March 1- 3 St. Augustine, New Smyrna Beach, Melbourne, Fort Pierce FL

We had a great time in St. Augustine, a beaautiful city.  We docked at the municipal marina, just under the Bridge of Lions.

Dock Bird

Twilight Time at twilight.

Next stop was New Smyrna Beach, where we decided to take a chance on  the Smryna Yacht Club, utilizing our reciprocal agreements from the Lahaina Yacht Club in Maui.  We will skip it next time.  Not much to it, including the fact that the docks had no cleats, only pilings.  Took us by surprise, as you don't find that a lot.  Nice restaurant though.

Coming in to Melbourne we made a navigational error (the wrong bridge)  that put us into a small creek in which a boat of our size does not belong.  But no harm done, except to our egos, particularly since we both made the mistake.  The stop at Melbourne is necessitated by (of course) a restaurant, The Mansion.  Not only does it have great food, but it also contains a huge wine and beer store (room after room), as well as a nice coffee bar, deli and catering services.  As the name implies it is located in an old home and has a lovely rooftop dining area overlooking the Indian River.  On a milc night in FL it is perfect.

We arrived Monday in Fort Pierce and reunited with our "J Dock" friends.  It was great to catch up on each others comings and goings during the last 8 months. We met some new boaters as well.   Another Saturday night party is happening tonight.

Fort Pierce City Marina

Saturday morning was beautiful, bright, clear and cool.  We stopped by the farmers' market early, picked up some tomatoes and beautiful citrus.

We have been settling in nicely in Fort Pierce.  When we are cruising there is little time for making repairs.  So of course we have many small items that need work - gauges not working properly, grill that wants to fall apart, some electrical issues , and some engine problems, coolant leakage, outboard motor to the dinghy in need of repair or replacement, etc.  Always something on a boat! It keeps Mal quite occupied. 

The new Garmin charplotter

Those of you less familiar with boating may be interested in understanding our chartplotter.  Basically it is just like the GPS in your car, except that instead of roads and street names you have markers and waterways shown.  Perhaps you can see the little boat on the screen?  If you are on the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway, the screen shows a magenta line.  You can ALMOST just follow that line north and south.  The chartplotter is one of the great 20th century technological advances in cruising.  While it does not make paper charts obsolete (one never knows when the power might go out) it does make it much harder to get lost!  And just like in your car, you can choose a destination and have the chartplotter route to it.  For backup to that we also have the Navionics app on the IPad, but that requires wi-fi.  We have a 4G hotspot that almost always can pick up a signal. Most marinas have wi-fi and some sort of rudimentary cable.

March 1, 2014
Fernandina Beach FL to St. Augustine FL

Our day started off very chilly but steadily improved.  We came in to St. Augustine City Marina in our long underwear and it was 70 degrees.  But everyone was overdressed,  including the dockhands.

Both of us had been to St. Augustine before, but didn't feel that we had a good look at the whole town, so decided to stay over an extra day.

We docked right next to the Bridge of Lions

which is right downtown.  Nice marina.

It is a beautiful, old (settled by the Spanish in 1565) city, and is the oldest continuously occupied European settlement in the US.  It is extremely well preserved, with beautiful 19th century Spanish Renaissance architecture.  We visited the old Spanish fort, the Castillo de San Marcos,  where volunteers dressed in Spanish uniforms (and speaking Spanish) demonstrated cannon firing.

We spent quite a bit of time at Flagler College, the site of the once luxurious but now defunct Ponce de Leon Hotel, built in 1888 by Henry Flagler, the founder of Standard Oil.  This is one of the first great hotels in Florida and really opened the state to tourism.  Prior to that time the only people who went to FL were those suffering from tuberculosis.  Flagler also built a railroad that ran from New York City to St. Augustine so tourists had a convenient way to get there.

 In the college's dining hall, once the ballroom for the hotel,  is the largest collection of Tiffany stained glass in the world.  Quite a sight.  Amazing murals and ceiling frescos are painted throughout the public areas, and it only took 18 months to build!

We are presently cruising down the Matanzas River, almost to Flagler Beach, on a beautiful, 70 degree Florida day. We are on our way to New Smyrna Beach and the Smyrna Yacht Club.