Life Aboard: St Augustine, FL

Sunset at Beaufort, SC

We saw some beautiful boats past by when we were in Beaufort.

Rainy time at anchor

Sea Salt is finally here!

We had a good time with Richard and Connie from Sea Salt. We walked around town and saw the sights. We went window shopping and had BBQ. Glad they are with us.

The bridge at night

We are leaving tomorrow morning. We have calculated the tides and currents for the next day and we will have some push and some against us. That's the best we can do. We will have some skinny water but we will try to get to those areas when they are not so skinny. Sea Salt is leaving a little later than we are, so we will sneak out. As we headed down the river, it started to get foggy. That's not good.

The bridge as we are leaving

Quiet at the marina.

As we were heading down the river we checked the weather and decided it looked good enough for an outside passage. Not perfect, but ok. If we do that, it will save us all the hassle and worry about the tides, currents, and skinny water inside. We called Sea Salt and told them to look at the weather and see what they thought. They thought it looked ok so we headed outside at Port Royal Sound. We weren't the only boat heading.

We couldn't help but think of our nephew, Adam who is joining the marines and will be here at Parrish Island soon.

Sea Salt heading out. You can see that is getting foggy.

Great place to hang out!

Sea Salt heading into the fog.

It was foggy until just before sunset. We actually changed out course so we were closer to Sea Salt so we could see them. We were 0.3nm away when we could finally see them. Not a good way to travel, but we had our radar and AIS on. The AIS let us see other boats with the system and let them see us. We were able to get lots of information about the other boats. At the very least we could see how far away they were, their speed, and point of closest contact if any. If they boats had entered the information we could see their name, length, beam, depth and where they were going. We also heard an alarm if we were on a collision course with them. It's always good to know if something is heading your way!

We had calculated how fast we should travel to get to St. Augustine Inlet at around 8am so we would have good light to enter the inlet. We can look at waypoints on our trip and see what time we will get there traveling at a certain speed. So we kept checking and changing our speed as needed. We had planned to travel about 6.5nm/hr or about 7mph.

As I said, the fog lifted just before sunset and that was a big relief. It's one thing to be traveling in the fog in the day and an entirely different thing at night. Especially since the moon was not going to rise until after 2am and then only about 27%. That's not a great deal of light, but you want every little bit you can get when you are doing an overnight passage! The ideal condition would be a beautiful sunset, then 10 minutes later a full moon rising and no clouds! We did have lots of stars and no clouds, so we enjoyed what we had.

And we had shooting stars! We saw several during the night. Every year about this time, there are lots of meteorite showers. Of course, we were in the perfect place to see them. No moon, no lights and no clouds. We also saw jellyfish, a big sea turtle, and dolphins on the trip. You know, people go on vacation and pay lots of money to MAYBE see what we are surrounded by everyday! We are blessed!

We knew we would be passing by some busy inlets during the night and we did have some excitement. About 4am, we got close to St John's Inlet, near Jacksonville, FL and saw several big ships coming in from the ocean. We knew they were going to enter the inlet and wanted to stay out of their way. We could see their speed and knew when we would be getting close to them.

We could see three ships coming in a line. Shay decided he would pass close behind first boat, a big cargo ship and then go between it and the next boat. It's hard to judge speed and size in the dark. These ships start out as just a light far off on the horizon and end up being 600 feet or more long and over a 100 feet wide!

We adjusted our speed, so we would pass close to it's stern. We got within about a quarter of a mile as we crossed paths. Now that may seem like a lot of distance but remember how big he is and how hard it is for him to maneuver! And it's dark! But we had no problems and we increased our speed, so we could get across the channel before the other boat got to us.

Sea Salt had some problems. Their electronics shut off and he had to wait while they came back on. He actually turned around and went away from the inlet, until everything was working again. That got him several miles behind us so we slowed down to about 4.5nm to give him time to catch up with us.

It's hard to describe the sea conditions that night. If you look at the pictures, there are no big waves, but we were constantly rocking and moving around. Thank goodness we had stabilizers. Sea Salt doesn't have them and put out their sails trying to get some help from the wind, but there wasn't enough and they had an uncomfortable passage.

I was on watch when at sunrise and I was so glad for the night to be over. We had taken turns at watch, but neither of us had rested much. Shay slept from about 4:30 until 7 and that was the longest time either of us slept. Richard said the clouds looked like mountains. Sleep tight, Captain Shay!

We had planned well, and got to the inlet with plenty of light.

I watched the light from this lighthouse for hours as we moved down the coast!

Sea Salt leading the way into St. Augustine.

I guess the current pushes the fish into the inlet too, so that's why all the fishermen are here?

Beautiful cross guards the entrance.

Castillo De San Marcos National Monument, we are anchored across the channel from it.

We have had lots of rain and I finally got a picture of the old fort in the sunlight!

Sea Salt is close by!

Pretty houses near us.

We left Beaufort, SC at 6:40 yesterday morning. We traveled over 26 hours and traveled over 163nn at an average speed of 6.2kts. We are tired and glad that trip is over. Traveling in fog is not fun. I guess when are checking weather conditions, we need to think about fog. The pictures below show our anchorage. We have never anchored in St. Augustine, but the marina doesn't have any mooring balls for us. So we will hang out here until we can get one. You can see that we are not very far from everything. The inlet is just around the corner and the marina is just across the channel.

We kept seeing people dressed as pirates when we went to shore and found out there was a pirate invasion going on. I guess they came in on the pirate boat pictured above?

A rainbow after one of our showers!

And then a beautiful sunset!

Well, we've been here several days and seen lots of boats come and go from the mooring field and we have decided the marina has forgotten us and Sea Salt too. Sea Salt left Monday morning heading farther south. Our good friends, Emma and David, from Five Flip Flops, are now back in the states and are getting their boat back in the water and heading our way. We have missed hearing about their adventures and can't wait to see them. We are planning to have them over for dinner when they get here.

The weather hasn't been great since we've been here. Lots of cloudy days which means not much solar power. We've had several showers, so Escape has been rinsed off.

We had some very foggy mornings! We could barely see the other boats and the docks near us!

We've met some old friends and made some new ones while we've been here. St. Augustine is a great place to walk around. Beautiful old buildings and streets that make you think you are in a far off country. The city celebrated its 450th birthday this year.

Typical sightseers!

Beautiful church!

We took our dingy to Vilano Beach. It's just a short ride up the ICW and it's a great place. We went exploring with Cori and Dale from Hi Flite, some of our new friends. We stopped at the marina and asked about a good place to eat and had a great blackened mahi-mahi. Then we walked by all these 1950's hotels to the beach. We could just imagine this place back in the day, when families came down for a week at the beach.

Beautiful Art Deco building!

Great beach

We said we don't usually see many beaches from the sand side, its usually from the ocean side while we are coming in the inlet and we're busy then. It looked like a great place to hang out. As a matter of fact, after our delicious lunch, I could have taken a nap there, if I had a blanket!

Finally Five Flip Flops is here! We all had dinner on our boat tonight. It's great to have them back!

Then we went shopping at Publix. We have always said that St A is great except for having access to groceries. It's a great place to walk around, see great sights and eat good food. And now we have groceries too!

Vilano Beach is definitely a place we will come back to!

So we and FFF have provisioned and will head out of St A in the early morning. They are running a marathon tomorrow and the Bridge of Lions will be closed from 7am-10am, so we will leave before then. We can get under the bridge but not our buddies.

We Took up our anchor at about 6:45 and started our next voyage. We are heading to Daytona.