Almost Out of Florida

On Saturday, April 12, we cruised from Daytona to the historic city of St. Augustine. St. Augustine is the longest continually inhabited European-founded city in the United States. It is full of beautiful old buildings, the Castillo de San Marcos (the only 17th century fortress in existence in America), Ponce de Leon's "Fountain of Youth" (although they're really just guessing where that was), and way too many tourists for our taste. Definitely more people wandering the streets than we saw during our last visit to the city in January 2007. Having no desire to brave the crowds and revisit sites we'd already seen, we had "Happy Hour" at Meehan's Irish Pub, did a quick walk through the heart of downtown, and then returned to the boat on its mooring ball in the St. Augustine Municipal Marina for the remainder of the evening.

El Galeon Andalucia-replica of a 16 C ship

Castillo de San Marcos

Zipper's evening in St. Augustine

On Sunday morning, after a stop at the Vilano Beach Town Dock and a quick trip to Publix to restock our food supply, we were on our way to the Jacksonville area. Compared to previous days along the coast we saw less houses and more nature areas. As we move north the tides become more extreme. There are still palm trees, but there is quite a bit of swamp and grassy areas, and when the tide is out there is a lot of mud.

Landscape at low tide

One canal-like region that we cruised through was notable for a couple of reasons:  first, the houses fronting the canal oftentimes had elaborate boat docks and second, the watercraft traffic on this beautiful, sunny Sunday was absolutely insane.  We bounced over boat wakes much of the latter part of our day.

Watercraft in front of us . . .

Watercraft behind us . . . 

Boat shelter and waterfront patio

After playing more "dodge the boat and/or wake" just before we crossed the St. John's River, we were happy to pull into the Jacksonville Free Dock on Sisters Creek. There we were visited by a good friend and former National Aviation Academy co-worker of Lon's-Mick Campeau. Mick now lives in Lake City, FL, about an hour west of Jacksonville, so this was a perfect opportunity to reconnect. (We previously spent time with Mick's dad during our stop in Ft. Pierce.)

Lon and Mick Campeau

Sunset at JAX Free Dock

Fellow "Loopers" Glenn Tamguchi and Marilyn Brasier, aboard their American Tug Wabi Sabi, were also spending the night at the dock and we enjoyed refreshments and conversation on their boat.

We are now at the last of our stops in Florida--Amelia Island.  We'll be here for three nights for a bit of a break from the daily cruising, to wait out some bad weather, do a few chores, and see some of this historic area. We are also fortunate to be here at the same time as a meeting of the Marine Trawler Owners Association (MTOA), a group we recently joined.  Lon will be attending one of their seminars on Wednesday.  More on Amelia Island later.

P.S.  Pat's mom is out of the hospital--hooray!