May 15, 2017-May 21, 2017
We stayed in Vero Beach for a full week. One of the highlights was visiting Claire in Sarasota. The last time I visited her she was still in rehabilitation and it was wonderful to see her back at home and looking so good. I showed her pictures of the trip and told her stories of the places we had visited. She caught me up on her present situation with both blessings and challenges. It was also a great treat to spend our last night in Vero Beach with our friends from Gainesville, Mike and Vicki who now live in Vero Beach.
We began our travel north on the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW) on Wednesday, May 18. We had planned to make it to St. Augustine in four days, but the lure of getting there sooner grabbed us and we went 69 miles on our first day out. Our trip up the ICW to St. Augustine took only three days and was basically uneventful (which is a good thing). I shared the helm more than usual (is Bob getting more confident in my boating abilities?). We had numerous dolphin sitings and I always enjoy hailing the bridges for openings. We went under 22 bridges on this leg of the trip many of which had to open for us.
Getting to St. Augustine gave me a tiny bit of feeling like I was home. We have spent some great times here. However, our first major challenge of our journey home occurred soon after grabbing a mooring. We got the dinghy back together (we had emptied it out for the Gulf Stream crossing) and prepared to go into the marina office, take showers and head into town…..but the motor wouldn’t start… the pull cord didn’t even have any resistance. Rats! I called the marina office and found out there was a shuttle service for the moorings every two hours so we signed up for the 4 o’clock shuttle. While we were waiting Bob called around and located a small engine mechanic who would pick up the motor the next day. So we went about “making lemonade” again.
We settled up with the marina, took showers, and had Pizza Time pizza for dinner and were back at the boat on the 6 o’clock shuttle.
On Sunday morning Bob rowed the dinghy into the dock and we helped the mechanic get the engine off the dinghy and onto his cart. Let’s hope it is a simple repair as the engine is less than one year old. We were then free to have breakfast and explore St. Augustine. It’s such a beautiful town with Spanish style architecture, historic sites, great restaurants, and funky shops. If it weren’t for the huge thunderstorm that came through we would have stayed in town longer, but we had left the hatches open on the boat and had to get back to clean up the watery mess. But, Life is Good.
Some pictures from our first day in St. Augustine:
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| We had a delicious breakfast at this Cuban/American restaurant. After perusing the menu I think i want to eat lunch here sometime. |
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| We explored a different section of the old city today. Yes, cars really drive down these streets. |
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| I like to take pictures of doors and this one leads to an historic house. It also shows the cocina bricks that most of the historic buildings are made of. If you look closely you can see the shells that are the main component of the blocks. |
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| I also like to take pictures of flowers. These flowers cover a wall on the oldest street in the oldest city in the USA. |
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| This house is an example of very early Spanish style architecture in the city. |
We will be staying in St. Augustine until our dinghy motor is repaired. Hopefully, we will be able to leave on Wednesday morning.
Thank you for reading my blog.
