It was so good to get back to the ocean today. We sailed out of Ponce De Leon inlet by 0730 into a beautiful green sea day on the Florida coast. A very gentle swell gave us a nice motion the whole day. We had a slight breeze that allowed us to motor sail at better than seven knots the entire trip up to St. Augustine.

Kay had a nice nap, and I enjoyed the freedom from worrying over channel markers and boat traffic and got deeper into a great book on George Washington's crossing of the Delaware on Christmas Eve, 1776. I had planned on reading this book as we crossed into the Delaware Bay from the Chesapeake Canal, but as we are so far behind, I am just happy to be able to concentrate on the book. The autopilot does a great job of keeping us on course, and we saw only a couple of shrimp boats all day.

Before lunch Kay noticed that the over head ceiling of the hard dodger had gotten pretty dirty, and we attacked it with gusto. It really cleaned up nice with clorox, and that led to a general clean up after lunch that made us proud to bring ZT into the St. Augustine City Marina.

Our first look at St. Augustine made us glad we had decided to make a two day stop. First settled in 1565, Spanish colonial town still has an old world flavor. The marina is top notch and gave us a warm welcome.

As it turned out, we were berthed just two boats away from the Endeavour trawler "Cuchipanda" which had passed us yesterday. We met the proud new owners who were on their maiden voyage, taking the boat up to Maine where they had just established a new home. We found out that Cuchipanda is a slang Spanish word for festival, which seemed just right to us for a boat name.

As we tucked in for the night, I once again heard the odd clicking sound everywhere around the hull. I googled up "clicking hull noise" and "boat night noises" and sure enough, confirmed the story that I had previously heard about such noises being a type of shrimp clicking as they chased food in the shallow marina water. Many boaters have heard the same noise up and down the Florida coast, and it is much discussed on various boat web sites. Another marine mystery solved. I'm still working on the "green flash". Many claim it is a true phenomenon at sunset at sea, but I have spent many evenings looking for it, and have never had the luck to see it. Maybe on this trip, but of course, with the sun setting in the wrong direction from the east coast, I'm sure it will continue to elude me

Tomorrow will be a day of leisure and exploration, as well as cleaning on ZT. There are so many restaurants to pick from for our 40th celebration, but I: am willing to wager that we end up at Columbia, which is one of our favorites. Columbia was founded in Tampa, and has branches in Celebration as well as St. Augustine. It specializes in Spanish and Cuban food, and is really very special.