Video Transcript

00:00:00
We’re cruising the Great Loop Waterway from Florida to the Great Lakes and back again. Join me and  Captain Tom on our yacht, Swamp Puppy, as we figure out full-time boat life and  navigate through rivers, lakes, canals, and more. Good morning. Day number four, cruising America’s Great Loop. That’s the anchorage we stayed in last night. And it actually wasn’t too bad.

00:01:08
We came in on a Sunday afternoon, a little late in the afternoon, so we got waked quite a bit until about 6:00 or 7:00 p.m. when all the boats left. It was actually a pretty peaceful evening. Not too bad for Daytona, which is not my favorite. Just looking to see if what the route is today. It’s going to be lots of civilization. I think we’ll get some pretty spots. We’re kind of near Ormond Beach. In fact, we just passed the Ormond Beach free dock. I think you can stay there around 5:00 a.m. to midnight, but definitely not overnight. Yeah, I was looking at the charts.

00:02:37
It looks like you pretty much have to stay in the  channel and it’s pretty shallow outside the channel. Is that what it looks like to you? From what I can see so far. We’re going 30 miles today. We’re trying to  head up to Fort Was that Manana or something like that. Fort Matanzas. Yeah. Going  to Fort Matanzas today is the goal. Hopefully, we’ll get there. Our ETA currently is 11:40. That’s us doing 7.8 knots, which is pretty optimistic. We’ve got the tide in our favor. I’m assuming it’ll probably be closer to 12:30.

00:03:09
Still a nice early day for a 30 mile day. What time  did we actually get started? I didn’t even see. Right at 7 AM. Did you see that? Oh, not only did I see it…[but I got it on camera!]

00:04:32
About an  hour and a half into our day, we’re cruising along at 7.5 knots, which is about 8.7 miles per hour speed over ground. We have lost the current in our favor, but it’s not against us, at least. We’re currently passing by Tomoka State Park. It’s actually pretty through here. Lots of houses  on this side, but not too bad for the dense population that we’re in. Highlight of the day so far is seeing those rays breach. That was so cool. Elyse was able to catch them on film. That’s  our second day in a row seeing that.

00:04:58
I don’t know if it’s just the noise of our boat when we get  close enough or what it is, but it’s really cool to see. Knox Bridge, this is Swamp Puppy on your south side. [radio chatter] Oh, resume normal safe operation? That means gun it! Just kidding. But enough money that you’ll burn like 15 gallons an hour or something. How much money do we have left?

00:08:48
We’re down to 6.7 knots or 7.8 mph speed over ground. Now we have  the current against us or the tide is against us. But it’s increased our ETA to 12:02 PM. I think originally it said around what 11:30 or 11:40 AM, but it always takes longer than whatever the ETA is. Always. I was just saying look how beautiful real Florida is. Get outside and actually go see what Florida’s like. Not just the tourist traps. People come here for theme parks and super touristy crowded areas, but if you get out into real Florida, it’s much better. So much wildlife and everything is green.

00:09:31
According to my watch, it’s a high of  85 today, a low of 61, and it is currently 77, which is pretty accurate because inside the cabin my temperature guage is reading 77 degrees. Sunset is at 7:50 PM. Our ETA is now 12:00 PM.  We’re going 7.3 knots. We’re behind a bunch of houses. It’s actually not too bad through here. It’s a Monday, so not a lot of recreational boaters out and we’re just cruising right along. How’s the house battery doing? House battery. Let’s take  a look.

00:10:03
You said you haven’t been running the DC to DC chargers today, right? No. Our  battery was only at 83% when we woke up and I know that we’ll produce enough solar to refill that. I have the DCDC chargers off. We’re currently getting 1,000 watts of solar in and our battery is already at 90%. And it is 10:42 a.m. The best solar is typically 10:00 a.m. to 2:00 p.m. So, yeah, our battery will definitely be full. And I kept the DC to DC chargers off because about 700 watts is a somewhere around 1 horsepower. 

00:10:39
If I run my DC to DC chargers we’ll use more horsepower and therefore more fuel. Now, it’s kind of negligible, but why run them and tax the system when we don’t need to? The solar will do it with no extra fuel. It has been absolutely gorgeous through here. It’s like a jungle. It’s just so pretty. Once we got past Flagler Beach, it kind of slowly  turned into less and less houses and there were a couple state parks. And I mean, look at this. Would you just look at it?! Gorgeous.

00:12:22
We’ve been slowly following behind Good Ship, which is a gold looper. It’s a beautiful boat. It’s a custom trawler. And this is actually an area of Florida that I’ve never personally been. It’s absolutely beautiful. We just went through a national research area if I remember right. Beautiful all through here. Just absolutely gorgeous. We got about 30 minutes left before we make it to our anchorage. And the tide is in our favor  again. So we’re blistering along at 8.3 knots, which is 9.6 mph speed over ground. We actually seen 10 mph one time.

00:13:02
As soon as I get those trim tabs completed, wired in, we can go faster than that, but without the trim tabs we can’t. But things are going pretty good. I also want to mention that our fuel just finally hit the halfway mark. When we left the dock, we were a little over 3/4 of a tank. And now we’re about 150 miles in and we’ve used about a quarter of a tank of fuel. We have a 250 gallon tank. So essentially about 50 gallons of fuel.

00:13:35
We’re still on fuel from 2024. We haven’t gotten fuel because the fuel prices are pretty high right now. They’re over $6 a gallon for diesel around us. The plan is to try to make it to Georgia or South Carolina and try to find somewhere with cheaper fuel or just somewhere closer to the east coast north of Florida.  We’ll see. The depth is dropping 7′ 3″. Came up to 7′ 3″. Going  around some shoaling here. It’s like 8 foot.

00:14:50
If you look at the water, you can kind of see how there’s  waves coming through that area. Look at the shoaling. Back down to 10 feett. This is one of those spots wherehaving Bob’s tracks is super nice. There’s markers out. We can see the fort. What we’re going to do now, we’re going  to go hang out outside of the fort. I’m going give you a history talk, tell  you what this place is all about, and then we’ll go look around. Sound like a plan?

00:16:19
Where did you go, Beautiful? We had a lovely time over at Fort Manzana, Tanzanas, Kazanas, Matanzas. We had a wonderful time at Fort Matanzas. It’s kind of funny because we took a big boat to take a little boat to then take a ferry to go to an island because you can’t take your  boat there. Then when we were done, we came back over and went to the beach and hopped in because why not?

00:17:23
This is my third time being in the water in the first week or first 150 miles approximately of the Great Loop. Being a Florida man, I love swimming. And it’s hot, so why not jump in? What was really funny is there was originally a boat behind us which is now in front of us. And so we’re  coming from the beach and we’re like, “Hey, weren’t we in front of them? Did we drag?” What happened? Because, I don’t know if you can see or not, but the current is ripping through here. Take a look at this

00:17:52
We were worried that the anchor drug. Lo and behold, we definitely did not drag. I’m assuming that they just decided to move closer or something. I’m not sure. It starts to be no wake right here at this sign. Maybe they were moving because people kind of wait to the last  second to actually slow down if they slow down. I would say my favorite thing about the fort was learning that it was kind of used to protect St. Augustine because this is the inlet you would take to get to St. Augustine, which is, I think, 14 miles north of here.

00:19:40
And only smaller boats could come through here. Those smaller ships couldn’t really carry the really heavy canyons to be able to stop or defeat a fortress like this, which is why they had such a small little fort. Pretty cool that they used this to defend this area for St. Augustine because that was during the  first Spanish empire. Pretty cool. You know, Florida is flower in Spanish, and Florida was a lot larger before. It went all the way over to Texas. 

00:20:11
There was basically east and west Florida when the Spanish had it. Being a native Floridaian, I think stuff like that is just really cool. And of course, St. Augustine’s really close. Oldest city in the US. And our next stop! And our next stop.