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!

 

South Carolina

After leaving the marina at Little River we made our way down the ICW through the famous "rock pile" with no issues whatsoever!  Thank goodness for that - I'm just sorry that Rick did all that worrying and lost sleep anticipating it to be bad!  All of our sailing friends who are reading this know exactly what I'm talking about but for the rest of you I'll briefly explain.  Apparently, when the ICW was made (back in the 1800's) there was a substantial amount of rock that had to be blasted out to form "the ditch" through several miles of the waterway through the Myrtle Beach area.  It's not very wide through there and boaters are warned to use extreme caution when meeting other large boats because you do not want to get close to any of the rocks.  We were advised to go through at lowtide so we could actually see where the rocks were.  We did and yes, we could see them but neither of us thought they looked as menacing as we had expected - however, we sure wouldn't want to have gotten close!  Fortunately, there was little to no traffic on the morning that we went through!

We spent a couple of days in Georgetown.  What a pretty little waterfront town!  They've built a very nice boardwalk along the water in front of the shops and restaurants where boaters can tie up for free during the daytime.  We spent most of a day walking around the town, visiting the maritime museum, shopping and eating lunch.  I had a very interesting and delicious item for lunch called "Oyster Bar Trash"!  I love all types of seafood and with a name like that I just had to try it - especially after our waitress told me that she doesn't eat oysters but her mama does and she loves it!  It was a combination of shrimp, oysters, scallops and flounder chopped, stirred and blackened - yummy!  Never saw it on a menu before and may never again so, here's a picture of the interesting place where I ate it.

Here are a few more pictures we took aournd Georgetown.

We've visited Charleston many times (by car) and it's a wonderful place but arriving there by boat is so totally different it's hard to describe!  First of all we got to be dazzled by all the gorgeous homes on the Isle of Palms and Sullivan's Island before we entered the very large Charleston Harbour and port shipping channels!  What a sight to see the huge suspension bridge over the Cooper River from the water!

We also go the best view of Ft. Sumter we've ever had because it sits so far out of the harbour near the ocean and a different view of the lovely old homes along the Battery.

I'm having a problem uploading some of the Charleston pictures - sorry! 

Taking a brief break from sailing

Sorry for the long delay but the last few weeks have been very busy as we have been visiting with various friends and family members along the way and we have been off of the boat during much of that time.  We really enjoyed a relaxing time with Rick's mother, brother, brother-in-law and an aunt for 4 days at Holden Beach.  We used to go there all the time but haven't been in many years due to sailing and it was great to go back and to see how much some things have changed yet others are exactly the same.  We also enjoyed a surprise visit with Rick's cousin's son, wife and two children who were vacationing on Oak Island.

Leaving Holden we motored on down by Ocean Isle Beach, Sunset Beach and Calabash to Little River where we were fortunate to have the offer of a free slip (by a friend of Rick's from Wake Forest) in a beautiful townhome community marina.  Hooked up with friends and family there also and got to eat some of that famous Calabash seafood for the first time in quite a few years!

Here's a picture of Carolina Moon in the slip where she stayed for a week while we vacationed with my parents in North Myrtle Beach.

We had a great time staying at the beautiful Wyndham Ocean Blvd. resort in Ocean Drive just as the SOS Fall Migration was gearing up.  Relaxing on the beautiful beach and swimming in the ocean was great fun and a real treat because even though we're on the water all the time - we are rarely at a beach!  Hopefully, that will begin to change as we continue heading further south.  Here are a few pictures I took from the balcony of our condo.

Ocracoke and Oriental

We enjoyed a nice, smooth crossing of the Pamlico Sound on our way to Ocracoke.  Can't believe it's been so long since we were hear!  Fortunately, all the familiar faces (Bill, Mike and Marco) were there waiting for us at the marina when we tied up to the fuel dock before anchoring in Silver Lake.  It was great to see all of them!  This has always been one of our favorite places since we began sailing and it still is.  We enjoyed 3 wonderful days anchored in Silver Lake and walking around on the island visiting all the neat shops and several of the restaurants.

Almost there!  The excitement level really goes up at this point of the trip!

We rented a golf cart for a couple hours on our final afternoon and here are a few pictures of places we drove to and other shots of things on and around Ocracoke.

The Ocracoke Lighthouse

British Cemetary

Silver Lake

From Ocracoke we went to our first marina in Oriental - Sea Harbour where we really enjoyed spending a week-end visiting with great friends there that we hadn't seen in a long time.  The weather was perfect and we spent time cooking on the grills and sharing our meals in the clubhouse just like we used to do!  Doesn't get much better!

The next several weeks are going to be busy because we have plans to meet up with lots of friends and family members at various beaches in North and South Carolina as me make our way on down the ICW.

Leaving Virginia

Earlier this week we said our farewells to all the friends we made at the marina over the past several years.  This was a significant step in our adventures as we now begn our trip southward toward Florida for the winter.

Leaving the Chesapeake Bay to cross the James River - this is the view of Fort Monroe and Hampton.

On the other side of the James River we entered the Elizabeth River, which runs right by the Norfolk Naval Base and then on through and between the Norfolk and Portsmouth waterfronts.

This can be a rather tricky passage due to all the numerous highway and railroad swing and lift bridges - most of which open on the hour and half hour - so, timing is everything!

Our original plan was to stop in Portsmouth for the night and then navigate through all the bridges that span the waterway first thing in the morning but fortunately another friendly sailor told us that he had just learned that one of the bridges was going to be closed for repairs for three days beginning the following morning.  So, we trudged on and made it through all the bridges and the lock at Great Bridge, VA just barely before nightfall.

The following day we motored on down through the remaining bridges over the Chesapeake/Albermarle Canal and then crossed a rather angry Currituck Sound, which is the smallest of the three NC sounds.  It is shallow and when the wind blows upward of 10 knots it tends to get very choppy.  We had winds averaging 15 knots all the way across - but at least we're back in good ole NC!  We spent the night in Coinjock, NC, which I'm sure most of you have never even heard of!  It was a hot and humid day but fortunately the marina has a small pool and we took advantage of it once we were docked.

With a forecast of a cool front moving in the wind was blowing even stronger the next day so we only traveled 15 miles, which took us through the remainder of the Intercoastal Waterway NC Cut and to a nice little anchorage just north of the Albermarle Sound.  Much lighter winds were forecasted for the next day so we opted to wait and make the crossing because it can really be uncomfortable when it gets stirred up!

One of the most gorgeous sunsets ever from that anchorage.

The next two days our travels took us across the Albermarle Sound, down the Alligator River and through the Alligator/Pungo River Canal to the Pungo River and finally then into the quaint little town of Belhaven.  Nice place to spend a little time after all the long travel days!