Cocoa Fun with the Folks

Reinhart and I spent a cloudy and warm Thursday exploring the waterfront park and browsing the adorable shops of Brevard Avenue in Cocoa. If there is one particular thing that makes a trip to Cocoa worth it, it is the amazing S.F. Travis Company Hardware Store; I’ve never seen anything like it. They stock everything, and I mean everything, on two floors of two old buildings in downtown Cocoa. There’s even a rickety bridge connecting the second floors of the two buildings. I do believe a visit to that hardware store was my best birthday treat. Reinhart had wanted to take me out to dinner at any number of quaint restaurants, but we ended up making a special dinner on-board instead. We are going to “bank” the dinner out for a time we feel we really need it! On Friday morning we woke up and brought the boat around to Cocoa Village Marina (N28 21.475 W80 43.523) to keep it at a dock for a couple of nights while my parents visit. We immediately started taking advantage of the dockside amenities by running the air conditioning to dry out the boat, using copious amounts of water to wash down the boat, and taking as much laundry as we could find to the laundry room. The weather cleared up to become one of the prettiest days we’ve seen along the way, and a few minutes later Mom and Dad came bearing gifts. They brought us our mail, Reinhart’s green card, my new passport, and all of the packages which had been delivered since we left home, including the new spinnaker which we promptly raised at the dock! We ate lunch at one of those quaint Cocoa cafes in the courtyard. We had a wonderful day, and a warm evening of wine in the cockpit…a perfect reunion! We took advantage of Dad’s clean car, and Saturday ended up being another tour of West Marine stores down the east coast. We went to the one in Cocoa and the one in Melbourne, collecting the hardware necessary to fly that spinnaker. We had another charming but quite cool lunch on the water in Melbourne and ended up having a shrimp dinner on the boat to finish off a very delightful visit with my parents. They’ve absolutely showered us with generosity while we’ve been together, and I’m so grateful for the visit and for everything they did for us while we were together.

Currently, it’s Sunday morning and we are doing some more chores before we leave the marina around lunchtime. Mom and Dad will come by for one more goodbye and to get some more pictures as we cast off. They are on their way to visit Tim and Renee near Tampa, and we aren’t quite sure where we are off to, but we’ll be landing in Vero Beach on Monday.