Just another day on the ditch! A little less confining as the Indian River is wide and a fairly constant depth for some width. Not much shallower than 6′ near the edges but maybe 9′ to 12′ in the channel. We make about 40 to 50+ miles per day. It gets light late and dark early so you can only get in 7 or 8 hours in. Hope to be in Vero Beach tomorrow. We’ve reserved a spot on a mooring but were advised that we will be rafting with others. Should be interesting.

Sometimes we wonder about what we’re doing. It’s pretty lonely out here and contrary to popular myth it can get pretty boring also. I guess when you finish the day like this you just gotta say, “what a life!”

Well, we almost left. After giving Per Hans back his Mini, we busily prepared for our long delayed departure. The water tanks were topped off and things were getting stowed when I noticed that thick fog had rolled into the ICW. Hmmm … what’s up with this? After a weather check and a discussion with others on the dock we decided to stay put for a couple more days. Rain was due on Saturday and a strong cold front passage was due early Sunday.

A day of relaxation was a welcome relief. Saturday we walked over to the Farmers Market to get some more fresh produce. We were a little late and most of the good stuff was gone. I was able to get one (of only two left) bunch of cilantro, some peppers and fresh tomatoes for salsa. We did a little shopping and Mary made quite a deal and walked away with a new pair of shoes. It seems she felt since she had given me a pair of her deck shoes, she was one pair short in her allotment. Shoe neutral! That’s a new one!

Saturday night was the Halifax River Boat Parade. We decided the best place to enjoy it would be from our dinghy. We took off and positioned ourselves by the Memorial Bridge. Just as the parade was underway, our stern light decided to give up the ghost. Oh well, we’re only a short way back to the marina. We enjoyed the parade and started to head back. It seems the “last” boat in the parade was a USCG inflatable. They pulled us over and with a “where’s your stern light, Bubba?” we figured we were busted for sure. I explained that it had just burned out and after visual affirmation that we had all the rest of the required stuff they said they would follow us so that no one ran us over. Cool, so we headed off. It gets pretty shallow outsdie the markers and especially near the channel to the marina. I hit and snagged a crab trap with the prop. It stopped us cold. The Coasties came over to see what the problem was and promptly ran aground. All they had to do was raise the engines and they were off but wouldn’t come any closer to us. I disengaged the trap from the prop and headed back to our slip. Turned out that the parade went right past our dock! We pulled in between two parade boats and motored in to the cheers of the crowd. “Merry Christmas”! What a treat!

The storms blew through early Sunday as promised and it has gotten real cold for here. We promise, we’re heading south tomorrow, (maybe).

Sometimes plans need to be flexible. That definitely was the case with our stop in Daytona.

The intentions were; stop in and say hello to my friends, Beckie and Per Hans and then continue on our way south. The Halifax Harbor Marina is very nice and welcoming. Operated by Skipper Bud’s (a familiar name to my Wisconsin friends) the marina is beautiful and reasonably priced. We decided to stay two days. We had been in touch with Per Hans several times since leaving St. Augustine and on our final call from our slip he suggested that we use his “extra” Mini Cooper since his son was on tour (more on that in a bit). I think it took several milliseconds before I said … “sure, that would be great”. He and Beckie drove down from Ormond Beach in SXE-MINI 2 (a Mini Cooper S Turbo) to pick us up for dinner. After dinner we picked up 1-SXE-MINI. Per Hans has tricked it up a bit for auto-crosses, rallies, etc; lowered with coil over springs, competition clutch and flywheel, racing exhaust and so on.

Needless to say it was hard giving it back. We decided to stay a week and get a few projects done on the boat and see a few sights.

Per Hans has taught photography in Volusia County for 30 years before retiring. He now teaches at Daytona Beach College in a facility that is unbelievable. It is a state of the art photo facility covering all aspects of photography. We received a tour that left us in awe. This was followed by special tour of the Southeast Museum of Photography where Per Hans’ daughter is assistant curator. Another unbelievable facility.

A day or two later we awoke to the sound of two men doing canvas work on a Hatteras across from us. Well if any of you recall what an ordeal I had getting a dodger built will know why I sprung from bed and approached the two workers. We needed a bimini and so far had found no one interested in our project. I asked if they would be willing to give an estimate and could they do it by the end of the week. They responded that sure they would be interested but could I give them till the end of next week. If the price was right, sure why not. We came to an agreement an today the final pieces of the bimini were installed. Yes, we stayed an extra week but it was well worth it.

This is Zac and Brett of MarineSeam. First class guys who delivered as promised. A terrific job!

The finished job. It’s tall but I needed to be able to stand on the cockpit seats to see out. I’m short, what can I say! It has provisions for a full enclosure.

Back to our adventures…

We decided to take a trip to Green Cove Springs to visit our “home”, actually our mailing address. A 45 minute trip from Daytona by Mini, took us to our address.

That’s it just to the right of the green flag. Quaint old street paved in brick. Perfect! We ate across the street at The Top of the Reef. Fresh flounder and other quality items were a pleasant bonus.

A mentioned before that Per Hans’ son was on tour. He is the drummer for the alternative rock band “I Am The Avalanche”. Their tour was bringing them to north Florida so we decided to take in a show. The show would be in Ocala so we headed out early to take in some other sights. Blue Spring, near Orange City, is home to wintering manatees so it became a must see. What a beautiful place. The natural spring keeps the water at a constant temperature warm enough for the manatees so they come here to stay warm in the winter. There were all sorts of fish too. Tarpon, gar, tilipia and others we couldn’t identify.

From here we went to Ocala to see IATA. Ocala’s town square was all decorated for Christmas. Very nice.

Much later that night (past our bedtime) we went in to see the bands. It was a small venue (a converted bank complete with open vault). These are some shots of the band. The drummer is my friend’s son.

We had a great time in Daytona due to the generosity of our friends Beckie and Per Hans. It’ll be hard to turn in the 1 SXE MINI’s keys but we need to move south if we are to meet Mary’s kids in Islamorda by New Years.

The trip to St. Augustine was great. If all the ICW was this way, it wouldn’t be so stressfull. Florida has established a fund to keep the waterway maintained. It is very obvious after having traveled some of the touble areas in other states.

We dropped the hook north of the Bridge of Lions. There were not a lot of spaces so we were in 20′+ depth near the channel. I only put out about 75′ of chain after my experiences in St. Marys. The Bridge of Lions is being restored so another complete lift bridge was constructed while the original bridge is dismantled and rebuilt. The Bridge of Lions is really quite cool and it should be interesting to watch it being rebuilt. We’ll have a few more chances to see it as completion isn’t until 2010.

We dinghied ashore and explored the old section of St. Augustine. This is the oldest city in the US. Something like 1595 as the date of incorporation. The downtown area is nicely restored and maintained. We walked down Aviles Street, the oldest street in St. Augustine.

Much to Mary’s surprise we discovered a shop that served original Polish food; golombki’s and pierogi’s! So we had to go in and sample. Excellent!!! We were stuffed.

We explored a little more (to wear off some of that food) and then made our way back to the boat. As I explained in our post from St. Marys, these areas of large tidal swings produce swift currents that can hold the boat opposing the prevailing winds. This was the case that evening as the current switched and we had 25 knot winds from the north. The boats were sailing all over. We were worried (as was the owner of the black Whitby near us) that we were too close to this other boat. As it turns out we were fine and it was the two Whitby’s near us that would need to worry about each other. The other Whitby was white and they looked like those black and white Scotty magnets we had as kids. They’d sail away, reach the end of their rode, swing around and come cruising towards each other at about a knot. Just as they might touch the owners would fend off and then repeat the whole thing again. Finally the white boat shortened his rode to where they would come within 20′ and then swing away. What a night! The next morning most boats relocated as no one wanted to stay up all night again.

We moved closer to shore in very shallow water. The currents don’t seem to affect us as much in shallow water. We headed out for the day to become Floridians! We took the bus to the Government Center where we were amazed to find that we could get our drivers license, register to vote, register the boat and get a fishing license all at the same place, all with virtually no wait. A nice gal named Brenda helped us through all the paperwork. We didn’t have the papers for the boat so we came back the next day to do that.

St. Augustine is real easy to get around. We took the Sunshine bus everywhere. The people were very helpful and friendly. The eating was excellent. We stopped for a late lunch at the Colombian Restaurant, another very old but excellent establishment. The food was excellent and once again we ate too much.

We got back to the boat and noticed that it wasn’t moving much and wasn’t pointed the direction that the other boats were pointing. We were on the bottom. No big deal as the tide would come up almost six feet in the next six hours. That night we slept like babies.

We stayed one more night and then headed out for Daytona Beach. The trip down was cool and misty. The tides weren’t as severe but their cycle had changed so we hit some trouble spots at low tide but escaped any problems. We pulled into Halifax Harbor Marina late that afternoon for an extended stay in Daytona Beach.

The night before we were to leave we were greeted with the sound of the water pump sucking air. We had run out of water. We had planned to go to Cumberland Island the next morning but it would have to wait. We called the marina in St. Marys by phone as well as by VHF, but no luck in getting an answer. Cumberland would have to wait so we headed back to Fernandina Beach.

Routine by now, we headed back towards Fernandina. We slipped up to the dock and got fuel and a pump out. We checked into our slip and filled the water tanks. I also took this opportunity to wash of the top layers of salt.

Fernandina Beach is an old historic town with many attractive restored buildings and homes. We took a long walk and explored as much as we could in our short stay.

The next morning we headed out for Cumberland Island one more time. The fog had lifted as we turned north but soon we were facing less than 1/4 mile visibility. Radar was picking up land and boats but not markers. Slowing down, we questioned whether we should continue. We couldn’t see anything ahead. As about six boats started to appear out of the fog (they had not showed on radar) we decided to turn around and head for St. Augustine.

The first part of the trip was typical ICW, shallow and narrow. Mary lost her hat (again) and we got to practice HOB (hat overboard) drills. It was a success and we continued on towards Nassau Sound. We had read in on the Cruisers Net that marker 61A near Nassau Sound had been moved but we weren’t sure where. We slowly proceeded past 61 looking for 61A. The swing bridge crossing the inlet didn’t respond to my hails on the VHF. Something was wrong and it was looking to get worse. The current was sucking us towards the bridge and it was getting very SHALLOW. Full power and a sharp turn back towards 61 saved us from a potential bad situation. A power Cat heading south turned sharply at 61, headed across the sound and disappeared behind an island. Had I looked closer at the information I had available I would have seen 61B across the sound. As we approached 61B we saw it was 61A! Bad information intrepreted poorly is not a good thing.

As the day and tide was passing we followed another boat into Ft. George Creek. A remote picturesque anchorage. We followed the creek channel in and as we turned to set the anchor we backed into a submerged sand bar. A quick throttle burst and we were off but a little scary. As the boat settled in the tide continued to fall.

Overall there was a 7′ swing. Soon were there had been water to the north was now all sand. We took the dinghy over and beached it and walked around with some of the other cruisers. Goliath had great fun getting chased by another dog and getting totally soaked and full of sand. Needless to say he got a bath.