St. Augustine

January 28, 2014

Will tour this Spanish galleon today

We arrived in St. Augustine just in time to make the 4:30 PM "Bridge of Lions" opening. The weather was deteriorating fast and it took us 4 tries to pick up a mooring ball. (We actually latched on to the ball each time but our lines got tangled under the ball each time). It was cold so we shut down the engines and fired up a generator and put on the heat. It had been a long day so we were in bed before 10 PM

This morning we dropped the mooring ball in Fernandina at first light and headed off shore. There was bad weather on the way and we wanted to get to St. Augustine before it arrived. We went out the channel into the Atlantic and headed south. The ocean was a study of "gray on gray" and looked very ominous, with visibility maybe a 1/2 mile. Radar was running so we could "see it" that way. We listed to the weather periodically and the forecast was holding up OK so logically we were OK but the look of the ocean was just spooky.

Morning tea at sea!

In an excess of caution we decided to go back inside at the St. Johns River entrance. A more efficient solution was to continue outside another 32 miles to the St. Augustine entrance. But my concern was that the worsening weather could arrive when we were about to enter St Augustine and the entrance was not a "Grade A" entrance and subject to strong currents. (I came into St Augustine in a large sport fishing boat with my sister on board about 10 years ago. It was a powerful boat and a sunny day but I remember using a lot of power to keep the boat straight. Tide Hiker does not have that amount of power.) So we came in at St. Johns.

Boat house on the ICW

We were immediately slowed down by adverse tidal currents. As slow as 4 kts in the St Johns and about 6 kts in the ICW. Outside we had been making 7.5 at 1650 RPM. Also, the Bridge of Lions in St. Augustine did not open between 4:30 PM and 5:30 PM so we had a bit of a deadline. At one point I was running the engines at 1900 to keep up speed. We made the bridge with 5 minutes spare.

On the St John's river we passed another large US Navy base. We saw 8 destroyers/cruisers in the base plus plenty of other support vessels and helicopters buzzing around. (Did you know: The US Navy has about 430 ships including 10 aircraft carriers. On a tonnage basis the US navy is bigger than the next 13 countries combined! You really wonder what they do all day. These days they are into "stealth" ships so a lot of them don't look like real warships at all.)

 The weather woke us up during the night. At one point the current and the wind were working together and the lines on the mooring ball (doubled up) were groaning out loud. It rained all night and was 38 degrees when we woke. We plan to stay 2 nights and go ashore today for lunch and to tour the replica ships.

Wednesday January 29, 2014

Woke up to a cold and wet and gray morning. The honey boat came at 9 AM when I was still in my pajamas. We took it easy and caught the 10 AM water taxi to shore. We were rugged up but went straight to a coffee house for a latte and a paper. Then to the USPS and a "sailors consignment" store and the bank and I got a haircut (that made me feel even colder so Deidre bought me a hat).

Then we took a tour of the two replica ships. The Caravel was the size of the Magellan and Columbus ships. It really is not much bigger than Tide Hiker. The galleon is much bigger than the caravel and a replica of the ships send to Florida back in the 1600s to chase off the French who were nosing around at the time. In effect, St Augustine is its "home port". I was very impressed with the Galleon and just wish my camera was not dead.

The galeon

The caravel