Hiding out on the Halifax

We read one Looper reference that said he saw no reason to stop at Daytona Beach, well with a yacht club to dock at with a pool and pickleball, that was reason enough for us. The Halifax River Yacht Club turned out to be a delightful spot. The yacht club is one of the oldest in the nation – over 120 years old. Their clubhouse had been recently renovated and is really beautiful, inside and out with the pool and patio dining. The restaurant had great serviced and served up delicious meals. It’s one of the more casual yacht clubs we have stayed at, but the dockmaster and people couldn’t have been more welcoming.

We did check out the town and beach of Daytona Beach, last time there was spring break 40 years ago and I don’t remember anything about the town from that trip. The main street still caters to bikers with all its shops and bars, the riverfront has been under renovation since 2019 and will be quite wonderful for the city when it’s finished.

We had a tense moment at this point in our travels through this Ponce de Leon Inlet route. If you look at the two images above, the left shows our recommended route in red, and the dashed line is where we actually went to avoid shoaling that is so new it wasn’t even in the right place on the chart on the left. On the right is a Google Earth image of the same spot. Turns out there is so much shoaling and changes in this area that they don’t even mark the channel that turns north and to port to go up the AICW. Those shoals were very shallow and thanks to all our maps we crept through the area and never saw less than six feet, but the next day we found out two other boats ran aground in the same area.

Wonderful dining experience at the Halifax River Yacht Club, very reasonable dockage at a very protected marina right off the river near the Memorial Bridge and downtown. We had great service and food and it was a nice touch to have the Past Commodore’s flag and signage at our table to honor Ron as a Past Commodore from a visiting club. Their Commodore’s Cup recognizing an outstanding member of the club looks a little different than the SCYC’s trophy when you’ve been around since 1896, much larger with more names! We found Daytona Beach to be worth a stop and we’d go back to see the new waterfront when it’s complete, but tomorrow it’s off to St. Augustine.