This is our first Thanksgiving together on the boat. Last year I was in Detroit with Jamie and poor Bud was alone with Fuzzy in Charleston. We are having a nice, quiet day. This morning, after stowing all the provisions we had purchased the day before so I had room to work, I made pumpkin pies. I made two of them because three 15 oz. cans of pumpkin make two nice full pies. Lately Bud has been buying piecrust when he wanted pie, but he knows I don’t like those, so for Thanksgiving I made the crusts. It wasn’t bad in the tiny galley. The only difficulty is that only one pie will fit in the oven at a time, and a pumpkin pie takes about an hour to bake. The pies got finished around 3 PM.

Once the last pie was in the oven, Bud started on the main meal. The menu was crab stuffed flounder, filet of beef, green beans almandine and parsleyed red potatoes. He had all the prep work done by the time the pie came out of the oven. We just left the oven on for the fish. While Bud finished, I decided to take a bike ride to work up an appetite. There’s really only room for one in the galley, anyway.

I rode around old St. Augustine. I really like this town with its narrow old streets. There are a real variety of neighborhoods and a great mix of houses in the neighborhoods. Our marina is on the edge of Lincolnville. This was a settlement of free blacks before the civil war. A lot of slaves came through here on their way out of slavery. Lincolnville has some bigger nice homes, some tiny nice homes and some run down homes. On the other edge of Lincolnville, where a salt marsh splits it from the rest of the old town, is an estate with a huge mansion and another beautiful old home. The gate to the mansion has the name Lion’s View. I don’t know if that refers to just the big stone house or to the whole estate. Once you cross the salt marsh, which further in appears to be dredged and is called the lake, you get into the old residential section. That has many big old homes that range from very nice to mansions. I cut through there (past what I think is billed as the oldest home in the US) and cross King Street to the tourist Old St. Augustine. That is a mix of old houses and old commercial buildings that is now 90% shops and restaurants. Going back away from the water you come to Flagler College. This has to be one of the prettiest small colleges around. The buildings are mostly Spanish style and there are courtyards and fountains throughout. There are some nice neighborhoods around the college, again with a mix of houses. Coming back across King Street you’re in Lincolnville again, and back to the marina (maybe a mile south of King Street). That’s the route I took today and the whole ride was only about 35 minutes.

I got back to the boat in time to help Bud get the food served and to take this picture of our Thanksgiving feast. Everything Bud made turned out good. I don’t know about the pie because we are saving that for later.

Bud is now out fishing. He was going through withdrawal because with all the work we’ve been doing to provision the boat to leave he hadn’t fished in three days. Today is the new moon. This morning there was a very high tide, this afternoon very low. The tide is running back in now, so it should be a good time to fish.

I hope your Thanksgiving was as nice as ours.