a second time. I see where that turn could confuse some people since there are red and green buoys heading straight too as if that was the ICW. If you don't know you're supposed to turn to port, you would just proceed straight ahead. 

Bethune Park has a very good and sturdy launching dock that's also good for dinghies. I took advantage of the docks for Hoolie relief - he enjoyed himself too. The anchorage was more crowded than I remember in the past but the place is so large that there's plenty of room for many more boats. We anchored in 10 feet of water and the anchor grabbed immediately. Judging from past experience, the anchor and chain will be very muddy in the morning - good work for our washdown pump.