Explore Fernandina and make some plans
24 March 2009
• Fernandina Beach, Florida
by Mike
We went in to the dock this morning to pay for our stay and to explore the city of Fernandina. The centre of town is just behind the marina and is full of old historic buildings, and we quickly decided that we liked the place and could understand why Mary Lou and Jay had decided to stay here rather than continue further south. Heather, one of the dock staff had heard all about Peri and Al and made a big fuss over the dog, getting down on the floor of the marina office and playing with him. Peri thought that she was pretty special too. We then took a long walk up Centre Street checking out the stores, most of them before they opened and reading the posters in the shop windows. There will be a couple of musical concerts in town while we are here that we will probably try to attend and we have already decided to head out for a dinner in town tonight. We also gave some thought to going into the dock for a significant period of our stay if we can work out a deal on price. Jay tells us that the marina manager is a pretty reasonable guy and will likely smile on such a plan. We'll see. Being alongside would give us a chance to go ashore more frequently that we would if we were on a mooring plus we'll have better access to wifi.
We came back to the boat to change into wet shoes and then went ashore of the little offshore island across from the mooring field. Yesterday Jay introduced it to us as a great place to run Peri and their dog, plus as an added benefit, we could look for shark's teeth. On this one 30 minute trip we were able to find a couple of dozen and a sting ray barb and a tooth from something else - a molar of some type of vegetarian creature. It's a lot of fun beach combing again, even if there was no glass to be found there were a lot of teeth.
Later in the afternoon I went over to a commercial dock to recce it for fuel purchase. You can buy diesel there for $1.80/gal so guess where we will be filling up.
I had an idea to head over to Cumberland Island for the last couple of days of our stay here. This is an island that was most recently privately owned by the Carnegie family and donated to National Parks. Mary Lou and Jay think that it's a great place to visit and have been taking their friends and visitors over to it all winter. That's my idea. Jay thought that would be great especially as his research has shown that we should wait for 48 hours after the last of the wind systems with any north in them has passed by before heading out to head for Hilton Island and Beauford. That way we'll have a nice sail to get there.
Tonight we went into town again to one of the eateries that are all over the place here - Italian, French, Spanish, haut cuisine, you name it, as well as some good old fashioned pubs and down south diners. We had a hankering for Italian so we wandered around until we found a place that suited our fancy and marched in. It was a very nice evening. The only thing that I don't think that I'll ever get used to is being served by a very attractive dark haired Italian looking lady only to have her open her mouth and out comes that delightful and charming southern accent that the ladies down here sound so nice with.
While we were dining one of the small cruise liners came into the long dock at the marina and spewed out about a hundred passengers to see the sights. That would be a great way to see the cities in the south down here - take one of those cruises. We looked in the windows and the cabins all looked very posh with lots of space and comfortable and attractive furnishing. Jay tells us that there are quite a few cruise lines that tour up and down the eastern seaboard specializing in certain segments of the coast. He and Mary Lou had looked into them for up in the New England area and that is where he found out about their schedules and itineraries.
When we were aboard Screech we noticed that they have a generator aboard as well. Theirs is a Honda 2000 and it has just about convinced me that we have made a mistake with the Champion 3500 that we have aboard. The Champion does the job but it is noisy and bulky while theirs, although 1000 W less powerful, would easily do the job for us. Sigh, one more thing to put on the to buy list. Anyone want to buy a slightly used generator? Less than 100 hours on the motor! It would make a great generator for a hunting or fishing camp where you could put it in a shed to run.
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