Playing Catch Up (With updated photos)

After two weeks in St. Augustine, we were anxious to get moving and to get somewhere warm. We travelled for three days almost due south, passing through Daytona and Cocoa Beach and landing in Vero Beach, where the City offers moorings for $14 per day. The temperature warmed considerably over those three days and we have been enjoying warm 70+ degree days since our landing. We are now approaching our US departure point and all those little items on the 'to-do' list that have been put off, suddenly have come to the top. Which all translates to "we expect to be here for a little while." We are shopping with Christmas gift cards and have had our mail forwarded here as we settle in at mooring 54.

 

Meanwhile, thanks to Uncle ted, I was able to save my Google Earth map as a JPG, only to be stumped by blogger. I was able to upload five photos but can't manage any more. I'll try again tomorrow. Meanwhile we are catching up on school, chasing down an FCC radio license, both Bob and I are doing some consulting, we have sewing projects, cell phone set up for the Bahamas and a myriad of little boat projects. 

We arrived here on Friday and decided the kids did need a little break so we spent Saturday exploring the very cool area around the mooring field with sitings of manatees and dolphins and even an abandoned boat from Maine. On Sunday we hoofed one mile to the beach and had a ball, the water temperature was perfect!  I've uploaded all the photos planned for this post on my Facebook page if you want to check it out there.

 

 

While underway, the starboard settee turns into a mudroom.

 

 

Bob on our sailing trip out of St. Augustine. He was very happy!

 

A welcome visitor!

 The view coming into Daytona, we decided not to stay. A little too busy for us.

 

 

 

Manatees!

The Boston College Women's Crew

Day 29 and Christmas in St. Augustine

Day 15 to Day 29

After two great weeks in St. Augustine we finally released ourselves from the mooring ball this morning and headed south.  We knew it would be a long day to get to Daytona but the anchoring options were few so we had a choice of 18 miles or 50 miles. It took a little while to get moving , we had to check out from the marina, reload the dinghy motor and get our heads back into the ICW.

We had a great time while in St. Augustine. We were able to spend a significant amount of time with Bob’s Uncle Ted and Aunt Carolyn and the kids even tried swimming in their pool, temperature 62ºF. The day before Christmas, Ted and Carolyn visited us on the boat and Ted, Bob and Finn had a great time fishing, catching whiting right off the boat. We spent several evenings including Christmas Eve with them at their house and the kids had a great Christmas morning thanks to Aunt Carolyn and Sue Fernholz! They did get stockings when they got back to the boat Christmas evening, filled with practical stuff.

Ted delivered us back to the marina, late afternoon on Christmas. We spent the next week catching up on projects including changing light bulbs on the mast. We also did a considerable amount of socializing including a great dinner with our new  friends Scott and Tina on the Sangaris and dinner and a visit with the M/Y Morning Star Family, (including two kids!) on their great trawler.

We were able to compare notes on schoolwork with the Morning Star folks who seem to face similar challenges in finding time for school while traveling. In addition, the kids played together and had a great time.  Anna and I spent a whole day studying Social Studies out and about on the town with a visit to both the Castillo De San Marco (old fort, downtown St. Augustine) and the legendary Fountain of Youth. We both tasted the water but with no effect. Ah well.  We also went out New Year’s Eve for Pizza, a walk through the old town and miniature golf. We made it back to Midwatch on time to watch the fireworks from the cock pit, followed by a visit from the Morning Star kids. It was quite a day.

The one other goal we had while in St. Augustine was a shakedown sail out in the open ocean. Although we have been living on Midwatch since early October, we had only set the main sail once and never been on the 'outside' or open ocean.  Day 28 we successfully navigated the St. Augustine inlet and had a great sail about six miles down the coast. The winds slowly increased over the three hours we were out and about and peaked somewhere around 20 to 25 knots, we buried the rail and Anna and Bob got to see the portholes awash with seawater.  I saw spouts associated with bird activity and assume it must have been a whale! We have developed a long to-do list for the next time we go off shore which hopefully will be soon!

 

 

Bob did figure out tonight (Day 29 from Rockhouse Creek, 10 miles south of Daytona) that if you are adding coordinates on Google Earth, looking for our location, you have to add a place mark to get it exactly. If you just search a lat/long position, you end up at the nearest mailing address. I’ve been placing a pin in our position each evening on Google Earth but have not figured out yet, how to add that map to the blog. Thanks for reading!

 Anna playing with the Bosun's chair, she had quite a ball!

 Anna and I assisting Bob up the mast.

 

 Anna was able to catch some fish too, thanks to Uncle Ted for the bait!

 Our Happy Boy! He loved sailing out on the Ocean on Day 28 and wasn't sick at all! Of course, I was.

Anna at the Castillo De San Marco

HIJACK!

Hi, my name is Grety the elf. It is 2:00am.

Me , Teddy, Freddy and Ready  moved into a boat called Midwatch. 

We hide from those giants called humans. Teddy is our photographer, Ready is the oldest,

Teddy and Freddy and I are triplets.  On Midwatch we come out after the humans go to sleep. We are up and moving. We usually go straight to the potty because we have to wait all day and half the night before we can go. Then we help each out washing our hands.   

Our favorite thing to do is to get into the basket with the Clementines. Teddy was too busy eating to even snap a picture.  He is the fat one. Maybe he is because he eats too much.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I took this picture of Teddy after he managed to get into the snack box. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Ready likes to look at the clock because he is our first watch on the time.  We all go back into our little cubbies under the floor at 4.

Sometimes I break the rules and go and visit my best friend Anna. Anna is big but she never squeezes me. We are good friends but I don’t get to see her very much.  

 

 

 

This is Freddy. He loves to fish.

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is me, sleeping in the human’s bed. They went away on a dinghy ride.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 This is me, trying to get the door open to the bathroom.

 

 This is me, writing a list. I am not a very good speller.

 

 

 

 

I need to go get a snack now. Its Christmas morning and we have to take care of the boat while the humans are gone.  Merry Christmas!

A Turtle, by Finn

I saw a turtle and the turtle was swimming around and I saw a turtle and I yelled! “Guys, guys! I see a turtle!” and then the turtle swimmed away.

It was a sea turtle and it had stuff growing on it. It was a little bit smaller than me.

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.

Day 13

Can we just skip Day 13 like they do on the 13th floor in high rises?

Day 12 - Fog

We were optimistic on the evening of Day 11 that we would have a good day including an early departure, on Day 12. We had good weather and good tides. This would include ending up somewhere near St Simon’s Island. We were up early and ready to roll only to realize we were thoroughly socked in, fog. We sat until about 8:30 when our neighbors decided to head out, optimistic that it would burn off soon. We decided to follow, slowly. We headed out into Johnson Creek and decided to experiment with the radar system. I managed to turn the machine on…but that was about it for me. Bob quickly went down and got it running and I started following the boat’s progress in front of us on the radar screen while Bob followed the Magenta line (the Intracoastal Waterway line) on the GPS and steering. We were able to see ICW path markers on the Radar and even birds swimming nearby.  All went well and we continued down the creek and out into Sapelo Sound where the programmers of the GPS apparently forgot to add in the Magenta line layer. We could see the boats on the radar screen in front of us and occasionally glanced their tails but we were a bit blind. We also dug out the fish finder and got that turned on. It worked great, no magenta line but the screen was much clearer and between the paper chart, radar and fish finder we were doing great…until the battery on the fish finder went. I was then able to plot a compass course and continue on the old-fashioned way with just a little electronic help. Finally, around 11:30 we managed to break free of the fog and we finally continued on at full speed.

Georgia is notorious for shallow spots in the ICW. Fortunately we hit a good stretch of tides with high tide around noon. This gave us almost the full range of daylight for travelling. We went through the worst stretch in the afternoon, but still saw a minimum of 10-foot depths. We anchored in the evening adjacent a colonial fort, central to the British/Spanish conflict between Georgia and Florida in the 1730s. We ended the evening surrounded by dolphins, eating grilled hotdogs and baking fresh cookies.