Day 14 - St. Augustine for Christmas

We finally made it to St. Augustine on Day 14. It was a rough start to the day as we bumped hard on the bottom coming out of Fernadina Beach and struggled with shallow water the whole morning.  We went through one opening bridge with the best of luck; the operator opened it as we approached and we flew through without even slowing down.  As we approached Jacksonville, we read all the warnings about currents, military no-go zones and large freighters. Fortunately, when we entered the river no freighters were coming. We searched hard for the markers in the glare of a December noon sun and were able to traverse the river quickly without incident. A radio call had warned us of the rapid current on the south side of the river as we entered the ICW channel, it certainly was strong. We made it through as the tide approached high and we slowly realized that we would be riding the tide down to St. Augustine for the rest of the afternoon. The going quickly improved and we passed beautiful houses in a steady and straight 16-foot deep channel. As the channel opened up in the Guano Tolomato Matanzas National Estuarine Research Reserve, we were able to put up the jib and we truly sailed down into St Augustine. We made it through the downtown bridge and tied up to a municipal mooring ball for our Christmas stay with Uncle Ted and Aunt Caroline.