Saturday 25 January 2020
We started the day with 794 statute miles to go in 27 days that will get us to Deltaville in time to haul Nelleke, prep her for a couple of months on the hard and make the flight home. That works out to 29 miles per day. If we continue to do 50-60 miles daily we should get there in plenty of time to relax, contemplate nature, and figure out our way forward.

If you haven't heard it yet we have put Nelleke up for sale with Sunnybrook Yacht Sales the same folks that we bought her from. This was a very hard decision for me as this has been my dream since I was 22 years old, but the fact is that is wasn't Barb's dream. She has been a good sport and did enjoy the travel, the new places, the new people, but this year emphasized the fact that neither of us are getting younger and add to that climate change makes the possibility of southbound cruising more problematic due to the uncertainty of the weather. This cruise, for instance, went nothing according to plan mostly due to the weather situation. All I can say is that if anyone is contemplating the cruising lifestyle do it as early as you can - like, SOON.

So, to conclude, we have Nelleke up for sale and if we can't get a reasonable price for her we will continue to cruise her in the summer in Maritime waters and winter her at home. Sooner or later someone who will love her as much as we do and who wants a big solid blue water cruising boat will come along.

We are in northern Florida, the part of the state that I think is the most attractive. There is less of the opulence and ostentatious architecture; instead there are regular homes along the coast of the ICW for regular folk to live in. The homes are older and some look like they need their lawns mowed. In other words the people who live there can't afford groundskeepers and pool boys. They do it themselves when they have the time. The banks of the ICW are, I don't know, more rustic? What all Florida probably looked like 40-50 years ago.

We were up early again to start off for the Saint John's River. Apparently there is a free dock for 72 hours on the other side which, with any luck, we will find a spot for us tonight - at least that was plan A.

We are back in parkas, gloves and toques. The temperature here and at home was the same today at eleven degrees. We have decided that unless there is an extended period of warm weather we will be doing two things. First we will stay on the ICW and stop every night so we can get into our sleeping bags and stay warm. And second, we are going to say to heck with the expense, and stop in a marina every night so we can plug in and run the electric heaters. Unless it is forecast for warm in which case we will still stop for the night but not necessarily at a marina. Call us woosies if you like but as a wise master corporal once told me "Any fool can be uncomfortable!"

After motoring all day we decided to stop at Jacksonville Beach at Palm Cove Marina. We are alongside and plugged in with the heaters running. We walked to the nearby mall and a Publix for some small provisioning and I was struck by a sense of déjà vu. I had the feeling that we had been here before but then I realized that any strip mall in the USA could be transplanted and put down anywhere else and everyone would think that normal.

We made 48.6 miles today and are at mile 747.4 on the ICW. That means that we have that far to go to get to Norfolk VA which is mile 0.

Tomorrow we will head for one of two marinas on Jekyll Island either the Brunswick Island Marina at 680 or Jekyll Harbour Marina at 684. Or we might stop at Cumberland Island one last time - it all depends on the weather.