St. Augustine

Our nation's oldest city - founded by Pedro Menendez de Aviles in 1565 and of course home of the famous Fountain of Youth discovered by Ponce de Leon.  I believe the history here is some of the most interesting of any place I've ever visited!  So many of our nation's firsts are here - the oldest wooden school house, the site of the first Catholic mass ever said in America as well as the first Jail!

Upon entering the harbor via the St. Augustine inlet one of the first landmarks that you see is The Great Cross, which was a gift to the city.  It is believed to be the tallest in the country and it weighs 70 tons.  The cross marks the sight of the first mass.

The next piece of history you see is the fort named Castillo de San Marcos, which we were told has "never, ever been taken".

We thoroughly enjoyed our stay here.  We bought an Old Town trolley pass that was good for a week and we certainly got our money's worth.  We were able to get off and on as many times as we wanted and it also included unlimited trips aboard the trolley that goes out (hourly) to St. Augustine Beach, which is on Anastasia Island.  The island is connected to the mainland by the beautiful Bridge of Lions.

You can see one of the white marble lions in the last two pictures.  There is an identical one on the other side at the foot of the bridge.  These lions were a gift from Spain to the city on one of it's significant birthdays (can't remember which one!).

Henry Flagler, a man who had to leave home at the age of 14 to find work because his mother was so poor she could no longer afford to feed him became an extremely wealthy man and built most of the old churches and hotels in St. Augustine.  He, with one of the Rockafellas founded Standard Oil Co.  He also built the Florida East Coast Railway, which runs all the way to Key West.  One of his most beautiful hotels here was named the Ponce de Leon.  It is now the home of Flagler College.

Statue of Ponce de Leon, which is on the main plaza (middle of this picture).

Old Ponce de Leon hotel - now Flagler College.

Another hotel built by Flagler, which is now home of the Lightner Museum.

The oldest Jail.

Full moon rising over St. Augustine.

St. Augustine waterfront restaurants, shops, etc.

St. Augustine has numerous boats for taking tourists out on the water.  Here is a beautiful tall masted clipper ship.

We had a ring side seat (from our boat) for watching all of the boats and it was quite obvious that the most popular one was this pirate ship named the Black Raven!  Very entertaining to listen to all the singing of pirate songs, the aaarg's and all the saber rattling!  This smaller pirate ship would sneak up on the large one and to the surprise of the passengers aboard the large ship would start firing cannons at them!  It was quite a show and a lot of loud cannon fire echoing across the harbor every afternoon!



Florida!

We're finally here!

Yes, getting here was always part of the excitement and the adventure but I think the ultimate goal was always "getting to Florida for the winter"!  Well, we finally made it!

Fernandina Beach is the northernmost (Florida) stop on the ICW and what a great little place it is!  I imagine most of you - like us - have driven to Florida for vacations and we all saw the green interstate signs on I-95 for the exits to Fernandina Beach.  But, who ever had time to exit when you were in a hurry to get to Daytona, Orlando, Ft. Lauderdale or any number of other popular Florida destinations?  Not us, but boy were we missing a great spot on beautiful Amelia Island!  Shopping galore and so many great restaurants - not to mention a beautiful beach on the ocean side!  We're very glad we finally weren't in such a rush and could spend some time in this great little "off the beaten path" town!  It's also home of Florida's oldest hotel and saloon - both of which are still in operation today.

More Adventure!

I don't know how many of you even heard about this but we were shocked last week to learn that several (7, I think) of the waterfront buildings in Georgetown, SC burned - many of which were in pictures on my last blog post!  The pictures we saw on the news were just horrible.  What a sad thing for that great little town.

We've just had all kinds of adventure since I last wrote!  First of all, we had no more than pulled up our anchor and started motoring down the ICW just south of Charleston when we were approached by a police boat with a flashing blue light manned by both police and Coast Guard officials!  They pulled right up alongside our boat and asked for permission to board.  Of course, we've always been aware of these type of boarding inspections but in all our years of sailing we had never experienced it.  Fortunately, everything went just fine and we checked out with no infractions, etc.  Whew, I'm glad that's over!  Actually, I'm kind of glad that it did happen and now we know exactly what it's like - admittedly, a little scary - even though you know that everything should check out and thankfully, it - and we did!

We chose not to spend time around Hilton Head as we've been there on vacations by car several times.  When we got to Beaufort we spent most of our time across the water on Lady's Island.  There's a nice little marina there and we met some of the nicest people.  The first night we were there they did a potluck dinner, which included a big pot of Low Country Boil containing fresh shrimp just caught that morning!  It was awesome and so were the people.  We really enjoyed our stay there.

We enjoyed an extended stay just south of Savannah at Thunderbolt Marina due to a nor'easter that sat just off of the Georgia coast for the better part of a week.  Fortunately, a few other nice couples were there in the same situation and we enjoyed getting to know each other.  Rick and I even learned a new card game.  The shrimping business is big around there and we were able to buy fresh shrimp right off of the shrimp boat, which we steamed in Old Bay and ate with melted butter that night.  Delicious!

Once leaving there the Intercoastal takes you across a lot of sounds in Georgia - St. Catherine's, Sapelo, Doboy, Altamaha and Buttermilk.  Some with some funny names.  It has been interesting to see all the scenery along the ICW and we realize what an opportunity it is that most people never have but we have just about seen enough marsh grass to last us awhile!

We enjoyed visiting with old sailing buddies from Oriental for a couple days in Brunswick, where we sailed under our first suspension bridge - quite impressive!

From Brunswick we went to Jekyll Island, which is just gorgeous!  We rode bicycles all over the island and here is some of the beauty that we saw.

From Jekyll we headed on south to Cumberland Island, which is a well-kept secret.  There are hardly any people there but there is abundant wildlife including deer, horses, alligators, turkeys, snakes and much more!  It's a lush tropical paradise with a beautiful white sandy beach on the ocean side and we were excited about getting to explore it.  We even found out that John Kennedy, Jr. married Carolyn Bessette there in a tiny church in 1996!

Unfortunately, the only way for us to access it was to tie up to the dinghy dock at the Cumberland Island National Park, which was closed due to the federal gov. shutdown.  Oh well, at least we did get to see a few horses from our boat!