A Day in St Augustine.

Up bright and early...oh joy!..well, the JOY is for the night spent sleeping soundly, all tucked up with the air conditioning on! How precious these cooled nights are! All the while we are plugged in to the dock and have paid for the electricity, we luxuriate!

We came back to the boat by shank's pony...by foot, that is. On the way I found that my left shoe had come 'unstuck' literally! bah! Waz has some shoe stick stuff, so all we need now is a clamp of some kind. I don't think the clothes pegs will do THIS job as they did others.

As I told you yesterday, we had ordered up some diesel for 7.30-8am, this morning. Five mins to 8, Waz noted that the 7.30am wasn't going to happen...and then who should appear around the corner, but the fella with the filler:) Right on!
We filled up with 385 gallons, and they were kind enough to give us a discount for a check! love it...cash talks...sometimes!

All filled up by 8.30, we decided to make our way down the road to The Metro Diner. This is the new restaurant we discovered in the parking lot at the supermarket complex, where we chatted with the owner and manager, last night. They weren't there this morning, but the restaurant was almost full and we waited all of two minutes to be shown to a table. They menu covered two sides of the large card and was one of the most extensive we have seen in a long time...if ever. I had made a mental note of the Crab Cakes Benedict, last night, so that is what I ordered. We liked the price:) even though the taxi driver we spoke to later, thought the prices were expensive, in this town.

 

 Compared to the price of the same, in New Zealand, $12.99 is inexpensive!

The meal came with a muffin under the crab cakes, which I promptly removed. There was no need for them, and the hash browns serving was HUGE. An excellent meal, but I couldn't eat all of it.

 

Waz ordered  poached eggs (like golf balls, the waitress said!) hash browns, crispy bacon and a 12 inch pancake. Not that we knew it would be that large! It came with whole wheat toast. He didn't eat the hash browns or the toast, and left some of the pancake, so huge was the breakfast for $8.99.

 

All up, we felt it was really good value for money. The 'snickerdoodle' flavored coffee was hot and excellent, and we left there feeling very good about the whole experience. How nice to be able to say so:)

The waitress happily supplied us with the name of a taxi company and gave us the number to call. The cab arrived within five minutes and the driver whisked us downtown to the waterfront for $5.50. Again, good value in this tourist mecca.

 

Waz had arranged to meet Colin and Dawn at the Municipal Marina at noon, so we had two hours to kill. We walked down to the marina and knocked on their boat, (just in case they were there) around 10am, but they were out and about like us.

 

 Walking back to the Marina entrance, we stopped in the shade of the Red Train stop, and chatted with Tony and Courtney from Ft Lauderdale. They were waiting for their two sons to finish playing mini-golf, and enjoying a few minutes of cool.

I promised that I would post this photo of them...Tony and Courtney...here you are! And thanks for the great chat! Have a great vacation!

 

They had Red Train stickers on them (see the round white thing on the bottom right of his t-shirt!) and we asked for more information from them, which they were happy to supply answers to. We were directed into the pay booth, and bought our tickets. Being seniors has it's benefits...we got one full price and the other half price:)

The red train ticket was a rather spontaneous purchase, and we were thoroughly glad we had done it. Last time we were here for a week and we biked everywhere...and I mean everywhere, around the Historic District.

This time, we sat in the 2nd to back seat and enjoyed the commentary and the history of the area we had so enjoyed previously. St Augustine has been in our consciousness ever since.

 

We love the architecture, and hearing the history of the various buildings was great. The first commentator/driver we had was slightly boring, but when he changed over with Scott, the second driver, the tour got really interesting. Not only was Scott a bit of a character and very  opinionated, but his commentary was full of delightful asides and history that may or may not have been in the books. I think he took some license with some of the facts:)

 

We alighted at the town square, and made our way to the Marina. On the corner opposite, and because we had 15 mins up our sleeves...and I might add, were VERY parched, we popped into the pub for a Lemon Lime and Bitters, which we had to instruct the barman in the making of. We had forgotten just how sweet the drink it! Having satisfied our thirst for the moment, we went across the road and met up with Colin and Dawn at the Marina. We went back down to their boat and sat and got acquainted. Being kiwis who have lived in Aussie for the past 15 yrs, we found much to chat about. Boating being the overwhelming theme, of course, and how we each got to be in this part of the country, as well as how we chose our boats and why and the complications of buying a boat when you haven't laid eyes on it in person.

 

We finally went forth in search of food for lunch and ended up at the pub across the road, but upstairs in the restaurant. Dawn and I had the seafood Cobb Salad, which was excellent, and the boys ordered Grilled Chicken Sandwich (Waz) and a burger for Colin. We all enjoyed the food and the company.

 

We went in search of a Flat White coffee...which D and C were happy to take us to. They had sussed that out in the morning. The other three ordered their flat whites and I went the whole hog and ordered a Caramel Mocha...ack! With cream on top of course, lol.

 

 

It was VERY sweet! WAYYY too much sugar for me today! and the coffee underneath all that sweet stuff was barely warm. Oh well!

 

As always, we loved seeing the Victorian houses and refreshing our memories about the Coquina (co keen a ) which is:

Coquina is a sedimentary rock that is composed either wholly or almost entirely of the transported, abraded, and mechanically-sorted fragments of the shells of either molluscs, trilobites, brachiopods, or other invertebrates. For a sediment to be considered to be a coquina, the particles composing it should average 2 mm or greater in size. Coquina can vary in hardness from poorly to moderately cemented. The term "coquina" is derived from the Spanish word for cockleshells or shellfish. Incompletely consolidated and poorly cemented coquinas are considered grainstones in the Dunham classification system for carbonate sedimentary rocks. A well-cemented coquina is classified as a biosparite according to the Folk classification of sedimentary rocks.

 

Thank you Wikipedia!

 

 

Walls all around the old town are made of this, and fascinating to see. We saw this kind of construction in Fort Meyers, some time back, but certainly not this old.

There are oyster beds everywhere and are easily seen at low tide. I don't know if I would eat the oysters, or even if you can!

 

 You have to love the light stands!

 ...and the marina admin office. Of course the Spanish influence is everywhere.

 This tall ship was waiting for the Bridge of Lions to open.

Our Red Train tour vehicle. Thank goodness for the shade and the cool breeze. Without it, the tour would have been unbearable. We aren't 'tour' kind of people, normally, preferring to discover places for ourselves, but this was a welcome change in proceedings. We are tired, and this was just what the Dr ordered!

As always, the architecture is of importance.

 The original city gates. In the early 1900s, as the story went, according to our guide, the city fathers declared that they were out of style and a nuisance and should be demolished. If it wasn't for the bloody mindedness of 9 women, they wouldn't be standing today. Apparently the women chained themselves to the wall! All heresay? I haven't checked the facts, sorry!

The Bridge of Lions in the background, behind the City Marina.

 This is one of the residences (we believe) attached to Flagler College. LOVE the wide veranda...so essential in this climate.

The yellow stone church Henry Flagler built for the church in order to secure the land he wanted in the middle of town, owned by the churches. He built three churches for the price of the land, apparently. They are all worth a look, and when we come back to St Augustine, we will take the time to go inside and discover further.

 Don't you love the details!

 

It isn't easy to see, but the road surface is original bricks.

 Gorgeous Sago Palms!

 Colin and Dawn were trying to tell me to "Cross Now"! :) Waz had the right idea! Just walk!

It was 4pm, and all things must come to a close at some stage...The 'wench' from one of the Pirate Ships was pushing the cart with the GOLD in it...

 ..and was closely followed by the riff raff Pirates themselves. When asked why the WENCH was doing all the work...they replied "That's what you have wenches for!!!" lol.

We left Colin and Dawn  and their boat, around 6pm. How time flies when you are having fun.

On the way home, my camera was giving me some weird signals, and this was the last photo I took with it, even though we saw many more that should have been taken. 300 photos today, so perhaps the camera was too hot and bothered to take any more?

 

As I said, we walked home...did I say that? Well, we did. It isn't far if you walk down King Street, and then turn onto Highway 1 sth.

 

It was good to be home and turn the aircon on. We ate strawberries and cream with ice cream for dinner....well, what else would you eat ?:)

 

We are watching a movie featuring Christopher Plummer and Harrison Ford....Hanover Street....but the reception is not good. Must be time for bed! 9.10pm, and we are a bit sun burnt, (despite the sun screen) and just plain tired.

We are moving on towards Jacksonville, tomorrow. We have a slight tide issue, but the Captain thinks we will be fine. I will trust his opinion.

Night Night!

Daytona to St Augustine.

Yes, we have been here before, all up this coast. It is comforting on so many levels, and I am happy to report that I am taking the shallows in stride. Waz is happy to report the same:)

Another early morning, but I missed the pink morning sky I saw out the bathroom window, first thing, and by the time I got topside, it was almost all over.:(..see what I mean. It was bright pink when I first looked out!

We were up well before the alarm, again...making a bit of a habit of this! Makes for tired people later on tho!
 We were surprised, frankly, to see the neighbor ship still stuck on the sand. Thank goodness, because we swear that little rope and anchor would not otherwise hold him in a stiff wind!

We started the engines, hauled up the anchor and turned in place. Retracing our path from the night before, we asked for a bridge opening, and got it in no time. On our way well before 7am.
The mosaics on the upright supports of the Main Street Bridge in Daytona are lovely.

 I think I posted these last year, too.

 Oh dear! What a shame. We see too many of these...

 Well on our way, and we are now coming into Marshes territory. We had the first of the large cattle flies visit us...Waz was flailing around the fly deck for a bit...and I went to get the screens out! All sorted now for when we leave St Augustine and continue through to Georgia and more marsh territory.

 Lots of little islands, as you can see in the above chart..well, maybe not THAT chart, but you can see that it is mostly marshes, at least, lol.

 A few people out kayaking...and we would have been too, methinx. Lovely and serene and so much birdlife and dolphin and Manatee.

The first tow we have seen for a very long time. ..:)

Rather pretty Boat Houses...don't you think?

 We rather liked this condo complex...at least the facades are different to the norm.

However, we couldn't say the same for this housing estate. The view is negligible in our opinion, and they are SOOO close together. We can imagine they are premium prices too! You can barely squeeze between the houses to build them.

LOTS of dolphin surfing our wake. This is mum and baby. There were several moms with their young learning to surf....or are they just born knowing how to surf?:)

 The passage along the ICW just inside the Atlantic coastline. We can see the ocean and hear it sometimes over the purr of our kitties downstairs....which leads me to something funny we heard today. We always refer to the engines downstairs as kitties or Cats...well, because they are a pair of CAT 3208's. Makes sense, right.! Well, a yacht we passed today was having a conversation on channel 16 with another yacht, and it went something like this: " You folks can go on ahead...you are longer than me and faster, and though my 'squirrels' are running as fast as they can...." Yep...that fella had 'squirrels' down below. The picture that conversation created was a bit hilarious to us...weird?

On to more important matters....time is flying and I am now waiting for Waz to return from the shower block, here at the Marina in St Augustine....I had mine off the back of the boat, per usual! Everyone else in the marina were inside their boats, so I had the place to myself.

I am always on the lookout for the unusual...and this caught my eye!:)

 

 Other boats and yachts coming towards us as we go towards Matanzas Pass, and skinny passage that is cause for much speculation in the yachting community using the ICW....some of these yachts draw 7 1/2 ft so they are a little challenged in some places that barely show that on the depth sounder. This is one of those places, but the shallowest point, going through the middle of the channel, was 14 feet...fortunately! Those are sand dunes in the background.

 ...and that, is the Atlantic Ocean.

 This is an old Fort at Matanzas Pass. I don't know the history, but Im sure, given time, I could find out. Not today Josephine! I just found out that Matanzas means 'Murder'! here is a link..http://www.nps.gov/foma/index.htm

Close-up of the shoaling on the pass, and how close the red marker is to the shoreline. We didn't go there!

 

 Do you think it was hot today???really??:) Out of the breeze it was deathly!

I was too busy putting out the fenders and rearranging the ropes to take photos of where we turned off the ICW into the river where our overnight marina is located, but I can go back to the photos of last year, and the place looks the same:)

Yes....this photo from last year is exactly what we see now. We came under the bridge in the distance, turned left sharply, once on the other side, and went about a mile up the river to the River's Edge Marina. Same people are still here.! They had 22 live-aboards at the marina last year, and this year they have 25 boats! WOW! Just like old times, tonight, when we said g'day to a couple of people we met last year:)

 There she is last year. This year we came in facing the other way. We are taking on 400 gallons,4
 or thereabouts, of Diesel in the morning...all ordered! So we had to face up river for the filling.
There is a different yacht next to us, this year, but the yacht in this photo is now further up the marina.

Well, Waz is back, and gone to bed. We did some laundry, ate lunch at Hurricane Patty's across the other side of the parking lot (typical bar food!) and walked to the supermarket after a salmon and cole slaw dinner. Good to have a walk, and we found a new restaurant in the supermarket parking lot that we knew was going to be built, last year. They do Eggs Benedict with crab cakes, so guess where WE are going tomorrow or the next day.

Waz has made a date with some Aussie/kiwis to meet for lunch, in town, so perhaps breakfast will have to happen the following morning before we head out to Jacksonville.

I will catch you up on our town visit tomorrow.
Ciao, and sleep well

Palm Shores to Daytona.

Gosh! How could I possibly have forgotten to write the blog last night???

I know...We anchored and I made coffee and grabbed my book and went up onto the fly deck where there was an excellent breeze.
Lets go back to Leaving Palm Shores.

Why do I take these sunrise and sunset photos? Well, I am always interested to see what the end of the day brings, and what the beginning brings in turn. I love the colors and clouds in the sky and find them fascinating.  This is the sun rising on Palm Shores. The heat came on pretty quickly, I can tell you. We woke around 6.15, and before the alarm. It was warm downstairs, so it was a relief to come upstairs and open up the salon windows and doors and survey the world as we see it.;

The morning coffee worked it's magic and we were up-anchor and away by the time the worms stared gnawing and breakfast was in order.  Scrambled eggs are easiest and fastest to make, along with hash browns and the tomato we tend to have with every breakfast. We love the little Campari brand tomatoes...if you haven't tried them..do!

As you can see, we are travelling almost due north.

This inside passage on the AICW finds us going through and under plenty of bridges of all kinds. Most are 50-65ft above us, but some we have to ask for an opening. Shorties we have  managed were between 21 and 24 feet in the last day or two, and we only had to lower the tall aerials to get under them comfortably. I love how the different cities accommodate the fisher folk, and provide lovely jetty out into the Indian River

We are now joined by many yachts going north for the summer. They are coming out of the little and large marina on the River and telling us they are off to Nantucket, predominantly.

It is interesting, having done this route once before, how often we say to each other..."I remember this!"...We will start on a particular stretch of waterway and memories will come flooding back to incidents, or the fact that the river was full of Dolphin/Manatee etc.

We entered the Haulover Canal and followed this large Cat through. There were so many people enjoying the calm waters in the canal, and the HUGE number of Manatee we saw was just fantastic.

 At the end of the Haulover Canal is a sharp left turn along all the little islands; many mangrove swamp kind of islands. How apt is the name "Mosquito Lagoon"!

 The area is so shallow, you see people standing in the water, everywhere, which gives me quite a chuckle. Just tells us how shallow it is outside the designated channel, and we had better stick to it!

Folks were out fishing!...yes, standing in the water. White sandy bottom, and it looked so refreshing compared to the heat on the fly bridge!

 It really is very hard to convey the sense of what this looks like in real life, when seen on the chart. Imagine that all those little islands are sandy and covered with some vegetation of some kind...in the chart it is designated swamp. That is our boat in the middle. The long blue fingers on the top left are residential canals.

 Shallow, anyone?

 As we are passing all those little islands on our right, this is what is found on our left...on terra firma, in other words. Rv parks, double-wide trailer parks...permanent residences for snowbirds, no doubt, as so many of them looked locked away for the summer. They are all front and center on the Indian River/AICW

 We dubbed these two brothers, (perhaps unfairly, but...) the Hillbilly Brothers. Good reasons for this! They kept their bino's trained on the back deck (cockpit) of the boat, and got pretty close to us to view what was out back...we don't know why, coz it was mostly just 'stuff'. They kept pace with us for a long time...about 15 miles all told, and kept doing circuits and bumps around us, looking us up and down all the way.  The brother in front was fishing...off and on. I asked them why their flag (this is Memorial Day, remember!) was dragging in the water??? They told me the boat didn't have a taller flag pole, in reply! as good an answer as any, I guess :)

Fortunately all this area was a slow wake area, and for good reason. The dolphin were so plentiful, ant it was obviously a nursery area for Manatee and Dolphin. Manatee were everywhere, and people were very respectful of their space and presence.
I love that Osprey will nest almost anywhere tall. This house is well endowed:)

 The father in this boat was more attentive to his GoPro camera, that you can see mounted just above his head, and what was happening on his IPad. It was disconcerting to see him come VERY close to the boat at times, because he was too busy filming the two boys in the donut.

 We just love that people plonk themselves down in the middle of a sandbar in their deck chairs, someone fishes, others swim, and generally have a great time. We were rather jealous! One day!

 The 'hood ornaments' as Waz called them, were plentiful, and I have lots of photos of them, but this one took the prize for most balletic! The young man on the back looked rather beautiful, truth be told, but we wondered if he would get tossed if they had to go over a wave, because the captain is very engrossed in his phone, on the left.

Lots of puppies out too...good to see people value their dogs and include them in the wet fun.

 All this is in and around New Smyrna Beach, Florida. The Atlantic is on the right of the chart. Look how much water we have under us!!! 19.1ft! woohoo!:)
Also notice we are absolutely at crawling speed...this being a no wake zone.

What a glorious place to live and play!

Plenty of folks out on the water's edge restaurants, and we again felt just a little bit jealous that time and circumstances meant we couldn't go there too. Nowhere to anchor, but also we have to be out of Florida! Ack!

Some lovely homes. Yes, I know you might get sick of some of these, but they really do show the lifestyle...and homes such as this are not expensive by NZ standards. We went and looked! lol. this one wouldn't meet our criteria though...no pool! (sheesh, are we getting picky, or what!!!):)

 The light house at New Smyrna Beach. The place was an absolute zoo. No other way to explain the myriad boats, great and small that were out on the waterways, and parked any way they could, in the shallows, to allow the occupants to disembark and stand, sit or swim in the water.

 These folks were trying to decide what to do with the stingray they caught. I hope they cut it loose! It was rather distressed, as you might imagine.

More wall to wall boats and people in New Smyrna Beach! We just cant get over the numbers. Flabbergasting!

 We were followed into Daytona Beach by plenty of fast boats all out to pass us and leave us rocking in their wake.

I just had to throw in this photo of a waterside mansion in Daytona, with a backdrop of a tall condo complex.

It was a little tricky to get into, but we did it. We had to approach the anchorage from the main channel, then sidle along the bridge (the chart isn't correct) and then make our way SLOWLY into that little pool of 11ft of water. We were followed in there at sunset, by the boat (boat?) in the next photo.

Three youngish males tried coming in the obvious way, but got stuck on the sand bar that we avoided. Finally, I guess they called the bridge for instructions and were told to go the way we did into the anchorage. They did get stuck on the sand, however, as we notice they didn't turn with the wind! No accommodation on the boat, other than the camper. We were not very happy with their anchoring apparatus. A small anchor attached to a short rope. We hoped not to find them alongside us in the night. That might have been much fun!

I decided to go back upstairs with my coffee, but having to open dirty windows meant I had to clean them, then as I was cleaning them, I may as well do some conditioning cream as well...so the whole of the back of the plastics got conditioned...it was hot work, but satisfying, as I had been intending to do it for some time. Good to get that done, and have dinner up top with a fab. view, and relax out back with our post dinner coffee and watch the sun set. A perfect end to an interesting day.

A rather oily looking sun set. Cool breezes, which were perfect, and it was warm again in the bedroom. Not to worry...We can enjoy aircon tomorrow night!