Merry Christmas (not from Shawnee)

pathetic fake Florida Christmas decore

                     

   For Christmas we drove two days from St. Augustine up to Schenectady, New York to visit family, my daughter, Sarah, her husband, Yeang, my first husband, Angus,  and his 101.5 year old mom and Mazu came too.  Having a great time.  The drive was rather grueling.  The boat is being watched by the cruisers net members, a wonderful group we got in touch with the day we arrived in St. Augustine.
  Big news came in the form of ten Christmas balloons for my mother-in-law, Rhona.  One of the balloons said "It's a girl!"  We all thought, Gee they must have run out of Christmas balloons.  But no, the card said, "Merry Christmas from Dillon, AJ, Tate, Violet and ... Celia due June 14, 2014." Wow, were we all surprised.  So the family grows, another granddaughter.
  Merry Christmas everyone and Happy New Year.

St. Augustine, Florida, Reached our destination

  We loved Fernandina.  St. Mary's inlet was easy to come into down the Amelia River to Fernandina Marina.  Great little boutiques with no chain stores allowed.  We stayed one night.
  We had much discussion about going  inside or outside to the St. John's inlet. Outside allows us to sail and motor less, go faster and not worry about the depth.   Going inside is smoother and safer because we do not enter the shoaling St. Augustine inlet.  I voted for outside. Captain Drew decided not to take the St. John inlet challenge since it's our first time doing this.  We started inside, down the ICW, what I call the pencil line with white knuckle motoring.  As I've said before the ICW can go from 13' to 4'9" instantly so the helmsman (me for the first day) must watch the depth constantly.
    We were planning to anchor just off the ICW, but when we got to the spot that was tucked into a cove, it was low tide.  The charts didn't show the actual depth at low tide.  We turned to go in and immediately hit ground, smashed the throttle into reverse to get off.  We tried 3 more times continually hitting bottom.   Fortunately we've learned to go slowly -- it's a muddy, sandy bottom.
  It was 4:00, (sun  sets at 5:15), and we had to find a place to stay for the night.  We decided to go on and try another anchorage at Sisters Creek, ICW mile marker 738 (738 miles from Norfolk, VA).  After an hour we found a huge free public floating dock next to a park with only one other boat.  We'd seen it on the mile by mile book we're using, but thought it would be filled at this late hour.  Soon after we got there one more boat, Oriental Moon, arrived.
   We were lucky to be able to tie up so easily.  We invited the captains and crew of the boats aboard Shawnee for evening drinks and to hear stories about going aground, getting off, and  Florida fines from Florida Water Police.

Santa on the ICW near condos south of Jacksonville

  Since I had done the hard shallow ICW with no auto pilot the day before Drew took the helm for the next leg from Sisters Creek to St. Augustine.  We crossed the St. John's inlet with 1.5 knots of current against us.  Funny to look at the instruments and see Speed over the ground 4.5 and regular speed at 7.5.  Later we caught the current in our favor and motored a steady 8 knots south.
  Of course, during Drew's turn at the helm the water never went shallower than 15' (Shawnee draws about 5' that means we can't go anywhere that is shallower than 5').   He set Shawnee's auto pilot and enjoyed the view down the straight part. 
This is Palm Valley outside of Jacksonville that has beautiful homes along the ICW.

Snowman on the dock

 

We arrived at St. Augustine waiting a few minutes for the Bridge of Lions to open at 1:30.  We motored  through the drawbridge and to our mooring at the St. Augustine Municipal Marina, right downtown.  The town is entirely lit up at night.  This is City Hall.  A friend of ours, Steve Lalond, a cruising friend from Marblehead, took us to a cruisers party as soon as we got cleaned up.

City Hall and Lightner Museum

More Spanish architecture - Flagler College. 
  Many things are named Flagler because he was the man who was extremely wealthy and built the first railroad through Florida, among other things.  The city of St. Augustine is bustling with holiday horse and carriages, tour trolleys, and many tourists.  A small red convertible just drove by full of Santa's shouting "Merry Christmas."
  This morning I got up at 9 and listened to channel 72 on the VHF, the cruisers net.  It is kind of cool because anyone can call in about upcoming events, introduce themselves if new to the area, and make connections.  There is live music all over town tonight on Amelia Island, across the bridge and tomorrow the Farmers Market.  There is going to be a Pirates Ball January 4th.
  I put up some pathetic Christmas decorations on the bow of the boat, fake green garland and a fake wreath with a red bow.  Everything with greens has to be fake here because the real stuff turns brown in days. 

On south

We repacked the boat after all of the repairs, that took a day.  We waited for a weather window after the rainstorm and front came through.   Using grib files (wind direction and speed), Chris Parker's weather service for boaters going south and the usual weather apps decided Sunday Dec. 15th at 3:00 was the best time to go.  The wind was predicted to change from west to south.  We sailed out of the Cape Fear River channel with huge breakers on both sides of us where the water was shallow.  Kind of an eerie feeling to motor through the calm part with breaking waves on either side of us.
    I was glad to leave the ICW because we couldn't sail very often or for very long and the depth is just constantly changing from 12' to 6' in the blink of an eye in spite of all the good buoy markers.  Out to the open ocean to be greeted by this glorious sunset.

Out in the open ocean we saw the moon rise and set.  The sunset is very much the entertainment for the evening.  The sky goes through so many changes for about 45 minutes.  Just feel close to nature with water, sky, reflections, and this air that was about 45 but felt much colder.

Mazu is not much for offshore sailing.  She doesn't ever get sick, just nervous and scared.  She is always touching one of us.  I took the 10pm to 2am watch at the helm.  It requires watching out for boats on the radar screen.  There are a few radar settings like 1.5 mile out up to 48 miles out.  We usually set it to view 6 miles out.  6 miles is the equivalent of about half an hour at 6 knots.   We used our travel apps to determine a route.  Once the route is set, the program on Navionics tells how long, how far and all the tide and current information.  Night on the open ocean is wonderful.  We were out for 2 days and nights.  The clear sunrise, starts warming up our enclosed (zipper in and out vinyl) cockpit like a sun room.   

We arrived in Florida going down St. Mary's River to the Amelia River to the marina.  : ) One side of the entrance from the open ocean is Cumberland Island,  a nature preserve in Georgia.  The other side is Florida, our primary destination. : ) Fernandina Beach.  Mazu was so excited to get off and go to the bathroom that she jumped and slipped falling in the water between the boat and the dock.  It's about 4' down to the water.  I dragged her up by her leash (yes, around her neck) until Drew grabbed her paws.  Saltwater wet dog is not fun.  But she was cooled off and wasn't scared by the event at all.

Tomorrow we go outside and sail farther south to St. John's River where we may anchor for the first time (anchoring is free.)    If you want to just receive this blog as an email so you don't have to put the address in every time, go up to the top of this page on the right hand side and you'll see a place to type your email address.  Keep in touch.                                                              

 

 

            

Christmas Flotilla in Southport, NC

I have never visited a marina at Christmas time.  Boats in New England are under wraps or inside avoiding snow.  In Southport  and many other ports the boats are decorated, sail past a reviewing stand and then judged by 4th graders.  Even in the rain they went out.  Many boats are decorated for Christmas.  Here are just a few:

 I bought a real wonderful mixed green wreath to put on our boat.  Duh, of course it's so warm down here that it will dry up in days.  It's dropping needles everywhere.  I bought my first fake greens and will decorate when we get to St. Augustine.

 The reflections are kind of neat.  This night the water was like glass.

Christmas Flotilla in Southport

I haven't been to a marina ever that decorates the boats quite like this.  Southport has a contest that is judged by 4th graders.  Even in the rain most of the boats went out and passed a reviewing stand.

Maintenance Items completed ,Hurray!

We drove 15 hours straight from New Hampshire to Southport Wednesday night.  Arriving Thursday to Shawnee all fixed!  Zimmerman Marine came in under budget, on time and with quality work completed, a first for any boatyard we've used.

 Lifelines replaced after 15 years.

A/C heater fixed so we can use it when we are plugged in.  We can use the Esbar heater when we are offshore with fuel.

And Voila,  the new toilet, Raritan pump type works.

We plan to leave Sunday night for Florida , outside on the open ocean, after the Saturday storm goes through.

Two jokes today.  We were shopping and typed in the store name with Google GPS.  Following the directions it took us into residential neighborhoods, we're like, "What the heck?? Where is it taking us?"  Finally we drive to a cul de sac and GPS says, "Park your car and walk the rest of the way to your destination."  We roared.  Has anyone ever gotten that message?

We drove up behind a car at a stop light and their bumper sticker said:
HORN NOT WORKING
  LOOK FOR FINGER

Back on Shawnee - all fixed

 

 Amazingly everything is fixed!!
Zimmerman Marine came in under budget, on time with great quality work - a first for us at a boat yard.  They added new lifelines along the entire boat.

 They got the A/C heater system to work which uses electricity when plugged in at a marina.  Our other Esbar heater uses fuel, we use when we are off shore.
  We'll leave Sunday night to head for Florida after the coming storm tomorrow and Saturday.

And Voila  the new toilet, Raritan pump type WORKs - hurray.

Planning to go back to Southport, NC

December 3, 2013

  We will drive back to Southport the beginning of next week with Mazu.  Since we are headed back up to New York for Christmas with my 101 year old mother-in-law (from first marriage) we'll be loaded down with stocking stuffers and gifts.
   Before we go I am going to try and build some fender boards to use since there are so many marinas with pilings.  It should protect the side of the boat and the fenders.
Check out this way to make them with 2  6' PVC pieces of 4" 40 pipe.  These should be easier to store than boards.  see it at fender board link.  It just requires drilling 4  1/2" holes big enough for the line to fit through and then sanding a bit.
  Another item we need is portal curtains since we are in marinas more often.  We never needed them on moorings.  We are inches from some boats and people walk along the finger piers.  I'll have to think about how to attach them inexpensively.  Currently we're using cardboard over the BR portals - very classy.
  We hope to shove off quickly after checking the repairs and maintenance work done by Zimmerman Marine at Southport Marina. The repairs included checking the Yanmar Diesel engine injectors, adding new life lines, checking the air conditioning water pumps, and installing hoses and new toilet .  With a good weather window we'll head out of Cape Fear to St. Augustine.  Everything will be working for a few minutes I hope.