March 12, 2021 St. Augustine, Fla

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St Augustine has been in our voyage plan for the purpose of visiting with our frends Ed and Lynn, who have a home here.  Over our week here trips out in public were kept to a mininum due to Covid, but we made the short walk from the marina over the Bridge of Lions to Ed and Lynn's condo many times.  We greatly enjoyed hours of conversation and shared meals with our friends.  They were very generous with their time & home & car rides to facilitate getting us ready for our adventure to continue.

 They've made the trip to the Islands several times in other years, and provide excellent mentorship.  We've had discussions on current weather forecasts and southward/eastward route strategies several times.  The weather forecast is updated twice per day, and you can just about count on it completely changing with every update, then the planning begins all over again.

The one sortie we made out while in St Augustine was to the Aligator Preserve.  The variety of aligators and crocodiles living there was fun to see, but the best part was the wild tropical birds nesting in every tree branch: storks, cranes, ibis, egrets, herons, spoonbills (Lois' favorite because they're so wildly pink). These indigenous birds are free to come and go, but favor nesting above the aligators, who seems to discourage racoons and other natural predators.

We set aside a day to visit the marina laundry facility.  We are still trying to figure out how it took us 5 hours to wash & dry 3 loads, given that we were using 3 washers/dryers. We weren't sitting & waiting for machines. Where did the time go? A mystery.

Once laundry was done we loaded everything into the dinghy for the trip back to the boat, only to discover our outboard wouldn't start.  Normally it is very reliable and starts on the first pull even for Lois (who doesn't pull the cord very assertively). An outboard motor with the cover off being inspected has some kind of irresistable magnetic attraction for boaters.  So many people stopped by eager to help, every one of them offering the same 5 or 6 ideas about what's wrong, all of which Brent had looked into already.  The situation was made more complicated by the fact that the screwdriver & wrench normally kept in the dinghy kit for just this type situation was AWOL.  Finally a nice gentleman named Bob offered to tow us back to our boat with his dinghy. Once we got back, Brent had the motor running within 5 minutes.

We leave St Augustine fully provisioned and rested.  One of things that made its way into our lives here is a ukelele!  So now we music on the ocean.


At 7:05AM we pass under the Bridge of Lions, leaving St Augustine to head into the ocean.  The light wind is taking us south on the final miles of chapter one of this adventure. In the morning light the rolling waves take on a satiny, metallic lustre, like sailing on liquid mercury.  There is just enough wind to tempt us to raise our sails and turn off motors. 

Comments

Lynn and Ed said…
Jealous to see you head out without us following behind on our own boat. Looking good with the ukulele!
March 14, 2021 at 10:21 AM
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