We’re here with a new plan! (super long catchup post…)

We finally made it out of Brunswick and headed down the ICW.  We had to leave a little bit later than we liked so that we would hit Jekyll Creek around high tide.  The conditions were much better than the day before and we made fairly decent time.  Jekyll Creek did prove to be a little challenging.  We had only one foot of water under the keel at times and had to “feel” our way along at times.  The shoaling was not as bad about half way through the creek and the rest of that portion was not as difficult (thank goodness we only draw four feet!).

We were aiming for either St. Mary’s or Fernandina Beach.  St. Mary’s seemed like a nice town near Cumberland Island but was a little out of the way.  We opted for Fernandina Beach which is the first town in Florida along the ICW and Joe Murphy had recommended it.  We hailed the Fernandina Harbor Marina and they told us where to dock.  They originally had us in this narrow alley with about 35 feet of space for our 32 feet of overall length.  We would have had to back in either going in or coming out and those that have been following along know how difficult that can be.  We hailed them again and they were kind enough to put us on their side floating docks (score another point for 4 foot draft!).  We docked and went up to talk to the Dockmaster.  The original rate for the impossible docking spot was $1.85/foot and the new rate for our easy parking job spot was $1.25/foot.  Interesting that this rate wasn’t offered to begin with…

We went up to take showers and everyone was kind enough to let me take the first shower because of my Megadock experience.  After the shower, I went to the lounge area to tag up with the next person and they were talking to a guy named Eric.  It turns out that he had bought a Catalina 27 in VA and was planning on sailing it down the East Coast and eventually down to Honduras.  He was asking advice from Jimmy and Julia about the trip.  He didn’t have any sailing experience but seemed like an adventurous guy.  We invited him out to dinner with us.

A guy named John at the dock recommended Luigi’s as a nice spot for a quality yet reasonably priced dinner.  We eventually found our way there (thanks to some quick work with Ryan’s Droid X) and went inside.  It looked like a nice little romantic, quaint spot but apparently John’s definition of reasonable was a little different from ours ($15-$20 entrees).  The bartender, a different John, recommended Pablo’s where his fiancée Stephanie worked.  We headed there and the menu looked much more like our definition of reasonable.  Stephanie was surprised to hear us request her by name and happily seated us.  We had a wonderful dinner and a few drinks.  I ordered the Shrimp a la Diabla and it was decently spicy (for those that know me, I am always on the quest for a super spicy meal).

After a while and our fill of chips and salsa we headed over to the Palace Saloon.  Rodger, the Dockmaster, had recommended it and said to order the Pirate Juice (something like a punch version of an LIT).  I ended up ordering the overpriced drink and we looked for a place to sit.  The bar itself was pretty interesting.  It had three distinct rooms.  The first room had a live jazz band and was nice but not quite what we were looking for our Wednesday night adventure.  The next room was your standard bar with games and more dance-like music.  There was a large, fairly loud group of people in the corner who apparently had quite the head start on us already.  They were overall a fairly unique looking group (some very cute girls and a few with green and pink hair) and definitely from out of town.  We moved to the final room which had several pool tables and a juke box.  I played a couple of rounds of pool but ended up spending quite a bit of time at the Pirates of the Caribbean pinball machine.  I love pinball…a lot:)  This happened to be the same machine that was at Brogen’s in Brunswick.  I earned an extra game there for 7,000,000 but the free game here was 25,000,000!  I played for a while and ended up with 37,000,000 as my high score.

While I was in there, the large group of people were kicked out.  There wasn’t any scuffle or anything but apparently the bouncer had a problem with them.  No one else around knew what the problem was.  Jimmy and Ryan called it an early night and went back to the boat.  Julia, Eric and I hung out for awhile but the bar was a little too loud and obnoxious for our tastes.  We decided to head to another one across the street called the Dog Starr Tavern.  We went in and it turns out the group had decided to set up shop in there instead.  We ordered drinks and I went up to a lady that was a little bit older than the rest.  I ask her what happened at the Palace Saloon.  It turns out that she owned a hair salon named On the Go Spa in St. Mary’s and they were having their Christmas party in Fernandina Beach.  The bouncer’s girlfriend had put a purse down near their table and one of the girls moved it.  The girlfriend complained to the bouncer and he kicked them out.  They seemed fine at their new location and were having fun there.

They eventually started hanging out with Zach the Bartender behind the bar and serving as DJ on the iPod as well.  I started helping out with the music responsibilities and ended up “working” behind the bar the rest of the night.  I took over the fancy ten button drink nozzle and served out water.  Zach also let me pour my own drinks from the tap too (I still had to pay though:)  The girls, who turned out to be hairdressers at the salon, all started dancing on top of the bar.  It turned out to be a really fun night and they said we should stop in if we are ever in St. Mary’s.

We woke up to leave around 9:00 and we quickly found out why our slip wasn’t offered to us in the first place.  It was low tide and we were pretty much stuck in the mud and the tide was still going down.  We had to get the boat out or else we would have to wait until 12:00 or so when the water came back up!  After about 20 minutes of work we were finally able to get the boat out and to the pump out station.  We had a few issues with the nozzle fitting our deck outlet but finally made a late departure heading south.

We had a nice warm day and really wanted to make it in to St. Augustine that night.  Jimmy has some family friends there who were also cruisers and offered to host us for dinner.  We knew that we would not be able to make it to St. Augustine because of our late departure and it turned out we could not even make it to Piney Island, a supposedly nice anchorage along the ICW.  We stopped in at Jacksonville Beach for the night with plans to make it to St. Augustine the next day.  The marina was fairly nice but there was not much around.  We took showers and went to Billy’s Boat House for Happy Hour.  I arrived first and worked on business things for awhile and slowly everyone trickled in after their showers.  Julia arrived with some pretty exciting news.  She discovered a huge arcade right down the road from us.  So we made a plan to enjoy dinner and refreshments at the Boat House and head over to the arcade for awhile.  Julia treated us to 100 tokens and we ran around and had a blast at Adventure Landing.  We talked the prize counter guy into giving us way more prizes than we deserved for our modest ticket collection but I think he was actually just ready to close up for the night and see us off.

We had an easy day down to St. Augustine the next day and made it in around 3 pm.  We checked in at the office and decided to stay in a mooring field near downtown.  The rates were about $20/night and seemed pretty reasonable.  We successfully picked up our mooring and got things ready to head into town.  Jimmy’s friends Peter and Gina (pronounced Geena) were at J.P. Henley’s across the street.  It was Happy Hour and they had at least 50 different beers on tap.  The Starrs treated us to our first round and we had a really nice time hanging out for a while.  They own a Saga 50 (I believe) and have sailed from Maine to Florida and the Bahamas many times.  They offered lots of good advice and some really interesting stories.

They needed to head home so we said our goodbyes.  As they were leaving and making their dinner recommendations for us, another couple was walking by and overheard our conversation.  They stopped in to listen to the good advice.  They were sailors as well and had just come into St. Augustine.  Rorke (sorry if I butchered your name!) and Sherry decided to head back into J.P. Henley’s with us and hang out for awhile.  Rorke is a software developer and owns his own business.  He bought a Pearson Triton 28 and sailed it down from the VT area for a three month stint while working from his boat (sound familiar?:).  He treated us to the next round and we headed over to Mojito’s for dinner.  Mojito’s was pretty tasty Cuban food but a little pricey.  Our waiter was nice but really tried to up sell us on everything!  It wore on us a little bit but we survived.  After that we went over to Kilwin’s for ice cream.

Rorke had a sad tale of boat problems to tell us.  He had fouled one of his lines in his prop and a tough time getting it off.  He ended up pulling the boat on to a shoal and waiting for low tide.  He was able to free the line and sail it into St. Augustine after the tide came in.  As he was coming into the dock the next day he threw a stern line to someone on the dock.  They dropped it in the water.  He quickly threw a second line and the man dropped that one as well!  Before he knew it the line was fouled in his prop again!  What bad luck!  He was having trouble getting the line off and said he might need some help the next day.  We said our goodbyes and went back to the boat for the night.

We packed our things for the day and went to take showers.  I set my stuff down on the bench by the shower and came out to find that someone happened to like the looks of my sunglasses a little more than their current pair and swapped them out for mine.  Not cool!  I went and told the Dockmaster just in case someone decided to turn them in.  So with squinty eyes, I headed out with Ryan and Jimmy into St. Augustine in search of a nice breakfast spot.

While we were at the Bunnery, Rorke called and requested our help and offered cold drinks for our service.  He had rigged up his spinnaker halyard to a cleat on the dock and was able to crank in a winch and tilt the boat over.  After several tries he was in position and I was the one that actually cut the line off with a really sharp knife clamped onto a boathook.  It worked and his prop was free!  We celebrated in his cockpit and then headed out to a sailing consignment shop that he had found the previous day.  We walked to Sailor’s Exchange and bought a harness to help us go up the mast (I forgot the tree climbing harness Tom was going to let me borrow!).

We came back to the boat to fuel up and prepare for our trip offshore the next day.  We wanted to make a final run offshore from St. Augustine to Ft. Lauderdale.  Peter picked us up for dinner at his house in his 1956 Oldsmobile convertible at 5:00 pm.  The car was gorgeous and in amazing condition!  Peter owned quite a few Toyota dealerships and apparently had a nice classic car collection.  We turned to go up the bridge and the car started sputtering and turned off.  We are right in the middle of the St. Augustine Bridge around rush hour!  Peter was able to signal to the opposite lane of traffic and roll down into a turning lane at the base of the bridge.  Traffic was way too heavy to push the car to another location.  The car had never had problems before!  Peter started diagnosing the engine and trying to figure out the problem.  A guy named Dan pulled up on his Harley and was pretty helpful in trying to figure out the problem.  Peter needed a part from his house (only a few miles away) and in no time Peter was on the back on Dan’s Harley and they were speeding across the bridge.  Once they were back (with a Prius just in case) it turned out to be a fuel pump problem and we couldn’t fix it on the spot.  A police officer finally showed up and helped us move the car to a better spot.  Peter called AAA but they said that it might be as much as an hour or so before they would be able to make it.  A tow truck came by and a nice guy named Jeff offered to tow the beautiful car for free as an early Christmas present (he wasn’t associated with AAA).  Peter gladly accepted and 20 minutes later we were pushing the car into the garage next to a pristine Toyota 2000 GT.

Gina had prepared a wonderful beef stew and we had a great time hanging out and sharing stories.  Peter and Gina were such nice hosts and it was so relaxing to have a good meal at home off the boat.  We looked at the weather forecast together for our offshore run and he advised us against going out on Saturday and that we should wait for the more favorable weather on Sunday.  They had several cats in their house and I was quickly reminded of my cat allergy:)  After a really nice visit, they dropped us off at Scarlett O’Hara’s several blocks from our boat.  It was Friday night and we figured we would enjoy the night since we were not going to leave the next day.  We ended up leaving Scarlett O’Hara’s and spending most of the night at the Trade Winds near our boat.  Right before we called it a night we went over to A1A and then had a great philly cheesesteak at South Philly’s next door.  Julia had found her way there earlier that night and it turned out that she and the owner were from the same town in Pennsylvania.

We woke up the next morning to work on our anchor light problem (a white light used when anchoring that we found out wasn’t working on our first anchor out…) at the top of the mast.  We rigged up the Mast Step system that Joe Murphy had loaned us and used the harness that Jimmy had bought the day before at the consignment store as a backup on the jib halyard.  Jimmy went about halfway up but the harness was really uncomfortable and he decided to come down for a rest.  Julia went up to the top and after several relays of pictures and verbal exchanges she removed the anchor light and we decided to take it on shore to have it tested out.  It was the perfect day for going up the mast because it was nice and calm with almost no wind.  A quick diagnosis at the dockmaster’s office determined that the light worked and it must be a wiring problem.  We went for lunch and then headed back to the boat to put the light back on.

We stopped by a boat named Klondike on the way in and asked if we could borrow a proper bosun’s chair.  The owner was very nice and lent us his chair.  He asked if one of us would help him go up his mast after we were down and we agreed.  I went up this time and replaced the light and took a few photos from up top.  It was really fun and there was beautiful view of the town.  Don, the owner of Klondike, came over in his dinghy as we were finishing up.  We followed him to his boat to help him fix a navigation light.  This guy was awesome!  He and his wife had sailed Klondike around the world and were getting ready to take it through the canal to San Francisco.  He had a power drill with a special bit that attached to the winch.  All I had to do was press a button and he zipped on up the mast!  He was done in a matter of minutes and then he gave us a tour of the boat.  It was a beautiful boat and he told us some fun stories of his adventures.  He was planning on leaving early the next morning around 7 am just like us to head offshore to Ft. Lauderdale.  We wished him luck and headed back to shore.  We all discussed our plans at the dock and came up with our plan for the rest of the night.  Ryan and Julia went to play putt putt and I went to work on the St. Augustine slideshow for the blog (you’re welcome:).  Jimmy had to finish up an application so we went back to J.P. Henley’s.

Ryan and Julia came in after an epic battle of putt putt and we went in search of a dinner spot.  We walked across the street to O.C. White’s.  We went to the hostess station to look at menus and it was a bit above our price range.  The hostess was so nice though!  She asked what kind of food we were looking for and made a recommendation for a burrito place a few blocks away.  She was so beautiful and friendly and we all fell for her right away:)  Madre’s was an easy walk and turned out to be a perfect suggestion.  The food was reasonably priced and really tasty.  We went back to O.C. White’s to thank her and decided to stay for dessert.  Julia and I had the Xando which is a fried banana cheesecake with ice cream.  So delicious!  Jimmy went to check on the offshore forecast one more time and came back with distressing news.  In the short time between dinner and dessert the forecast had changed to gale force winds the next day.  We went to the lounge area to discuss.  We decided to wake up the next day and check the forecast one more time.  There was a group of about six boats that were leaving at 7 am the next day just like us including Rorke and Sherry.

We woke up the next morning at 6 am and went to the dock to disassemble the dinghy.  The weather forecast was back to what we expected and we fell in line to go through the bridge offshore.  Don took the lead and went out first (8 ft. draft so we figured it was safe to follow) and made it through the inlet fine.  It was pretty choppy in the inlet and definitely threw us around.  I braved the galley and made coffee and hot drinks.  We all set off in slightly different directions and it looked like we were on a path to go slightly further offshore than the others.  We all kept in contact on channel 11 and followed each other’s progress.

The waves were a little swirly but we had experienced much worse already.  We motorsailed for awhile because the winds were fairly light.  Jimmy and I took the first six hour watch in the afternoon.  We motorsailed for a while longer because we were running pretty much directly downwind.  We were able to surf down the waves and we ended up making really good time (avg. 7 knots).  Our shift was pretty uneventful but very pleasant.  It was so nice to be off of the ICW and making better than 30 or 40 miles per day.  I crashed at 1900 when our shift was over and immediately went to sleep.  I was woken up as I was thrown up in the air and out of the V-berth right around our watch change.  I went ahead and got dressed and came up on deck.  It turned out that it had been a pretty eventful four hours!  The engine alarms had gone off so we had to shut the engine down.  We had to wait for the engine to cool for about an hour before we could check anything (turns out that it just needed a little oil).  The wind had picked up to gusting around 30 knots and the waves had increased as well.  We reduced the headsail area and were able to sail fairly comfortably.

There was quite a bit of water coming into the cockpit and Jimmy and I were actually completely swamped by one big wave in the middle of our shift.  The cockpit cleared fine and luckily we both have really nice foul weather gear.  I reached a speed of 10.9 knots once while I was helming!  We were definitely flying!  We turned in at 0300 and Julia and Ryan had a better watch the second time.  Jimmy and I woke up for the morning watch to calming seas but still nice wind.  It was actually a great watch!  Jimmy and I spotted 17 adult sea turtles and at least (no exaggeration) 75 tiny baby sea turtles swimming the opposite direction as us.  We also saw two large white fish and a whole pod of dolphins that hung out for about 45 minutes.  Most of the boats that we went out with decided to head in at the Daytona Beach inlet and only us and Klondike stayed out.

We had a few important decisions to make that morning.  We were actually making too good of time to make it into Ft. Lauderdale in the daylight.  We were planning on making it Tuesday morning but with our higher winds and waves we would be there around 10 pm Monday night.  We did not want to brave another night passage so we decided to go into West Palm Beach that afternoon and make it to Ft. Lauderdale the next day.  We also decided that we were not going to make it to the Bahamas this trip.  We all really wanted to but the weather is too unpredictable this time of year.  We might have a nice weather window going over but could easily get stuck waiting for one on the way back.  We decided that we would hang out in Ft. Lauderdale and maybe head down to the Keys in a rental car.

So we went into West Palm Beach tired from our offshore run and ready for showers and a good nights sleep.  We stayed at the Riveria Marina and were not impressed at all!  They had a piling dock system that was pretty difficult to get into.  They are not set up for 27 foot sailboats.  We ended up spending about $60 for the night and they didn’t even give us the wireless password.  There was nothing outside of their dock restaurant within walking distance.  We went to the shower house and had four not hot showers.  We met up at the restaurant for dinner and Ryan treated us to an amazing crab dip that we are still talking about!

We left the next day and had our best sail yet!  We sailed within sight of the beach all day and lounged in the cockpit and warm sun.  There were very light winds so we motorsailed most of the way.  It was amazing!  We had finally made it!  We put on the autopilot and hung out with the music on in our bathing suits (and of course sunscreen, Mom:).  Absolutely gorgeous day!  Ryan and I got adventurous and took some fun pictures of the boat sailing and even attached his waterproof camera to a boathook and extended it out in front of the boat (check out the upcoming movie link for that one!).

We made several calls ahead of time and decided to stay at the Ft. Lauderdale City Marina in Las Olas Beach.  The rates were $1.35/ft (!!!) and with my Boat U.S discount of 25% we would be able to stay for $33/night.  Not bad at all!  We came down the canals in Ft. Lauderdale and looked at all the crazy mansions and super yachts along the way.  We came into the marina and had a bit of a miscommunication docking.  We couldn’t hail the marina and Ryan had a close encounter with a nearby boat as we couldn’t figure out which slip to pull into.  We made it in and are happy to report that the facilities are so much nicer than our Riveria accommodations.

So the past few days have been so nice.  There are palm trees and clear water all around.  We are two blocks from the beach and there are cute girls everywhere:)  The temperatures have been about 75 degrees during the day and about 58 at night.  We have just been wandering around and exploring and eating tasty (but maybe overpriced) food.  We spent all day today on the beach just hanging out and swimming in the water.  Well worth the cold days and sleepless nights offshore!

Our new plan:  Jimmy decided that he would fly home for Christmas.  He is heading out tomorrow (Christmas Eve) and coming back on December 29.  Julia, Ryan and I are renting a car at 10 pm tonight and are driving down to Key West for Christmas.  Ryan has a free night at a Holiday Inn and he was able to book us a night at a resort down there that usually cost $210/night.  We are leaving tomorrow at 8 am and hanging out at a few of the state parks on the way down.  We will check in at the room Ryan booked and hang out in Key West.  For Christmas Day we were able to book a room at the Parrot Resort fairly reasonably which comes with $50 credit towards the restaurant there.  We will hang out in Key West for Christmas and take our time coming back on the 26^th and explore a few more parks.  We will probably move the boat down to Miami for New Year’s Eve and spend New Year’s there.  We will start our trip back up on January 2^nd.  We are all a little disappointed not to make it to the Bahamas but also super excited about our new plan.  I think it will be a lot of fun for sure!

I am about to post a slideshow in a little bit and a couple of movies.  I hope you all have a Happy Christmas (why does it always have to be merry?…) and a wonderful New Year! -Daniel