Cold Water

Zoe went for a short swim yesterday, but the water was too cold for me. I'd planned to wait for slack low tide a couple hours after noon, but by that time it was overcast, so I decided cleaning the bottom could wait, and let her swim by herself.

The water temperature here is about 60 -- too cold to swim -- but it's close to 70 at Cape Canaveral, and even warmer farther south.

Here's a link: http://www.tropicalweather.net/Florida_water_temps.htm

I'm hoping to go outside again at Cape Canaveral, so I'll do the bottom there. It should only take me a couple days to get there.

As for what happens after that, I'm not sure. I started looking into the gulf part of the trip, in particular the locations of offshore oil rigs, and was surprised at both the number, thousands, and their condition, many older ones aren't even lighted.

Since I'm singlehanding with no radar, that pretty much means I'll have to stay in the ICW for much of that part of the trip, especially as I near Texas. The Florida coast is fine, I'm not sure about Alabama and Mississippi, however, I think I'll have to go inside at Mobile anyway.

Here's a link to map from 2006: http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/explorations/06mexico/background/oil/media/platform_600.html

Pretty tough to avoid that many.