Saturday December 3rd 2016

Today’s mid 70s temperature with a lots of sunshine made a good day for a walk on the beach. That’s exactly what I did. I took another walk south along the ocean into Cocoa Beach and back.

Caught by a breaking wave.

Checking out the fishing

There were a lot of walkers and sunbathers on the beach today. The breeze made the air temperature a little to cool for many people to be swimming in the water. A few people were trying to surf and a couple of guys were trying to get their kite surfing systems going. Their basic problem was the wind direction from off shore. Getting enough distance from shore to allow the kites to work was proving difficult.

Cruise Ship AIDAvita at the dock nearest the campground.

Late this afternoon I joined many others at the side of the channel out of the port to watch the cruise ships depart. There were five ships in port today. Four are based here and one little ship stopped here as a port of call on a longer voyage. The little visitor was 680 feet long, but the local ships are over 1000ft long. One of the local ships, the Norwegian EPIC, is the ninth biggest cruise ship in the world. Tomorrow the Royal Caribbean Oasis of the Seas is in port. It is the 2nd biggest cruise ship in the world.

Norwegian EPIC is very boxy. It is the ninth biggest cruise ship in the world.

The big ships came down the channel about fifteen minutes apart. They were escorted by the coast guard and the sheriff’s boat. The visiting ship was moored close to the mouth of the channel near the campground. It didn’t depart until after six, almost an hour after the other ships cleared the port. It was getting dark and cold so I didn’t wait. It did a good job announcing when it left with horn blasts. I watched it glide by from the window of my RV home.