Lazy us, 3 days of just sitting in one place
01 May 2005 | St. Augustine, FL
JeanneP
May 1, 2005
Our stop in St. Augustine has lasted 3 days, a pleasant respite from the hard-slogging of the four days before.
We needed "stuff", and first on the agenda was proper dock lines, or Peter would never go into a marina again. And so on Friday morning we got into our dinghy and put-putted to shore to start our expedition.
The marine store at the municipal marina was very expensive, but I could use the telephone book yellow pages to locate other places, including West Marine. West Marine is far from town and we knew we would have to take a taxi to get there, but we figured we would walk up the road apiece to find a hardware store along the way. We found the hardware store just a few blocks from where we started, and were able to buy lots of the stuff we needed. Asking the salesman how we got to West Marine he confirmed that we had to find a taxi, but he then said, "but there's a marine store just around the corner, about 200 yards from here." So we went there, and found almost everything we needed, at a savings of better than $60 over what it would have cost at West Marine!
We were now overburdened with stuff so we decided to go back to the boat and install what we had bought. That killed the rest of the day.
John and Vicki invited us to join them at a neighbor's house for a barbeque that evening, which we gladly accepted. It was a lovely evening, pleasant company and lots of excellent food! Something new for me, there were green olives in the potato salad which was a really delicious addition.
John offered us the use of Vicki's car to get the rest of our errands done on Saturday, but Peter told John that we had so little to do that if John had the time it would probably be better if John just drove us to the two places we had to go and then he'd have the car for the rest of the day. John, poor soul, believed Peter and thus we were off on our four-hour+ trip around St. Augustine to find the rest of our "stuff". This included trips to West Marine, Home Depot, the Dollar Store, Vicki's produce market, and a grocery store (it's never easy with us). But we got everything that there was to get in this town, and then we had to lug it all in the dinghy back to the boat. We managed, of course.
We had wanted to take John & Vicki out to dinner Saturday night, but the weather reports threatened thunderstorms for some time in the evening, so Peter suggested that we eat on the boat, giving us a chance to show off our new toy. I got my fresh shrimp from the fish store next to where Vicki works, and it was really fresh.
Staying on the boat turned out to be a wise decision. When the sky got darker we sent John and Vicki back to land before they got caught in any rain, and then Peter high-tailed it back and we lifted the dinghy up on its davits "just in case". The storm hit almost as soon as we had gotten our preparations finished, and it was very, very good that we were on the boat. Although nothing happened to us, several boats dragged and a boat anchored not very close to us was suddenly VERY close to us for some reason, and we had to keep a close eye on it. This boat behaves very differently from a sail boat, and we need some experience with it to learn what is the best way to do things to avoid problems.
Today is overcast and damp, and Peter is using this lay day to do lots of maintenance/fixing. And Monday we will set off again, reinvigorated.