St. Augustine is probably my favorite city in Florida. It
has tourist kitch (the Ripley’s Believe it or Not Museum, for example),
historical sites (the oldest continuously occupied city in the US and the
National Park at Castillo de San Marcos) and a bunch of neat stuff (the shops
in the historical old city).
So, after
successfully mooring at one of the City Marina’s mooring balls, we lowered the
dinghy and went ashore. The first day we planned on just wandering around, so we
bought a couple of passes on the Old Town Trolley, which is one of those
bus/trains that allow you to get on and off an unlimited number of times while the
driver takes you on a guided tour of the city. We learned all about some guy
named Flagler who practically built Florida, about the Spanish occupations of
Florida, about the English occupation and reoccupation, etc. Then we got off
the train and went shopping in the Old Town. They had all kinds of shops –
including a jerky shop. You got it, they sold all sorts of jerky. I, of course,
had to try alligator jerky. Although I am usually not a shopper, I do like cool, weird things. Ann
and I both had a good time. I bought a wooden sign that has one of my favorite
sayings:
Twenty
years from now
You
will be more disappointed
By
the things you didn’t do
than
by the ones you did do.
So
throw off the bowlines!
Sail
away from the safe harbor
Catch
the Trade winds in your sails
Explore.Dream.
Discover!
Mark Twain
 |
Mike and Ann at Castillo San Marcos with the
Tall Ship Bounty in the background. |
The second day at St. Augustine we each picked an attraction that we wanted
to visit, and used the Trolley to get to them. Mine was Castillo de San Marcos,
the National Park. It is quite an example of 17th century fortresses. Everything is
very well preserved and you can see the walls as well as the rooms that existed within the
walls. It was besieged twice by the English – once for nearly two months – and
did not fall either time. For one of the sieges, there was something like 1500
souls living within the confines of a fairly small fort (I am guessing here that
the inside might have been 2-3 acres. Anyway, the only times it changed hands –
from the Spanish to the English, then back to the Spanish, then back to the English again,
and finally to the Americans – was as a result of various treaties.
For her part, Ann wanted to visit the Lightner Museum. The
museum is unusual for two reasons. First, it seems to consist of a bunch of
different collections. Not only were there the usual expensive (and beautiful) collections
of porcelain, dolls, watches, etc. but there were also collections of
matchboxes, cigar bands, and sea shells. In other words, it was quite an
eclectic collection of collections. The second odd thing about the museum is
that it is housed in a former hotel. The hotel had various kinds of baths
(Russian, Turkish and so on), an exercise room, a swimming pool and quite a few
other attractions. Now, there are
exhibits in those rooms. Kind of weird, huh?
 |
Ann loves samplers. This one is from ...
I can't actually read the date ... but a long time ago! |
Also on the second day we met some folks we had seen before.
Remember the people in the Viking that we had seen at Daytona Beach? They
arrived in St. Augustine shortly after we did aboard their boat Bel Lair and also took a mooring ball. We
stopped by their boat to say hello and introduce ourselves and were promptly
invited aboard. We got to talking about our plans and they had some good advice
for our trip up the ICW. We also drank some of their booze. For those of you
who are thinking that maybe I drank a lot of their booze, you would be wrong.
Ann and I had planned to go out to dinner that evening so I was very good.
Anyway, we invited them to come over for drinks the following night and we all
had a great time.
Okay, there is something that I have to admit – actually I
wouldn’t admit it if Ann hadn’t sworn that she would blab it in her notes if I
didn’t say something about it. Okay, here goes. Whew (deep breath). Whew (another
deep breath). I made a little bitty mistake. I mean all of us make mistakes,
right? Okay, here is mine. I think the last one was in 1960-something. Anyway, just before we went to see Bel Lair, I went out to start the dinghy. As usual, I had the keys
in my pocket. But just before starting down the ladder I looked down towards
the swim platform and … the dinghy wasn’t there. That’s right, the dinghy wasn’t
there. Now, I don’t know if any of you have been in a store or a mall and
walked back to your car only to find it missing, but of those of you who have, know
what I am talking about. What did you do? I suspect, like I did, you looked all
around to make sure you had the right parking place near the correct store and
yada, yada, yada. Well, I knew I was on the right boat and the boat has only
one stern and I knew the dinghy was supposed to be tied off to the stern, but
it wasn’t. I was dumbfounded. “Ann,” I said, “the *&@#^$& dinghy is
missing; I can’t believe it, the frigging dinghy is gone. “ (I am sorry if that
offends you, but on this Blog we tell it like it is … especially if one of us
threatens I looked to tell the world that the other of us made a little bitty mistake.) Anyway, I looked
to the left, I looked to the right and it wasn’t there. I mean my God, where was
it? Then it was clear to me, someone must have stolen it. I remembered that earlier
that day I had seen a small craft cruising slowly past Traveling Soul. At the
time, I thought it was just someone admiring the boat. Now I realized they
might have had more nefarious intentions.
Meanwhile, Ann, who happened to be the itsy-bit more
rational of us on this particular matter called the marina office to see if
they had seen anything. Nope, “but wait a minute,” the person on the other end
of the phone line said as he looked through his binoculars. “Is that a Boston
Whaler down by the big house?” We got
out our binoculars and – sure enough – the dinghy was aground about 400 yards
away aground in some reeds by what St. Augustinians call the "oldest house". The marina staff brought up their little flatboat
and took me over to the reeds. I heaved a little and ho’ed a little, and eventually got it
ungrounded, cranked it up and took it back to the boat. Now, some of you are
wondering why this was my fault? Well, maybe, just maybe, I didn’t tie the
dinghy to the back of the boat as well as I should have. I mean that's not "for sure" but maybe it happened that way. And maybe the current
in St. Augustine harbor was enough to tear it off the cleat and maybe the current was strong enough to float it away
in the direction of wind and current. (Deep wistful sigh.) Mea culpa I guess.
 |
A Tiffany lampshade from the Lightner museum.
Kind of cool of I do day so myself. |
After St. Augustine, our next big stop was Charleston. Our plan
was to head up the ICW at about 8-9 knots, covering 50 or 60 statute miles each
day, then to anchor each night. We would then get up and repeat the process.
We had intended to follow this pattern for five or six days until we needed to
take on either fuel or water. When we did, we would stop at and spend the night
in a marina. We bought a couple of books that told us where several good
anchorages were located along the ICW and we were ready to go. Anyhow, that was
the plan.
The first day after we left St. Augustine we experienced
part of the “real” ICW. It was winding, in some places it was very shallow, and
in some places the charts were absolutely, positively inaccurate. To cap it all
off, a full moon was rising – that meant that high tides were unusually high
and the low tides were unusually low. Now, in the Chesapeake, the Bahamas, or southern
Florida – or any other reasonable place on the planet – that wouldn’t mean very
much. But in northern Florida, Georgia and South Carolina regular tidal swings
can be 10 feet or more without a full
moon. So, you can zip over places during high tide and they might be 15 feet
deep, but if you try to zip over the same place at low tide, they are five feet
deep. Our draft (the depth of the boat below the waterline) is 4.5 feet. (I
suspect most of you know me well enough to know that I am not going to “zip”
over any place where I have only six inches of clearance.)
Okay now, in some parts of the ICW, you can imagine seeing
me at the helm. I am gazing intensely at the chart plotter, hoping that that
the charts it contains are accurate for this particular stretch of the waterway.
Simultaneously, I am trying to steer the boat between the red and green day
marks that are maybe 1000 meters ahead of us. And at the same time I am hunched
over the depth finder (which works most of the time, but once in a while
decides to go wacko – but I never know when it is wacko and when it is
correct). This stance, consisting of staring at charts, hunching my back to see
the depth finder and twitching – because I can’t do anything else – will be
forever known as the “ICW hunchback position.” Meanwhile, Ann is trying to help
by keeping track of where we are and letting me know when we will be out of
this particular stretch of ICW hell. (Later in the journey she had another
mission: to keep the goldarn flies off me – but more about that later.)
 |
| One of the many floats at the Shrimp Festival. |
With all this going on, we found out that the first place we
had intended to anchor – Fernandina Beach, FL – had put mooring balls in our
anchorage. Now that wouldn’t have been so bad, but the mooring balls would not
handle a boat over 50 feet. Darn! So, we decided to look at the other
anchorages as we passed them that the books had recommended. Hmmm., There did not appear to be anyone at any
of them. This did not bode well for our plan of spending most nights “on the
hook.” Since we didn’t see anyone anchoring anywhere on the ICW – except near
the big towns and cities – I began to get cold feet. Why weren’t they
anchoring? Was it the tidal swings? The current associated with the tidal
swings? I wasn’t sure, and though none of my cruising friends had said anything
about not anchoring, I certainly wasn’t going to be the first to try it.
Since we couldn‘t
anchor or moor at Fernandina Beach we didn’t have much choice but to spend the
night at the Fernandina Beach Marina. That, of course, meant that we were part
of the annual Shrimp Festival!!! Actually,
the Shrimp Festival started the next day, but it kicked off the night we were
there with the Shrimp and Pirate Parade. It was a typical small town parade
with school bands, homemade floats representing every business and civic
organization, people running for office in local elections, etc. The other good
thing that happened in Fernandina Beach was that we re-linked up with Scott and
Teri Miller on Miller Time. We had
met Scott very briefly at Treasure Cay in the Bahamas. At the time the two of
us thought we might be the only boats in the Bahamas whose “Hailing Port” (the
name of a place you put on your stern under your name – supposedly where the
boat “hails” from) is Occoquan, VA. Scott and Teri were on their way to
Charleston for their daughter’s graduation and put into Fernandina Beach as a
stop along the way.
After talking with Scott and Teri, we decided to go outside
the following day. We figured it was the smart thing to do for several reasons.
First, although it would be a long day, we could cut a day off our trip. The
ICW winds around so much that by going in a straight line we would be cutting the
distance we had to go, would have no bridges at which we had to wait, and we
could go a little faster. Second, I could change out of the ICW position at the
helm so I didn’t become a permanent hunchback. And third, the weather was
supposed to be great.
So we were off. The Next morning we followed Miller Time out into the Atlantic. It
was just a little rolly early in the morning, but by 10AM or so, the seas were
about only 2-3 feet and we were doing 9.5-10 knots. The day was good. About 4PM we
headed inside and found the little marina where we had planned to spend the night. It was
the Kilkenny Marina at the former Kilkenny Plantation near Richmond Hill, GA. It
was a pretty small marina but there were two other ICW cruisers there. In fact,
we had met the captain of Azure Skies
in the Bahamas. Bob is single-handling his boat up the coast. According to him, he goes north until it gets too
cold in the summer and then heads south until it gets too hot in the winter. Also,
if you will recall, Ann spent a couple of weeks in the Bahamas baking bread.
One of the recipes came from Azure Skies.
 |
Mike's ankle as a result of the attack of the
dreaded Georgian Marsh flies. |
The next day we went back to the ICW. People had told us how
pretty it was and we really did want to experience it. Pretty? Okay, maybe, if
you could see anything through the attacks of the vicious, swarming Georgian marsh
flies. And they sting! Man, it was bad. I hate putting on bug repellent, but
Ann was smearing that Deep Woods Off all over my legs, neck and arms. Now you
understand the twitching part of the ICW position. After having been stung
once, you are paranoid and are twitching or shaking the flies off everything
you feel something that might possibly be a fly. Besides rubbing bug repellent
on me, Ann was also the designated fly killer. We didn’t have a fly swatter,
only a little pad of note paper, but she made that thing the instrument of
death for a dozen or so of those little suckers. Ann is now officially an Ace;
I am proud of her. I think I will get her a fly swatter for Mother’s Day.
 |
Dead flies .. all as a result of Ann's handiwork.
God I am proud of her! |
We spent the night at a nice marina at Hilton Head. There were some restaurants close by, but we decided to eat on the boat and get to bed early so we could get a start early ion the AM.
The next night we spent in the Edisto Marina on Edisto Island, SC. It was about five
miles from the ICW in a place that, at one time, had probably been a booming
vacation community. There was a nice beach and several condos -- some high rises and some low rises -- a couple of
aging restaurants and a lot of small, older boats. It was kind of a C+ vacation
community with a C+ marina. It did, however, have water and power – and that is
really all we needed. We mentioned it to other people along the ICW and we got kind of a wistful response. It was clear that Edisto had been "the place" to go at some point, but wasn't any longer. (Another deep wistful sigh.)
The next day we were back in the ICW headed to Charleston,
SC. Before I write about getting to Charleston, I need to thank several people.
I have told you that the charts aren’t very good in many parts of the ICW. As a
result, most cruisers try to keep track of the potentially dangerous points
and pass the information on. Andy and Sharon on Finally Fun, Stan and Nancy on Bel
Lair, Chris and Mike on Missing Link
and John on Vulcan all provided us
invaluable information on navigating the ICW.
 |
| Some of the commercial traffic on the ICW. |
Okay, now back to Charleston. Several people had told us
about the currents in Charleston Harbor and had warned us to arrive around slack
tide, otherwise our boat could be moving with the current at 1-3 MPH –going
someplace we did not want it to go. (Slack tide is when the tide is either at
its minimum or its maximum; during the period around slack tide, there is
very little water rushing into or out of the channel – hence, there is little current). We know of one person who damaged his own boat moving into a Charleston marina,
and we heard of another who caused several tens of thousands of dollars worth of
damage to other boats. Anyway, one of the pieces of information my Garmin Chart Plotter
provides is the estimated arrival time at our destination. Since slack tide was
at 4PM (or so), I really didn’t want to get to Charleston before 3PM; even
then, I figured we might want to put-put around the Harbor before trying to
move into a slip. So, while on the way to Charleston I was constantly trying to slow the
boat down. But there were some places that the current was flowing so
freely that I was having a problem going slow enough. At the end of the day, because of our
prior planning, moving into the slip in the "Harborage at Ashley Marina" was kind
of anticlimactic – a perfect ending for the second leg of our trip.
 |
| Sunrise at the marina in Hilton Head |
ANN’S NOTES: Michael has an expression that some times drives me 'crazy'...if he has been to a place once and I want to go back and revisit it and he does not want to go back ,he will say "I did not leave any thing there that I need to get". My thoughts so far on cruising the ICW is "been there, done that"...so I think Michael and I agree that cruising the ICW so far has been interesting but not much fun. I spend my time killing biting flies, watching the water for crab pots and tree limbs, spraying Michael with bugs repellent and keeping track of where we are on our paper charts. I have this system that works well for me and us. I use a large chart and a special ICW book/chart . I move little pink sticky book markers from marker to marker. The yellow makers tell me when we are going to stop for the night. The blue sticky tell me were the bridges are and the cuts (sometimes very narrow openings that go from one river to the next that usually have pretty shallow water). I must say I do feel like I am helping Michael...sometimes the Garmin is really off and the paper charts are correct. I am still counting dolphins and will give you the count at the end of my notes.
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| Ann's sticky noes (and even a green one!) |
It has not been all bad...we had a wonderful time in St. Augustine and meet some wonderful people. The dinghy floating away was a good thing...now I can tease Michael about this little event. I do have a picture and he did not tell you about him coming back to the boat with one very wet shoe :) I am still in the market to find a perfect hat to wear when we are out and about town. Since I am letting my hair grow out the hats I have make my head hot. I found one in a little store that is like a visor...you can see it in the picture above...but it does not shade my ears. So my mission is to find the perfect hat for my 'hot head'...wish me luck :)
Dolphin count with other wild life
3 May 7 single 2 sets of 2 Total 11 Bonus 1 very large eagle
4 May 2 single 1 set of 4 Total 6 We were in the Atlantic that day
5 May 9 single 3 set of 2 1 set of 3 3 sets of 4 1 pod of 7 plus 2 swam by our window while we were eating dinner Total 39
Bonus Michael saw a Turtle
6 May 10 single 4 set of 2 1 pod of 6 Total 24 Bonus Michael saw another Turtle
7 May 5 single
Traveling Soul...Out
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