Work up this AM bright eyed and bushy tailed, wherever that saving comes from, I'll never know, and got into some quick early morning chores the least favourite of them for me was to change the holding tank air vent hose filter, a necessary job but, peeewuh! His is one of those things that you install and forget about and probably shouldn't especially if you use the holding tank which we have begun doing a lot now that we are in the US, at home of course there isn't quite the same requirement. Unfortunately not using it aids and a its the forgetting and after a while, in our case about eight years, next thing you know it's clogged and when you flush the head you are doing so against pressure and when you stop the pressure pushes what was in the hose back into the bowl. Surprise! For the next person visiting. Oh well. Job done. Now, let's see how that works out.

This Marina was built on a marsh through the simple expedience of dredging out the basin and a channel in through to the river. Now before everyone gets all twisted about the habitat for the pink bellied wiggled being upset or something let me remind you that they merely move the dredged material aside and create a spoil island which in turn adds to the ecology and habitat. This place has a thriving population of all sorts of bugs, no se'ums, raccoons, deer, alligators (in hibernation now, blessedly), mice, songbirds, raptors - osprey, eagles, etc.

It really was a lot warmer here last night and poor old Peri was really feeling his pants and wheezes lying there trying to sleep. We had the bug coil in operation and battened ourselves down to keep the little bleeders out so that didn't help with the internal temperature, but after dark they went away and by midnight we were able to crack open the cabin hatch.

Then off to the grocery store with bright eager faces and a sufficient line of credit at the bank. Can everyone tell that I am feeling much, better, now, that the shaft coupling has been fixed and the boat that was bilging periodically all last night wasn't us.

Today we are off along the ICW. We have decided that we want to look though the old town in St Augustine which since we are already ten miles in that direction from St Mary's Inlet it makes more sense for us to carry on down the ditch. We have seven days before we have to get to Titusville and we'd like to be tourists for a while.

We got off at 1030 and called it quits at 1430 only for the reason that I didn't want to stress the new bolts without having a look at them. We ran the engine at everything from 0800-2400RPM and she simply purred. Let that be a lesson to me that any sort of a knock is due to some cause and we should look to find out what before the problem gets beyond me. In this case since I was the one that puts the bolts in that failed I was the cause. I hang my head in shame!

We chose a marina simply because there isn't anywhere within daylight that we could have stopped and I wanted to be comfortable why I check over the bolts. I am 90% certain that all will be well but just in case......

This place is large but showing its edges. At least that's the first impression.

Tomorrow we will be off on another short day to the mooring field in St Augustine.