St. Augustine

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.