(Wet Storage) Rivers Edge Marina, St. Augustine, Florida: November 6, 2020
Marc- We are back home in Watertown, MA for the holidays. The rental van trip home was fine with only one stop in New Jersey. Lucy III will remain in St. Augustine until our return in late December. The blog will be on hold until we are back in Florida.
(Day 2) Rivers Edge Marina, St. Augustine, Florida: November 2, 2020
Marc- We are settling the boat in for the next two months here. The location is good, the price is right and the weather improved a lot today making everything better. Seeing our location on a sunny morning helped a lot and we spent the day playing tourist in downtown St. Augustine. This was a nice day to stay in port. The ICW was rough today with 20 knot winds gusting to 25 knots. We walked halfway over the Bridge of Lions to get an overview of the harbor (Florida does not have many hills to climb). The bridge opened as we reached the center and several boats rushed through including a large fishing trawler that was having some listing problems with its outriggers up. The trawler lowered its outriggers immediately after passing through and this did help its stability. The Northern mooring field was very exposed to the Northeast winds and the boats here were bouncing.
Back at the boats we started to prepare for our departure. I placed double lines on all docking lines and added two spring lines to Fiddler's Green from Lucy III. Both boats now have a spider web of lines to protect them. Next was taking the dinghy off its davits and placing it overturned on the foredeck. This was accomplished by Sue operating the electric anchor windlass to raise the dinghy by the spinnaker halyard. I simply had to adjust the dinghy down on the deck. Tomorrow we will clean and lock things up. We'll probably leave for home by rental car with Michael & Doreen on Wednesday, Nov. 4.
Rivers Edge Marina, St. Augustine, Florida: November 1, 2020
Marc- Calm winds and a slack high tide were just what we needed to leave Fernandina this morning at 07:00. Setting the clocks back one hour made this a lot easier than leaving in the dark. Off we went toward Paper Mill Number 2 and right away saw three sailboats that seem to have been wrecked and abandoned on or close to shore. A Westsail 32 looked as if it had just sailed up into the marsh. It still had all of its sails furled neatly and not a scratch on her. It would take a nice pull from one of those big commercial tugboats to get her off the marsh grass. We lucked out at the railroad bridge as it was open. The bridge closes for shipments of logs to the paper mills here. There is no VHF channel to call for information or an opening. The Waterway guide book notes that the bridge closes automatically when a train approaches (not the safest set up for passing boats). Lucy III had favorable current all the way down to Sisters Creek and the St. John River. There was some excitement as Warship 21 was coming in and awaiting a pilot. The crew was busy on VHF 16 keeping cruisers away. We passed two navy ships in drydock for repairs in Jacksonville. Navy Security boats were on patrol. Once we entered Pablo Creek our speed dropped to 5.5 knots and remained there for the next three hours due to the ebbing tide. The situation changed in our favor when we reached the headwaters of the Tolomato River. A cold front with showers was forecast to come through this afternoon, and it did while we were waiting for the Bridge of Lions to open at 16:00. As we waited circling the area in North of the bridge the engine started to skip. I instantly thought the fuel tank must be low and I transferred fuel from the spare tank (I flipped a switch). It worked. We passed through the bridge with a large fishing trawler following us along with alot of birds feeding on his discarded fish. We went around the corner and up the San Sebastian River to Rivers Edge Marina. This is a very protected spot.
This is the end of Part I of our trip. We're going home for the Holidays soon and the boat will sit here for 2 months.
