On the final day of our mad dash around Florida, we eased out of Melbourne Harbor Marina at 6:30am and enjoyed a beautiful sunrise as we continued north.

Today we took advantage of the boat’s ability to cruise at a faster speed. We spent several hours cruising along at 14 knots.  The fuel economy is the same as when the boat is running at about 9 knots because at the faster speed the boat is planing on top of the water instead of pushing through the water. It definitely takes more fuel to travel faster. When we are not in a hurry we can go at a pleasant 7 knots and enjoy much better fuel burn numbers.

We traveled up the Indian River past Cocoa Beach and Titusville. We saw the iconic NASA building, the Vehicle Assembly Building, off in the distance. When we came to the Haulover Canal we were in for a surprise: manatees!

They were all over the place. We were traveling very slowly at this point and could see dozens of them swimming around in the canal. The canal is not very long and soon we were back in more open water, but we continued to see manatees for the remainder of the trip.

Our destination was New Smyrna Beach, where we had a rental car reserved so we could drive to our home in Orlando.