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.