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.