To St. Augustine
28 October 2006 | Location coordinates: 29 53.516' N, 80 18.54'W
Weather: good, bad, ugly
To St. Augustine
If you go to Google Earth and plug in the coordinates you can see where we are right now.
Sunday, October 22, 2006. We left Parrot Creek in SC about 7:30 because the weather was forecast to deteriorate over the day. We planned to take a break for the expected day or two of bad weather at the same marina we stayed at last year when we were having engine problems.
The ICW through Georgia is a bit more difficult than through the other states, at least in my opinion. We still got to Thunderbolt (outside Savannah) shortly after noontime, and were tied up at the dock at Bahia Bleu Marina quickly and easily. ($1.50/ft per day, no charge for electricity, diesel $2.60/gal). The people are as friendly and helpful as ever. Peter just can't seem to shake this cold he picked up, and I asked at the marina office about the closest pharmacy so I could get some better cough medicine for him. A boat owner in the office offered to drive me to the mall where there's a WalMart and a grocery store, and the marina told me to call them and they'd send someone to pick me up. The last time we were here I walked in the other direction to do some shopping, but that was a leisurely 3-hour excursion; this chauffer service is very nice.
I can go up to the marina office and connect my computer to their high-speed network for free if I want to. There is a Beacon WiFi network that seems to come in fairly well, I assume from the other marina in the area, but I haven't investigated it for the short time we'll be here. And just a very short walk down the street is Tubby's, a very good restaurant. We went Monday night for dinner. Service was excellent, their fried Calamari appetizer is prepared in their kitchen and the best I've had. We wound up eating far too much food, it was all so good. Tuesday night Peter decided we'd go back for dinner again, but he said that we wouldn't eat so much. I agreed with that, but then Peter surprised me and again ordered the fried Calamari for an appetizer. There's a limit to what he will give up, I guess. A bowl of oyster stew and some hush puppies for Peter, some steamed shrimp for me and we were again fully sated, almost stuffed.
Peter's cold isn't getting better very quickly and the cold front that has just passed through is cold enough that I wanted to stay an additional day at the marina. I spent the day trying to find a marina in which to leave the boat when we return to the house for two months over the holidays. I have called more than 20 marinas, working south from Jacksonville. It is very frustrating; either the marina is full or they can't accommodate our beam. One marina's electricity charge is going from $75.00 up to $175.00 a month! Peter says that's okay, we wouldn't be plugged in while we were gone anyway, but they didn't have room for us anyway..
The problem when we stop in a marina is the inertia. Anxious though we were to continue south, the comfort of the marina tends to create a "maybe tomorrow" feeling. Yet we know we've got to get going, and so we unplugged ourselves early on Wednesday the 25th and headed out. We were running about an hour when the starboard engine started losing power. The port engine was okay, but we were not going to get far so long as one engine wasn't running up to speed. Peter chose to shut down the starboard engine and just run on the port engine while he changed the fuel filter. The water was quite calm so changing the filter wasn't terribly messy, but a bloody nuisance. When we started the starboard engine up again, it ran fine. Now the problem we have to address is a dirty fuel tank that obviously needs to be cleaned. I guess that's Peter's assignment once we find a place to leave the boat.
Even with the hour or so that we were running significantly slower than usual, we were able to make 135 miles, anchoring in the Amelia River just past Fernandina Beach. Thursday was a short day, arriving in St. Augustine before noon and we anchored just off the fort. We can't accomplish anything in Stuart, where our new davits are, until next week, and so we could slow down and visit with my brother. The weather report Thursday evening predicted nasty weather Friday afternoon, with winds getting up to 40 knots or more. I wasn't particularly pleased about our anchoring technique after the tide turned and it was clear that the boat we were worried about and had anchored well away from wasn't a problem, but the boat we had anchored behind turned out to not swing around as we had expected and when the tide turned we were much too close to it should the wind get up. Peter and I agreed that it was a good idea to go into St. Augustine Municipal Marina to sit out the bad weather on Friday. When Friday morning dawned clear and calm, Peter was lulled into suggesting that we postpone going into the marina until noontime, after we had gone to breakfast with John and done our errands. Worry-wart that I am, however, I urged going into the marina immediately rather than wait. The marina could take us and so we were tied up in a nice slip by 8:15 am. A VERY Southern gentleman came up to our boat as we finished securing the lines and said to me "I can tell you're not from New York! With all the boats that come through this marina, I've never seen one named Watermelon before!" He was a charming gentleman who handed me his card and told me we were welcome there any time. He's the Dock Master and quintessential salesman to boot.
We met John and Vicki, had a lovely breakfast, and then we were driven all over the place as we tried to get new anchor rode. Peter didn't like the line that we found and so we'll wait for a new destination before searching for anchor line again. Lots of miles and stops later we were back at the marina before noon, and oh, my, what a scene! The wind had picked up dramatically and there was a nasty chop and sloshing in the marina because the marina is open to the south from where the wind was coming. Those boats already in the marina had a ringside seat to the wild goings-on as boat after boat sought shelter in the marina in these high winds. The marina staff worked tirelessly all afternoon dragging boats into slips before the wind slammed them into other boats. Considering how wild the wind and chop was, there were surprisingly few mishaps or damage. One boat couldn't complete his maneuver to turn around before the wind caught him on his beam and pushed him broadside into the concrete piles at the end of the dock. He got off the piles with what looked like little or no damage, but it sure sounded and looked bad for a while. I thought some of the dock boys were going to be pulled into the water from the effort of grabbing lines and bringing the boats into the slips ??" sometimes the wind would slew those boats around before they could make the lines fast. And every boat captain had to perform the maneuvers under the scrutiny of a host of people already safely tied up, as they walked up and down the dock observing the next boat drama unfold (shame-faced grin here).
All afternoon boats struggled in, Peter adjusted our dock lines, we watched and listened to wind howling through the rigging. One sailboat left their wind vane spinning very noisily, but fortunately they left before the day was over, and another sailboat with a roll-out mainsail was hard on the ears as the wind whistled through the mast. These masts, with the sail inside, are incredibly noisy with a particularly unpleasant high-pitched howling.
It rained pretty hard during the night, but Saturday dawned bright and clear with little wind, though by midday there was a brisk breeze blowing through. Inertia again, we stayed the day, will leave for Stuart Sunday morning.