Just like any community, the marina at Cocoa is full of an assortment of characters, each contributing his or her own quirks to the overall fabric of the village.

There’s the family on a live aboard sailboat that has more junk stored on top than I’ve ever seen, including an old air conditioner, 2 propane tanks, boxes and crates of assorted supplies. Oh, and two little Jack Russell dogs that bark at Ziggy every time we walk by. They are named Lila and Adee, and the father Tim comes out each morning with his baby on his back and throws the little dogs on the dock so they can walk together and do their business.   Tim is a friendly Brit, and told me they were anchored out at Merritt Island for a long time, but when his wife got pregnant again she couldn’t get up and down in the dinghy as easily.  So they moved to this slip and he had to get a job to pay the fees.  I’ve never seen the wife/mother and second child so I don’t know if they really exist.

The staff is interesting – there’s Kelly the animated dockhand who laughs at everything and is always upbeat.  There’s Ken, the solemn dockmaster who never says much.  Johnny is the maintenance/web guy who’s friendly but can’t figure out how to keep their router from blocking my attempts to stream video through googlecast.  Then there’s Trisha the part-time dockhand who lives with her husband Chris on a sailboat in the marina as well as an RV in the parking lot.  They’ve been all over the place on their sailboat and are now going to try the roving RV lifestyle, heading to California and other parts west.

Every morning at the coffee shop we see the same group of old white guys convening at the same table over coffee.  One is a salty dog from the marina, who’s there every morning for a couple of hours.  I’ve spoken to him on the dock a couple of times, he just nods and goes on his way.  Kind of like Vero (Velcro) Beach, where a group of guys just live on their boats and never go anywhere.

We’ve met our neighbors on the big paddleboat “Indian River Queen”and they’ve given Ed the tour of the boat.  The owner is Penny, a former Miss Maryland, who runs the boat with three others.  They do wedding cruises, sunset dinner tours, etc.  They told us they made the mistake of doing a frat party cruise once a few years ago, and the guys got really drunk on the way back, then got naked and jumped off the boat once it docked.

Reining those characters in must have been a challenge.  We have a wedding this weekend on the paddleboat so that will be interesting.