Dec 8 – The day was truly warm and very comfortable. We were all fairly rested and even Sam was starting to feel a bit better having found that hardboiled eggs and small oranges were able to keep him going. Our progress had not been as fast as we had hoped and we were only making way at 4 knots or so as we had been seeing the engine get a little warm and did not want to push our luck. We made it down the palm coast and around Cape Canaveral.
Long story short – we ended up about 20 miles south of Canaveral, but the wind was directly against us and we were having a really hard time getting Nefertari to point to weather. This was probably due to the sails and rig not being tuned and not having a staysail ready to deploy. In light of our general frustration with all of the issues and not making any way against uncomfortable seas, we turned around and headed to Port Canaveral.
At one point the day before, I had made a critical error and had left the seacock to the main water intake closed. After about 45 minutes, the coolant reservoir burst open and we killed the engine to avoid any further damage. I had put in water and fixed the engine as best as possible, but we were going to only use it sparingly as we did not know how long it would run without proper coolant, etc. This meant that we came into Canaveral under light sail, following a few cruise ships into the channel. We came in just after the sun rose and just made it into the marina and were quite happy to have feet on solid ground.