St. Augustine, Florida

I am writing this in a marina (!!!) in Charleston, SC. Haven't seen even half of Charleston, so I will write about it tomorrow, after our horse-drawn carriage tour. So although it is backtracking, but I must tell you about St. Augustine, a pretty little town.

You see some spanish influence here and there in the U.S., but St. Augustine has kept it real. The spanish had a life here, they grew crops, defended their territory, spun their yarns, baked their bread, raised more little Spaniards. The held this place for good while until they had to cede it the British, just before the Revolution, ten, of course, it became part of The Union. The boast of St. Augustine is that it is the oldest, continuously occupied city in America. The first photo is of Fort Matanzas. Incidentally, the new photo on the header is taken just off Fort Matanzas, you can almost get an idea of the expansive view the Spanish soldiers had. We got closed in by a weird rain sqall before I could take some better pix, oh well. The building material is called Coquina, cut out of sedimented shell and sand stone, its properties include being cannon-ball proof! The enemy called off the only attack ever launched here because they could see the balls going in, but couldn't see any damage baing done. Cool stuff!

A man called Flagler decided, in about 1920, to make a resort town out of St. Augustine. All the edifice pictures are of his hotels, except the church. He kept the Spanish theme, which you just don't see that often. Contrary to America's desire to keep up appearances of total victory, Flagler, in his way, said, Yes. This is indeed our heritage, and we should be proud of it!

If you ever come here, you will find tourist traps, but also the authentic feel of the times.

The lighthouse is truly amazing! The original house produced light with a huge fire at the top of a tower. This house was built around 1890, using brick, cast iron and wood. It's not often we get to tour these beauties all the way to the top, most are regulated the Coast Guard (I think) and will not permit the public to climb the stairs. This one was saved from demolition by a local group, and in order to do so, they had to agree to keep it open for public tours. The resulting facility and grounds are quite nice. The pictures include the staircase, shot from the bottom, and the beautiful Class 4 Fresnel lens, a real work of art. The light itself went from kerosine to electric bulb in 1930, click on the photo of the lens above for a great (if I do say so!) sight of the bulb. Some of the excerpts from the Lightkeeper's Log include storms, hurricanes, a vandal shooting and breaking part of the lens (bastards!) and an earthquake that had the poor man thinking he was going to die! He must have thought, "Geez! Is this how I am thanked for lugging kerosine by bucket up all these stairs for all these years?"And of course the view from the top made the 217 steps worth the effort! The stairs, being cast-iron, are the see-through kind and give the climber a sense of vertigo. Then you had to step out onto the observation walk-way, which was maybe 5 feet wide and surrounded by a waist-high bar. I found it easier to walk around the deck at the Empire State Building! The beauty of the craftsmanship was lovely to see!

Georgia

Between the no-see-'ems, thunderstorms and chilly breezes, we did manage to see some sights in Georgia. We managed to get here just as another late-season cold front passed through. The above shots were taken in the town of St. Mary's, the second oldest settlement on the seaboard. We didn't see as much spanish influence here as we did in St. Augustine, Florida, only what remains of the old Georgian style architechture. The story of this town is the same as what we have been finding all over North America: the pretty, charming, old part of the town is accessable by water, but not the amenities like grocery shopping, propane, hardware etc. A few towns will have some amenities somewhere within a mile or two walk, the rest have theirs stashed away on highways in box store compounds, where you take your life in your hands just by being a pedestrian. So I have learned that when groceries are available to really stock up! So we buy things by the case: beer (duh!), wine (save 10% on top of sale price!), canned goods (save 7%) and produce. Unopened cheese lasts for two weeks! So we are ready for just about anything! Like being socked in due to weather. It decided to blow an extra 10 knots today, so rather than getting our toupees blown off, we threw the anchor down outside of Jeckyll Island and called it an early day. I just made a fresh batch of salsa, so we,re tucking into our daily appetizer a bit early. It's too windy to row ashore, so we'll camp out for the evening. Thank the Marina downriver for the unsecured wi-fi! Hopefully in the morning, we'll tour Jeckyll, summerhome spot for Vanderbuilts, Carnagies and other hot-shot richies! And another pretty, charming town. Maybe we'll find a fishmonger to sell us some shrimpies for lunch, then it's off to motor to the end of the next run. Run, run run!

Florida! Cape Canaveral, New Smyrna & Daytona Beach

Ta-Dah!!!
Made it across The Pond one more time, the weather co-operated this time to make a rather pleasant cruise.

We left the Abacos at sunrise and an hour later discovered about 20 other boats making the same crossing we were. Not too many headed for the Northern Florida inlets, like us, but headed south for a much shorter crossing. Some of our fellow crossers are pictured at the side-bar called "Doug wants to see more boats". The wind kinda died off, so we hoisted our cruising 'Chute (a very light air sail), then noticed a few others did too, colourful, huh? The sun set as we headed off Grand Bahama Bank into deeper water. Ahh, the water! I shall never forget the beautiful, beautiful colours of the water: Abaco Green, Sea of Abaco Turquiose, Gulf Stream Noxcema-Jar-Blue, no kidding. That night, I saw another piece of meteorite burning up alongside, then remembered that the Kennedy Space Centre is only 62 miles away...it was space junk! Saw a few freighters and three cruise ships. The Cruiseships were really something, you could see a live concert happening on the top deck, and if your eyes were too weak to make the performers out, there was live video on a gigantic screen that I could see from our cockpit! There was actually enough ship traffic to keep us "entertained all night long!

We arrived at Cape canaveral at 4am, so we stood off to make Canaveral Inlet in daylight. Had a rather exciting session of "who's on first!?" type of maneovers with one of the world-famous Disney cruise ships while drifting into the inlet channel. Oh well. It was my watch, so I got the hell out of there and I'm the wiser for it.
Some of you have heard us whine about not wanting to transit through Florida, but we take most of it back! We are rather glad to be back in civilization, with its fresh produce, wide sidewalks and enough of a population base to make for good cultural experiences. The Abacos were nice, relaxing and warm, but we did get to missing some of what we're used to.
So we took a marina, paid something like $0.65/foot at Cape Marina for the cheap wall, took a good mile walk to Customs (aka Homeland Security), cleared in in a matter of minutes, then celebrated with a fantastic lunch at a place called The Grill. I heartily recommend the catch of the day, nno matter what it is. Even if you don't like fish!!! The fish was all caught that morning by the owner. As a matter of fact, he's got a boat-cam with live feed of how the morning trawl is going, TV screen up on the outside wall of the restaurant so you know what to have for lunch latter. (?!) We liked it so much, we went back for another walk that night to catch live music. Anyone ever heard of The Horn-Dogs? Well they're great! They paired up with a talented rock trio and produced very different, but quite good bar-tunes. Imagine Guns & Roses a la trombone...
Next day, we motored up the ICW to New Smyrna, landed on the free wall (yahoo!) and stayed two days while we re-provisioned our boat stores and indulged in more walking. Gosh! It's so nice to have good, wide sidewalks! Much of the USA that we've seen so far features sidewalks wide enough for one person. We ended up waiting out a cold front there, glad we did because the wind speeds were quite high further up the ICW.
Today, I'm writing from the public library at Daytona Beach. We anchored off downtown, sort of, landed the dingy at a wee park and took a good stroll into town. It's very pleasant here, at the very beginning of tourist season. The shelves on our favorite stores are all stocked, new season of cruising guides are out, the Canada Geese are starting to make the trip North. It's funny to see them going from here to there! We also saw robins, bluejays and red-winged black-birds in the Abacos. Great fun!

The Pictures: The Spanishy-looking ones are of St. Augustine, a town we hope to spend more time in in the fall. The Whale-like thing is a manatee, floating on it's back to catch some fish-gut-water being rinsed off a fish-cleaning station at Cape Marina. What a life! The last two piks depict US Coast Guard escorting a sub out from Canaveral Inlet (the same CG crew later inspected us, had a good time with these 20 year olds...they were astounded that anything made/born in 1952 should still exist...especially a wooden boat) and the general feel of the sport-fishing industry of Florida...these people are mad keen on deep sea fishing!
So all is well, I will post some photos the next time we get wi-fi on the boat. Be good!

Attempt # 3, Fla. Here We Come!

O.K. We have a great weather window: one days of good wind to get us off the Bahama Banks, then two days of medium wind to get into Canaveral Inlet. Wonder if the nice people there are planning a space launch? Ooh, hey! Did I tell you I saw a shooting star the night of attempt#2? Three minutes later, I saw a real falling star! The difference? I think a shooting star (common at sea during the night, maybe more sky to view) is a burning meteor/space junk seen from a distance. This falling star was maybe a half-mile off our port side, very close! So Cool! We could see the main part of it burning, a trail of ash behind it, and a minute into its flight, it burned out and died right beside us. Hope it wasn't something important!
See you in Canaveral!

Still in The Abacos!!!

Yeah, there went dry run # 2. We got headed this time. We turned back and ran away. The fellow that was with us went anyway, to Cape Canaveral. He said it was a long, slow slog with lots of wind on the nose and waves to shove through, but at least he got a lift from the Gulf Stream current. So we're back at Manjack Cay.

Waah!

Looks like we may get another weather window on Wed. Yahoo!

So in the meantime, I thought you'd be interested to see what a cold front can look like here. This one appeared to be more dramatic than it actually was. Cold fronts come in "wet" and "dry". Guess which kind this one is? Those birdies, which are actually quite large, are called Man O' War birds, or Frigate birds.

I'll ask again for some good sailing Karma, but also fpor some good weather karma. In the meantime, we continue to meet all sorts of lovely people. Tah-tah for now.

The Cinnamon Buns

Well! We'll just consider that last "voyage" a dry run, shall we? We got out to our intended jumping-off place and lost our weather window. We also were in a dead-zone for recieving weather broadcasts, so we had to beetle back to our favourite anchorage, Manjack. We see another window coming on Thursday/Friday. Send a little more sailing karma!

In the meantime, I have time to tell you about the fabulous breakfast buns we've been enjoying. The above piks tell the story of the Bahamian Cinnamon Buns.

First, you must go to where the coconuts are free. That would be here. But, since you're there, you'll have to get shredded coconut from the store. Oh, well.

Secondly, you must select one that still has water inside: hold it up to your ear...and bang it agianst your head. Juss kidding. Listen for the sound of a cocktail being mixed- right in your coconut!

Third, rip the husk off, drain the water into your best rum glass, golden rum is my preferred choice. Smash your coconut to small pieces and pry the meat away from shell. If you do all this correctly, you can, yourself, get smashed and wear a coconut-bra. Everyone's doing it!

Put the rum down, and grate up 2 cups of fine-shred, beautiful fluffy coconut. Flollow recipe on the side bar.

Finish your rum, then serve your friends the best breakie they've ever had. I don't know where this unfortunate-looking person came from, but she, oddly, didn't care for eating a coconut bun and insisted on peanut-butter.

Time for new friends.

Anyhow, the next time I write, maybe we'll be in Florida.

Homeward Bound

Well! It's the six-month mark of our new life style. We had a very serious talk about how it is really going and came up with some pretty good feelings about it all.
Firstly, we really love our boat. Even Jim is coming around and is not quite so concerned about worm damage to the hull that he wants to sell her on the spot! Her better attributes include her solid presence on the water. She is big and heavy and can take quite a big sea. With her kellet (Phil- did I spell that right?) down, she doesn't swing so much on her anchor that she makes you dizzy. She's quite pretty inside, so nicely finished by cabinet-maker cum shipwright James. Everyone who cames aboard is is completely taken by her hardwoods and traditional interior design. She's very comfortable. Her decks are safe and spacious. If only she had a cockpit more condusive to lounging! She sails quite well, especially now that we've had more practice sailing her longer distances and in varying winds.
Secondly, we really enjoy the freedom of moving around. The Abacos is a great area to do a lot of sailing in safe, small water. The Great Abaco Island has a barrier reef with accompaying cays (wee lime-stone islands) so as the saying goes...all that wind and no big seas. We, especially me, got some great experience.
We did suffer a few emotional and social bumps and jolts along the way, the bigger jolt for James is the fact that I am peri-menopausal...he's going through his "change of wife" (haha! thank you Lyn Johnson!) But at least I'm here to stay, he's such a charming fellow! But one gets settled in with what life may bring, and flexibility is what this lifestyle is based on.
So we're headed back to Canada via most of the waterways we travelled to get down here, exepting the 8 day offshore trip. Standing a watch with no auto-helm or self-steering is a drag. So , depending on the weather for the day, we will either travel up the Intra-Coastal Waterway (The ICW- a great big ditch...where you can run aground...or hit things) or take as many 36 hour shorter outside hops as we can. Either way, we'll be back in time for a lovely Lambton Clan Gathering; Jim's younger brother is getting married in early summer. (At least there is a rumour...). Then we might make it to Ottawa in time for the Jazz Festival last week of June, July 1. And to visit my children! And whoever else wants to stop by! Then maybe we'll go up the Trent-Severn to see the folks in PTBO. Then there are all our friends & family that live on Lake Ontario, Aunt Joan, Randy Holt, Jim's Kids and friends from The Anchorage. Ooperwhallah, What to do? We obviously can't do every thing, but we sure would like to.
In the meantime, we're slowly getting into position to get to our Gulf Stream crossing place, visiting some of our favourite stops along the way. Right now, we're back off Manjack cay, and Bill & Leslie- we can't thank you enough for the wi-fi!
So send us your best good-crossing-karma, we should pull in to Fort Pearce Inlet, Florida in the next good weather window. Waiting for said window can take a long time, weeks as a matter of fact. And there is not likely any wi-fi up near where our waiting spot. So don't worry if you don't here from us for a few weeks. We'll be lolling around a beautiful white sand anchorage...swimming, eating, drinking and being merry! Very likely with a few other boats.
See ya soon!