Beautiful St. Augustine

We've made it to St. Augustine from Marathon, Fl. It took us 52 hours of offshore travel. We motorsailed most of the way because it was just too quiet out there. Saw a couple of waterspout offshore the first morning. It was quite concerning till I was sure we weren't going in the same direction. Then they were just interesting to watch. We came to the inside at the Ponce de Leon Inlet to refuel. Spent the night at a dock there and visited some local eateries and the Light House. It was a very nice area. In the morning we decided to travel up the ICW and visit the fort at Fort Mantanzas. It was a small fort built on the inlet to repell anyone that was trying to raid St. Augustine from the back door. Had a great visit with the reenactors there and the park folks were real nice to us "sailors". We continued up the ICW the next day to St. Augustine. Thought we would stay up the Sabastion River while here but the conditions weren't very good for a vessel our size. Almost stayed up the river via being aground in the shallow water. But we made it out safely and went on over to the regular anchorage by the City Marina. Glad we did. The facilities are great. Really nice marina, with  great showers and lounge for the cruisers. There are a lot of things to do in St. Augustine. Many many restaurants, and tourist kind of things. By the way, we're not "tourists" we're "trancients"...........way different!! :-) We are having a great time here. We got 3 day passes for the Red Train and rode it all over town. Shane loves going over to the Original Ripley's Believe it or Not. As though he hasn't seen enough strange things in his life. Maybe it's just so he can get a grasp on reality!? :-) We've had several people over for dinner or drinks, including one of my best friends growing up and his wife and an internet friend from Sailnet whose internet handle is Sailingdog. It was a great time visiting with friends down here in a tropical paradise. In the morning we will be heading up to Charleston, SC for a bit of a stay. We are going to tie up to a dock for a month and move our car from Tampa to Charleston. Kinda looking forward to a little time ashore. We're enjoying ourselves out on the water but it's not always a relaxing thing out there. We're always having to be mindful of the conditions around us, watching the wind and tide changes and making sure the anchor stays set and doesn't get all twisted up. We also have to watch and make sure the other vessels around us do likewise. It can be kinda unnerving at time when things go bump in the night. So anyway, I'll have access to Wifi and will be able to catch up on the blog map and my internet communications. Catch you all then.

Bill and his wife Michelle

Sailingdog and MtnMike

Time to travel

Hopefully we're going to leave Marathon, Fl. on Tuesday the 18th of May. Have to get up the coast for insurance reasons but need to move on anyway. We could easily get "stuck" here in Marathon like so many others. It is really nice and cozy here. Our next planned stop is St. Augustine, Fl. We really like it there and want to visit all the historic sites in the area. I would like to try to go a non-stop sail to there up the Gulf Stream but it's 384nm and I'm not sure we are up for that much time off shore. We'll see how that goes. We won't be so far out that we can't duck in if need be. We probably will never get quite far enough out to loose sight of land. That's always comforting. If that works out good then we will be more prepared to make another big jump up to Charleston, NC. We'll then try doing some ICW travel, doing day trips for a while anyways. We might end up staying in the Charleston area for a week or more, hard to tell. I'll post an update when we get to St. Augustine.

Working our way through the Keys.

Hi everyone. I'm back with a breif update. We sailed out of Key West and anchored near Little Torch Key and Little Palm Island. We visited with friends on Little Torch Key for several days. We had a wonderful time while there. While we were in Key West we bought Shane a surf board at Ron Jons. He decided to practice the other morning and while he was out paddleing around in the harbour a pod of about 5 dolphins came up and started swimming all around him. It was waaaaaaay cool. It was really hard to take a picture of the happening but I did get one, unfortunately it was like a Big Foot pic, fuzzy and just one fin.....looked more like swimming with a Shark!! Just one of those that Grandma doesn't want to see on the internet!!?? Anyway, we are now in the mooring field in Boot Key Harbor, Marathon, Fl. We can see why folks get stuck here. They ar really cruiser friendly and have all the amenities here in town. Nice showers, (real important in the tropics) wi fi, a work shop to use, tv, ect. Paid for a week and hope that the weather cooperates at the end of that time. It's nice to get a few thing done along the way. There's always something to fix, repair or replace. The latest improvement has been the installation of a Wind Scoop on the forward hatch. What an improvement in ventilating the whole boat. It's GREAT!! So tonight it's off to the air conditioned movie. Life is Good!