Here we are, safely at a mooring in St Augustine and trying to decide if we will be here overnight or for another day. The deciding factors will be our desire to have a diner ashore and he weather.

Bright and early this morning and we were up and getting Nelleke ready for departure which included first parade and topping up the water. We also decided to buy fuel here so we wouldn't have to put into a dock in a couple of days. For what it's worth at 2300 rpm which gives us a little over 6 knots through the water in calm weather we burn about 1/2 gallon, which I find quite acceptable. We have a 90 gallon fuel tank so we have in the order of 180 hours of steaming time plus we have an additional 10 gallons on deck for in extremis situations. Counting on fingers and toes that means we would have six days of motoring and still have something left in the tank. One part of my first parade might be a little different from everyone else's as I always check the four bolts on my transmission coupling. Twice now, once with the old keyed coupling, and once with the new one, I have had the shaft come loose. Let me tell you, it ain't much fun, especially when you think about what could happen if you are at sea and the whole thing pulls out. That's an inch and a half hole, three feet below the waterline! How long can you tread water?

There is a little breakfast cafe on the property of this marina that opens at 0700 which is great 'cause it gives you enough time to have a really good home made breakfast before the marina proper opens at 0800. Which is what we did this morning. Fascinating little place. We were there actually before their opening time, but we were allowed in anyway, and with five staff, we were to only ones there. Maybe it gets busier later in the morning.

Shriek!

Rude word! Rude word!

Remember yesterday's post where I said we stopped earlier than I wanted to because the next bridge was closed until 1800?

Well!

This morning as we approached it we discovered that it was not only open, but it was permanently open, never to be closed again. It is being replaced by a fixed overhead bridge and if I had continued or radioed ahead yesterday I would have found out.

Sigh! Oh well!

We saw several manatees again today and I have begun to hope that based on the number we have been seeing that they are making a come back. I have said it before and I will say it many more times I'm sure but the British sailors who thought that they were mermaids must have either had very poor experience with women back in Blighty or been at sea for so long they actually thought that an 800 pound animal with a hare lip and whiskers was beautiful.

One more musing for the day. We are still seeing boats that clearly have no traveling purpose, that are simply a residence for someone. They most often have 3, 4 or even 5 anchors out, with a completely fouled bottom, a collection of scavenged treasures on the deck, and, in many cases, no mast. There are way fewer of them than there were the last time we came down, due, I'm afraid, to Hurricane Mathew. You see a lot of them on their sides in the shoreline. We can only hope that the people living on them were able to get off. There was one, however, that absolutely boggled my mind. It was anchored in Mosquito River just north of Titusville. No place within 15 miles to land a dingy. Why would someone pick that spot?

Our arrival at the mooring field in St Augustine was not without its adventures as we provided the amusement for the mooring field as we made not one, not two, but three passes at the buoy before we were able to collect the pennant in a three knot current with a wind at 90 degrees. We did so with minimal loss of temper and not losing the boathook over the side. I think many cruisers regularly make a contribution to Neptune in the form of a boathook that gets ripped from your hands during a particularly delicate mooring manoeuvre.

After we stopped I have laid in several courses on the GPS - Beaufort SC, Charleston SC, Southport NC, and Beaufort NC - all possible offshore destinations. If we can get a two day or more weather window tomorrow we will toddle off shore. If not we will head on up the ditch again to Fernandina Beach and try again there.

Sigh.

Oh well. That's the lifestyle isn't it?