Wahoo thru St Augustine. FL

11-1-2012

We have owned the boat two years today. In some ways it seems like longer than that. Lots of changes since then…no jobs, no getting up at 3:30 am, no putting up with work crap, no house, no leaves to get up, no snow to shovel…

 

Up and ready to leave about 7:30. The wind was not bad at all. When we got out of the river and into Sapelo Sound, it looked so much calmer and the trip was so much better than it would have been if we’d kept on. Sea Salt called us and he said we had the right idea.  He said we shouldn’t try and go a certain number of miles each day, no matter what. If the weather is not what you want, stay another day. If the wind is too rough, stay another day. Remember, it’s supposed to be fun.

I think this shrimper is so pretty with all the nets out.

Looking out to the ocean.

We timed our speed so we could get to Little Mud River at high tide, since the guidebooks said it could get shallow. We had no problems with water depths. We are trying to keep good notes about the water depth and tide to help us later.

We are staying in the Frederica River near Fort Frederica again. We stayed here on our first trip north. We knew it was a good place so why not come back!

Is it just me, or does this marker look different?

Fort Frederica Monument. See the British flag?

The cannons

Our anchorage

We left the ICW at G 229 and came down the river to our anchorage.

See how calm everything is . Not a ripple on the water.

It's hard to tell where the water stops and the land starts.

Pretty

Sunrise

We knew Jekyll Island was noted for being a problem area in low tides. So we made sure we weren’t there at low tide. We also timed going thru St. Andrew’s Sound. The current at 8:30 am was 2.2 kts and at 11:00 am when we were there it was about .5 kts. The wind was calm and the current was almost slack, so we had no problems there either. We had some other areas that were noted for shoaling so we were careful and had no problems there either We’re not sure how we avoided grounding the other times we’ve done this, cause we haven’t paid as much attention to the tides and current and time as we have this time. Who knows, maybe we were just lucky.

Unusual boat

Birds waiting at the bridge. Wonder what they're waiting for?

Shay said to caption this as, "We finally made it, this is the Golden Gate Bridge."

Lighthouse



Looking out the inlet at St. Andrew's Sound. This can get really rough at times.

This is an abandoned lighthouse on Little Cumberland Island.

We heard the Coast Guard call a boat that had passed us earlier and told them they would have to stop, they were bringing a submarine and other boats in from the sound. We knew this could happen in this area, but had never had it before. We slowed down and when we got to the area we saw this out of our window.

Way, way off in the distance we could see the ships.

 

You can see the tugs bringing the sub in.

Hangers at King's Bay.

This sub was already tied up at the dock

Not sure what this is for

This was in the middle of the inlet at Fernandina Beach. Don't know what its purpose is.

Fort Clinch

We are anchoring in Fernandina Beach tonight. We are in Bell’s Creek just off the ICW. This is new for us and we hope it will be a good place.

Beautiful downtown Fernandina Beach

Shrimp boats waiting at the dock.

This looks like some "sicko" amusement park ride.

Our anchorage

We got up early the next morning to leave but had to wait for enough light to see the crab pots around us.

Leaving the next morning.

We are in Florida now. Can't you tell by the houses?

There was a fire somewhere and we had smoke.

Nuclear power plant near St. John's River

I said this boat looks like it has a bandage on it.

Looking up the St. John's River

A boat in a boat. If you look closely, you can see the boat is in "dry dock". It was put into the barge and then the water was let out so they could work on the boat.

This is an enlargement of the guns on the big boat.

This guy is fishing at the rock jetty in the middle of St. John's River. Who put these rocks in the middle of the river? Why?

BIG

Approaching a bridge with a current problem.

Well, we ran aground today. Another boater had told us about an area of shoaling into the channel and to favor the red side. So… we started seeing shallow water and we moved over toward the red markers and it got even shallower. The depth sounder read 0.6 feet under the boat, so I went downstairs to see what that one read and it was 0.0. OH CRAP! We were stuck. So he started working the engines and giving it more power until finally we started moving backwards very slowly. Thank goodness. We were both upset. Me because I didn’t get good info from the other boater and Shay because he didn’t do what he would normally have done in a place like that. Stay in the center of the channel.

We got to St. Augustine at 3:30. It’s been a long and frustrating day. We are glad to be on a mooring and to stay put for a few days. We plan to become Florida residents while we are here. We want to take advantage of that "no state income tax" thing.

We ate dinner with Ken and Margaret at PizzAlley and had a great time.

Lighthouse at St. Augustine.

Not sure what the significance of the large cross is.

Our welcoming committee. Margaret looks like a queen greeting her peasants.

Pirate ship in the inlet.



Battle at sea. You can see the smoke from the cannon.

Attack!

Beautiful sail boat.



Castillo de San Marcos

Next day I worked on the blog and after a walk with Bob Thompson, who lives here, Shay helped Ken replace something on his boat. Shay came back from a dinghy ride with Ken and had me 5 beautiful white roses. I asked why and where they came from. After a while he finally told me he and Ken "found them in the water'. Does that make sense?

 Bob picked us up at 5 pm for a visit and then we ate dinner with them at Bono's, a B-B-Q place. It was good and we really enjoyed the time spent with them. Linda sent a bag of books back to the boat with me. I'll think of her as I read them.  Shay was telling Linda about the flowers and she gasped andsaid she knew why the flowers were in the water. She said they were part of a memorial service held at the marina docks tonight for the Bounty, a ship that sank this week. Is it just me or is that kinda weird? I have flowers for a dead boat.

So on 11-5-2012 we rented a car and headed to Green Cove Springs to change our domicile, get license, and register to vote. We had gathered all sorts of paperwork...logbook to prove where we had been and how long we had been at each location, receipts for fuel and dockage, bill of sale for the dinghy, Coast Guard documents for Escape, mail with our new address... and thought we had it covered.

We stopped by the mail forwarding service we use, St. Brendan's Isle and found out we were in big trouble. Now we had already talked to these people several times and told them what we wanted to do... change our residence, get Florida driver's license,and register to vote. We found out we have all the stuff to change our residence, but not to get driver's license. We had also talked to people at the driver's license place and no one told us about what we'd need.

That's a BIG deal. You have to have either a birth certificate or passport and then a social security card or W-2 form with social security number on it or form 1099 with full social security number social security number on it. Of course we didn't have any of last stuff with us.

We talked to the people there and asked if we could get our license in another town. He said probably not since most places require a physical address not a P O Box for license. Now we do not have a P O Box at St. Brenden's we have a real address, but most place don't recognize it as one. We asked if we could get it in Marathon and he said the license agency were independently ran and the person that ran Miami, Marathon, and Key West did not recognize our address as legit.

So.....what to do?..... We decided to change our residence and then go back 45 minutes to the boat, get the papers, and come back to get license.

The change of residence was NOTHING. The girl behind the window looked at our form, looked at our N. C. license, took our money, notarized our form, and said that's it. We asked is that all and she said yes. So we are now Floridians.

Next stop to register our boats in Florida. We had all sorts of papers for that... It took a while and at first the supervisor tried to tell us we had to pay Florida sales tax on the boat or show proof that we had paid it in another state. Shay told her N. C. does not charge sales tax on used boats so we did not have to pay there and we got the boat out of Florida in the allotted time and kept it out of the state for the 6 months necessary so we did not have to pay sales tax now. He explained we had talked to several people in Tallahassee at the tax office and they assured us we we ok. So she finally decided since we had owned the boat over 2 years she couldn't get our money and registered the boat. Florida wanted $18,000.00 for sales tax on our boat...just think of all the stuff we can get at West Marine with our Port Supply discount card.

So we got the boat registered and found out exactly what we needed to bring back and headed back to the boat. Shay came back to the boat while I waited with the car since there is no free parking near the marina. Of course he had trouble...couldn't find the SS cards, so he finally found W-2 forms and we headed back with Ken and Margaret tagging along. We had planned to do a grocery run after all this was over so off we go.

We went back to the same office, took a number, and waited for our turn. When we went by the woman that registered our boats, we told her hello again. The woman at the license window was very nice. We got our license, registered to vote, and found out we could even get fishing license but decided to wait on that. I asked if I could get my nails done and she said maybe next week. Shay asked her if we could vote, but she said we registered too late. He said that was too bad. We had already done absentee voting in N. C., but hoped we would be able to vote as new Florida residents also. I told her his motto was, "vote early and vote often". We wanted to do all we could to make sure "O" was "OUT".

....So at the end of the trip... we are Florida residents, we are registered to vote in Florida, and the boats are registered in Florida. What a difference a day makes!

Back to St. Augustine to do a provisions run, The girls went to Walmart and the guys went to West Marine. We had planned to take the car back this afternoon so we could leave early tomorrow, but the weather forecast is 90% chance of rain tomorrow and we decided we'd stay put another day. So Shay took the car a mile away to park while the rest of us took stuff back to the boat and put it away. We had decided since we had a car we'd drive to a restaurant instead of walking to one here. Margaret and I picked Ruby Tuesday since I wanted a hamburger and she wanted a good salad. We could all be happy there.

We had a great meal... big delicious salad and for everyone except Margaret a burger. She had shrimp. We parked the car, walked back to the marina, and took a cool ride back to our boats.

We woke up to rain this morning so the weatherman was correct. For once. Shay and Ken took the car back. It has cleared of so maybe we can do one last wake around St. Augustine before we leave. I know I've said it before, but it is a great city...one full of history and beauty.

Thank goodness this storm passed us by.

As I was finishing working on the blog Shay called and asked if I wanted to go for a walk, since it had turned into a pretty day. We took off and walked around the town and bought dessert for tonight. We are having Ken and Margaret over to the boat to watch the election news. Hope we will be celebrating!

We plan to leave in the morning headed to Rock House Creek. One of my favorite and most beautiful anchorages.