Sunday January 21: St. Augustine, FL

The last couple of days in Jacksonville were spent finishing up jobs before we headed out again. After 2 months of sitting, it was strange to be thinking of untying the lines and casting off again! Steve's netbook sort of got dropped and the dreaded white screen was all that would show up on the screen. After help from Marialice (by phone), Steve took it apart to check the connections - still didn't work. Then after verifying the display worked on the TV and receiving great encouragement from Matt, we replaced the screen ($66 on the internet including 2 day shipping) instead of purchasing a new computer ($300+). And it worked!! We were very happy :-) Thanks for the help guys!!

Friday morning we got a call from Warren and Elin wanting to know our address - they were on the way to Jacksonville! We knew they were north of us traveling in their motorhome but didn't really expect to see them so it was a nice surprise. We dropped Wendy's car off at the storage unit (they will pick it up on their way to Cherry Point), relaxed in the hot tub and finished off Friday night with a game of dominoes. Mandy sent a picture of Jason and Solomon so everyone gathered around to check out the photo.

Finally - Saturday morning we left Jacksonville shortly after 8 am (Warren and Elin headed out just before we left for their next destination (unknown!). It was a pleasant ride down the St. Johns River - enough so that Steve spent the 4 hours working on freeing up the rusted solenoid from the generator as we weren't able to find a replacement. We think it'll work: replacement scheduled for later today.

Getting out of the St. Johns River entrance was something else. The current was going out at about 3.5 mph but the ocean wanted very much to come in the river. Result: we felt like we were in a washing machine with up to 4 1/2 foot waves and crazy water! Fortunately we could see that once out of the river we were going to be ok with 1 - 2 ft waves as predicted. The predicted sun never came out but it was still nice to be out on the open water anyway. The outside run of 35 miles to St. Augustine meant we could avoid passing through the spot on the ICW where the current would have been running 6 mph AGAINST us! Net forward gain for us: 2 mph :-)

The water offshore was ok but as always, we were glad everything was fastened down. Four 1/2 hours later we finally came to the approach to the St. Augustine (which the guidebooks say should definitely be done in the daylight). No buoys are marked on the charts (either paper or electronic) because the shoal shift around too much. The Coast Guard moves the buoys on a regular basis. And we discovered why they say that as we passed the giant waves on our port that were breaking over the sand bars not all that far from us.

We made it safely into our dock at Inlet Marina (actually located in Vilano Beach on the oceanside of the ICW). There was a very festive restaurant right across from our dock.

This morning it was up and off early to breakfast. Steve rode his bike for the first time since last August - said he could definitely feel it in his arm! We passed a yard full of driftwood novelties and the welcome bird on our way around town. Cute place.

Today was a rest day for two reasons: a long 68 mile, 9 1/2 hour day yesterday + the playoffs are on! So it was a very short 6 1/2 mile trip up the Sebastian River by St. Augustine.