Sightseeing St. Augustine- The Oldest and the Best

We arrived at St. Augustine and got the boat secured in St. Augustine Municipal Marina. Getting the boat into a slip proved to be difficult as we had a 15 knot tailwind blow up just as we arrived. We started to enter the slip and the wind gusted blowing us sideways. The marina harbormaster radioed and told us to go into a slip on the upwind side of the pier. This worked out well as we were now in much calmer waters and protected from any southerly wind (Jane slept better as a result of Captain Larry's poor boat handling!). Anyway, it was predicted to storm then next day so we decided to try and do some sightseeing that afternoon, in case we couldn't make it out the next day.

St. Aug's only skyscraper

Jane & St. Aug's fine architecture

St.Augustine is an absolutely beautiful and charming city, and is very tourist oriented. It has some outstanding architecture and quaint neighborhoods and districts. We started out with a trip to an English-style pub with over 50 beers on tap and had a wonderful lunch. The we staggered over to the trolleys or trams that will take visitors to the various historic sites over an one and one-half hour time span. We got to see all the historic sites as well as some of the new commercial points of interest. We returned to the boat, cleaned up, and had dinner on the boat and an early bedtime. We were bushed!

The Flagler Hotel

Old Spanish fort

Capt. Larry and Ye Olde Pharmacy

The next morning it stormed big time. Around 11:00 a.m. it started to clear and a couple of neighboring boats headed out. One hour later it kicked up again and we were only too happy to have remained in port. Early in the afternoon the weather cleared and we took another trolley ride to the same spots we saw the day before (the tickets are good for 3 days). One of the stops Jane wanted to visit was the Sebastian Winery and we caught that late in the day. We had met some other loopers from San Diego and had invited them to Bavarian Cream for happy hour, but by the time Jane got done sampling her wines and we got back to the boat, we had missed them.

Glad the port was the last round!

Jane & Cathy

Love you, Bunga!

Capt. Larry had called his sister, Cathy, who he thought lived in Jacksonville, to see if we would be able to get together. Turns out she lives closer to St. Johns and was only about 40 minutes away from the marina! She said that she would come the next evening, so we extended our stay in St. Augustine another day. The next day Jane went shopping while Capt. Larry did some boat chores. We took a bicycle ride to West Marine to get a dinghy repair kit to fix Cream Puff up. She was looking pretty sad with two bladders flat. Cathy arrived and we had a couple of drinks on the boat then went to a great restaurant for dinner. We were able to catch up the four years since we've seen each other. It was great. Cathy left and we retired for the night.

We Go to Daytona Beach and the Matanzas Inlet

New Smyrna Beach lighthouse

White and brown pelicans

Daytona Beach

We left Titusville and headed toward St. Augustine. With the passing storm a cold front moved in and the weather was really pleasant, so we thought we would sit on the hook for the next couple of nights. The first day we made it to Daytona Beach. Traveling was not much fun because it was Saturday and the weekend boaters were out in force. That coupled with the shoaling of the channel in this stretch made it a very tedious day. At Titusville we were berthed next to the sailboat Calypso with Justin and  aboard. They are from England and purchased a boat here in the U.S. They planned to cruise various American waterways for the next 2-3 years then sell the boat and return to England. We passed Calypso just before New Smyrna Beach. Here we had our choice of two routes, the AIWW channel, or the preferred channel through Sheepshead Cut. Capt. Larry started through the cut with Calypso following. Just past the branch, he decided that he couldn't read the channel markers very well and started back towards the AIWW. Of course this put him outside of the channel and he watched the depthsounder drop down to 1 foot. Calypso was right behind with a greater draft and how she didn't go aground is still a mystery. We would have felt terrible if she had grounded. In the AIWW channel we never saw depths less than 9 feet, so we still don't know why the cut is marked as the preferred route. We made it to Daytona Beach and secured the boat in an anchorage area.

Fort Matanzas

In the sentry box

The next day we headed toward another anchorage in the Matanzas River. Here there is an old Spanish fort that was used to protect St. Augustine from attacks. Today the fort is a national monument maintained by the National Park Service. We dinghied over to the park to catch a ferry to fort for a guided tour. It was a really pleasant site in spite of the heavy Sunday boat traffic. When we returned to the boat we found two things. First the dinghy seemed a little soft and spongy. Two days later we would discover that we had a cut in two of the three bladders from an oyster bed we had to go over to land the dinghy. The other thing we found was that we were at low tide and, while we had anchored in 5.5' of water, the 4' tidal range had grounded the boat.

Cream Puff fully inflated!

So we did the only thing we could think of- drink beer and wait for the tide to come back in! Jane kept watching weeds disappear as the water rose and Capt. Larry would occasionally take in some anchor rode to keep us off the shoreline. Just as we sat down to have some dinner, we felt the boat swing and we raced to get her repositioned in deeper water. To be safe in the strong current, we set a second anchor and retired for the night.

She's not moving with the wind or current!

We Get Spaced Out!

Space Cadet Jane

Our first full day in Titusville was spent dealing with the nasty weather. We thought it might be time well spent at the Kennedy Space Center, but the weather was so lousy there wasn't much to do except stay on the boat and look at each other. The next day the weather cleared and we decided to spend an extra day in Titusville rather than move on. The space center was about 15 miles from the marina, so we  rented a car and to drive out to see it, then visit some retailers for some re-provisioning of the boat (mostly we needed beer!). It was just becoming too inconvenient to make beer and grocery runs on bicycles.

There go the astronauts!

Ready to launch 4/19/2011

Apollo Saturn V Main Stage

We arrived at the space center early and decided to take the bus tour to various parts of the center. The space center is located on Merritt Island which a major portion has been designated as a wildlife refuge. As we came to our first stop on the bus tour, the driver announced that we should be on the lookout for the astronauts who were scheduled to do a training exercise at the shuttle that morning. We no sooner got off the bus when people started running toward the road. We caught a picture of the astronauts as they passed by in the astromobile on their way to the launch pad. We got to see the vehicle assembly center, the orbiter preparation building, and the huge crawler that rolls everything out to the launch pad. Our second stop was at the Apollo program museum. The shuttle stuff is impressive, but it was the Apollo program that in our opinion was this country's finest moment in space.

Jane kisses a moon man

Rockets, rockets everywhere

Watching the films and realizing how far we came with a lunar landing in less than a decade makes the hair on the back of your neck stand up. This was the program we grew up with and we found it very moving. 

We ended the bus tour with a ride through a swamp. Everyone was looking for alligators, but we weren't impressed. What was impressive was an old bald eagle's nest that has been used continuously as a nesting site for 40+ years. A little is added onto it each year and it is estimated to weigh between 800-900 pounds. Unfortunately, we weren't able to get a picture, and we were lucky to catch a glimpse. After we returned to visitor's center we toured the grounds and saw rockets and spacecraft from the Mercury and Gemini programs, then we headed out to do our shopping.

Travelin' to Titusville

Carlton & Becky with Capt. Larry and a conch sandwich

The pelicans line up for a free meal

Throw me somethin', mista!

On what we thought was our last day in Fort Pierce, we rode our bikes to a nearby restaurant to have lunch with Carlton & Becky. The special of the day was 1 pound of boiled crawfish for $9.99. Capt. Larry asked if that was peeled or whole, and the waitress said whole, she was a little insulted when we told here that in Louisiana the standard was 5 pounds for about the same price. We said that we would not know what to do with just 1 pound of crawfish! After lunch Jane took off and found a fisherman cleaning some fish and being hounded by a group of pelicans. They would come up and stab his leg with their bills until he threw them a scrap. That night Carlton & Becky came aboard Bavarian Cream and we grilled steaks. We ended up spending an extra day in Ft. Pierce due to weather. It started raining the night before we planned to leave and rained pretty much through the entire next morning. Although it cleared by noon, we decided that such a late start would not really serve us well, so we decided on an extra night. Besides Ft. Pierce is just about our favorite place on Florida's east coast.

The next morning with clear skies we cast off and headed for Melbourne. The plan was to stop at Jone's Fruit Stand and Dock to tie up for the night with Seamoore and Goofin' Off, with Rich & Lin from Troy, New York. We were the first boat out, and when we got to Jone's Dock, it looked deserted. We hailed a neighbor who informed us that the 85 year-old owner had passed away. We called Seamoore and told them the news and decided to head on to Melbourne. We arrived at Melbourne and anchored in the protection of a barrier island causeway. After a steak & shrimp dinner, we listened to some music, watched Todd Melancon's donated DVD, Pirate Radio, and had a pleasant night on the hook. The next morning the NOAA weather forecast sounded pretty ominous with major storms predicted to cross our path. We decided to head for Titusville and hunker down in a marina, rather than try and weather the storm at anchorage.

A manatee pair eating algae on the boat

Looking for a drink of water

Getting a drink as we cleaned the anchor

Water! Water!

We arrived at the Titusville City Marina and secured the boat for a good blow. The weather was still pretty decent, so we got the bikes down and rode to a nearby CVS pharmacy to pick up a few things. We got back to the boat and watched the manatees. The marina has a population of about 40 manatees, and they were milling about our boat, eating algae from the neighboring boat, and coming up for a freshwater drink when we cleaned the anchor chain. About an hour after we returned, the storm rolled through the marina. We were experiencing 50+ kt. winds and torrential rains. We weren't sure how the boat would do in such conditions, but she held her own. The sailboat berthed next to us was listing so far over in the wind that we began to worry if the mast would hit our boat.

Osprey on a mast

The sailboat three berths down from us didn't get the jib sail completely furled and the wind tore the sail to shreds. The problem was that the sail flapped in the stiff breeze virtually all night long and kept us awake longer than we needed. Since the weather forecast was lousy for the next day, we thought it would be a good time to rent a car and go see the NASA space center and Cape Canaveral. However, when we arose the next morning, the storms were still coming so we decided on boat chores and an early happy hour to pass the time. We plan to go to the space center tomorrow.

Crossing to Florida's Atlantic Coast

Early morning in Moore Haven

On Lake Okeechobee

Port Mayaca Lock

Jane working the lock

Happy hour on Sun Cat

The next day involved crossing Lake Okeechobee. We likened this 30+ mile leg to crossing Lake Pontchartrain, but where Pontchartrain has an average of 12-13 feet, Okeechobee, with the current drought conditions, runs about one-half that. Odyssee, Cassandra Jade, and Bavarian Cream left Moore Haven and locked through our third lock, the Moore Haven Lock. Since Cassandra Jade was a 65 foot trawler with a deeper draft, we let her blaze the way across the lake. Her length also gave her a faster hull speed and the other two boats would periodically go up on plane to catch up to her. We hit the Port Mayaca Lock a little past noon and settled in for a leisurely cruise down the St. Lucie Canal to our last lock on this waterway, the St. Lucie Lock. The problem was the St. Lucie Lock was over two hours away and on the odd-hour locking schedule. We were about 5 miles away with one-half hour to go for a 3:00 p.m. lock-through, and Capt. Larry was almost certain we were not going to make it. However, if the westbound side locked through first, we would be good. We were still about one-half mile away when we heard the lockmaster told a waiting eastbound boat to enter the lock. We radioed the lock and told the lockmaster that we were bringing up the rear and made our way in. Because we were last we had to go to the opposite side and Jane was beside herself that she had to move the fenders. We locked down about 12 feet and cruised on to Stuart. While we were in the lock we noted that the first boat in was Abrejojos, a fellow looper that we had been told to be on the lookout for. We radioed them and introduced ourselves. They were going to stay at Sunset Marina in Stuart for about a week, so we figured that we would meet up with them again. We also went into Sunset Marina which turns out to be a really huge marina and mooring field. We had a little difficulty getting into our slip because of a really stiff wind, but finally made. Jane joked that the marina was so big the restrooms were in another zip code! We met another current looper, Godspeed, from Slidell, LA on our way in.

Having a great time!

We were invited to join a group of former loopers aboard Sun Cat for happy hour and met a lot of new couples. The whole group went to a really great Italian restaurant for dinner, then settled in for the night. Between walking to the restaurant, walking to the happy hour boat, and walking to the restrooms, Capt. Larry's knees were spent.

Some really BIG fish camps!

Containing the fire

The next morning we had coffee aboard Odyssee. We received a lot of good tips and anchorages from Chuck and Claria and were invited to visit them at their home when we arrived in Beaufort, SC. We left the marina a lot later than we usually do, but only had a 25 mile run up to Fort Pierce. Leaving Stuart we passed some astoundingly large homes, and came across some really skinny water. We also got to see the Atlantic Ocean through the St. Lucie Inlet for the first time. We cruised slowly to Ft. Pierce through the Indian River on the Atlantic Intracoastal Water Way (AIWW) that would be our route for the next several weeks. On the way to Ft. Pierce we came across a large brush fire with a helicopter dumping water on the fire. This further emphasizes just how dry this area is. We arrived at Ft. Pierce City Marina and got tied up in our slip. Jane checked us in and lined up our social calendar for the weekend. We ate on the boat and turned in for the night. The next day we spent doing boat chores and riding our bikes to nearby stores to

Dinner with Carlton & Becky

re-provision. In the afternoon we noticed that a new boat was berthed behind us, and when we checked her out we found out that it was Seamoore with Carlton & Becky from Decatur, AL. They also were doing the loop and came up from a wintering stay in the Florida Keys. We had met them at the first Port St. Joe mini-rendezvous, and after getting reacquainted, decided to have happy hour aboard their boat, then go out to dinner. When we returned to Bavarian Cream for a nightcap then turned in.

At the farmer's market

Jane and a sticky bun

The next day we went to a farmer's market and craft show in a park just outside the marina. We had a delicious breakfast and bought some great vegetables and fruits to have during the coming week. Jane wandered the craft show and walked three blocks to the downtown area, while Capt. Larry found a hardware and auto parts store to pick up some things he needed for the boat. We refueled the boat because we felt the need to become about $800 poorer, and spent the rest of the afternoon napping and working on the blog.

Sunrise over the AIWW

Movin' on to Moore Haven

The name says it all!

At the Edison & Ford Winter Estate

Travelling 1st class and in the middled of the marina!

We  wound down our stay in Ft. Myers with a bike ride that took us to the Edison-Ford winter estate museum. The grounds were really magnificent and one can only imagine what interesting things went on here when Thomas Edison and Henry Ford were in town. We left Ft. Myers and headed east through the Okeechobee Waterway, Lake Okeechobee and the St. Lucie Canal and River on our way to Stuart, FL on Florida's east coast. This is a really interesting part of the trip as we proceeded through the Caloosahatchee River, some  man-made ditches and canals, Lake Okeechobee, some more man-made ditches, and finally the St. Lucie Canal and River.

Beautiful Island RR Bridge

Bavarian Cream in her 1st lock

Shy manatee in Ortona Lock

Jane's tools for locking gets rave reviews!

Yes, that is a pontoon boat for a dinghy!

Orange groves everywhere

I think I can, I think I can!

Just out of Ft. Myers we hooked up with two other boats, Odyssee with Chuck & Claria from Beaufort, SC (that's pronounced bow FORT like the weapon in SC vs. bew FORT in NC. This is apparently very important as it represents the English vs. the French pronunciations and coming from Louisiana we were corrected several times before we finally got it right!) and Cassandra Jade with Bob & Carol from Toronto, Canada. We passed up both of these boats before Odyssee radioed us and told us not to be in a hurry because the the locking at the first lock would only occur on the odd hours due to the drought conditions and low water levels. We slowed down, but arrived at the lock, first in line, and had no idea what we  were doing. After all this was our first lock. We radioed the lockmaster who also didn't provide use much useful information. We finally saw the signal light turn green and proceeded into the lock. This was the Franklin Lock and would take us up approximately 2 feet. Jane put out the fenders and took a line at bow and Capt. Larry got a line at the stern. And we held on it seemed for dear life. Locking up creates a lot of turbulence in the lock which occurs when the upside lock gates are partially opened to let the water pour in and raise the level in the lock. And being the first boat in (stupid us!) we probably got the worst of it. But we were successful and Jane was so elated that she started to toss Mardi Gras beads to the lockmaster. We found out there will always be spectators at the locks which adds to the pressure for Capt. Larry, but presents and audience for Jane and her locking tools. And on we went to the next lock, but this time we were last in (fast learners). Our second lock was the Ortona lock which took us up about 8 feet. The lock was interesting because we discovered that a manatee was going to lock through with us. We could see it in the water, but it never came to the surface to pose for a picture. We continued on finally ended the day at the Moore Haven City Dock where we spent the night.

Odyssee and Cassandra Jade at Moore Haven Dock