Day 1 – Cruising the Beach
Links to Chapters in the Series
The airport is only three miles from the harbor, one of the reasons we chose to connect here. Doug meets me and we hail an Uber for the short hop to the marina. It’s still mid April, but the sun is already a white hot glare off asphalt and concrete. Everything looks sun-bleached and pale.
Halifax Marina is a big municipal marina full of big boats. The GDP of a small country is tied up at the docks. He walks me down the gangway to a slip where Tidings is cheerfully holding her own.
We’ll spend the night here on the boat and get an early start in the morning. I get a quick tour of the layout and stow my duffle, then we’re off again – Doug wants to investigate all this fuss about “World Famous Daytona Beach”.
We catch another ride with a very chatty Uber driver, a long time resident from Puerto Rico. He has much to say about current affairs before dropping us at the foot of the boardwalk and pier.
What I remember about Daytona, as a kid, is car culture is king.
In the early 1900s, Daytona was the East Coast version of the Bonneville Salt Flats, where speed trials and races were held on the hard packed sand beach. Land speed records of early auto designs were set here, the highest at over 276 miles per hour. On the beach.
As you might imagine, the combination of untested engineering at high speed on sand often ended in “rapid unscheduled disassembly” – which created quite the exciting spectacle. It drew crowds.
About a hundred years ago, the race course was moved off the beach onto a dedicated speedway, built for that purpose, and still home of the Daytona 500. That race put this place on the map, and like all things NASCAR, the potential of witnessing fatal disasters still draws the crowds.
Cars are still allowed on the beach, though. It’s the only place I remember where “cruising” means driving up and down the beach in hopped up custom muscle cars. It’s a car show on the sand, where everyone’s here to flex. They still do that.
And motorcycles. Bike week is like race week, but louder. So you can buy your bikinis and beach towels in the same shops as your black studded leather chaps and boots. It’s a whole vibe.
Strolling the pier and the boardwalk, Doug tells me about growing up in Atlantic City, NJ, and patrolling the boardwalk there as a teenager. He and brothers and friends ran an outboard rental business for the tourists. After closing time, they had free use of the boats to water ski and just mess around on the water until dark.
Families trundle wagons of gear past us back to the parking lots, sunburned and grumpy. We pass a small wedding party by a pool at the base of a concrete tower. All the standard music and toasts, the rituals. We could be anywhere: Las Vegas, Omaha, Newport . . . Seems some things are universal and never change.
The condos above, though, 25 stories of balconies, all look empty. Maybe now they’re all Airbnbs, and they only fill up for Spring Break and Race Week? So some things change.
We start looking for likely dinner spots, but everything smells like funnel cakes and French fries, so we head back for food at the marina restaurant instead.
First night on the boat is surprisingly quiet. Especially for a Saturday night. I only see one other boat in the whole marina with people on it, and they are doing maintenance. Do people buy these huge boats and pay to dock them just for show? I’m confused but grateful. It’s peaceful. The smallest boat in the harbor has the best view.
