11-3-98 We crossed the Florida state line this morning, and now we're anchored in the Ft. George River (ICW Mile 735), about 40 miles north of St. Augustine. We intentionally moved quickly through Georgia. Coastal Georgia is 138 miles of serpentine routes through marshes .... which can be beautiful, but they are full of mosquitoes, flies, gnats and "no-see-ums". We had to overdose on bug spray to make our way through. Now we're in sunny Florida, and its the first day of cloud cover we've had in weeks! The weather has been beautiful the last three weeks, we've taken the blue skies and warm afternoons for granted. Looks like the forecast for the next couple days isn't too promising, but we hope to move to St. Augustine tomorrow. (P.S. Pat is still practicing with the shrimp net, no luck yet. I caught a blue claw crab the other day with the net. We're hoping for shrimp cocktail soon.)
11-5-98 Today is a miserable day - a cold front and Tropical Storm Mitch are converging on us here in St. Augustine. The wind has been blowing 25-30 knots (a moderate GALE) and we had to re-anchor once this morning, since we dragged our 45 pound anchor and 80 feet of chain through the soft, sandy mud. It seems to be holding us now. It's also raining, so we poke our heads out the hatch now and then to check that we're still in the same spot! We're anchored in a small cove called Salt Run and other boats have been dragging around us too. I guess we were due for some of this weather, since it's been so nice for the last month. We'll probably be here a couple days, listening to the weather forecasts and waiting for the winds to subside. So today we'll bake chocolate chip cookies for lunch! (Ever hear of "comfort food"?)
11-9-98 We did get out of St. Augustine the day after the "blow" and spent the next few days in Daytona Beach, working on some projects. I didn't get a chance to take any digital pictures for the WebPages while there, but I should've at least snapped a few shots of the cars driving on the beach. What a strange site to see. There are ramps from the main drag in Daytona onto the beach - you drive right on and you don't have to have 4 wheel drive or even a sport utility vehicle. They have a pseudo roadway set up with speed limit signs (10 MPH). I guess it's the thing to do when in Daytona. We walked the beach on a late Sunday afternoon and felt almost out of place since we didn't have a vehicle. On our walk to the supermarket, we found another strange car-related site. A drive-in church. They converted an old drive-in movie theatre to a church. Now that's "thinking out of the box". They have a minister and choir set up and you drive in and hook up a speaker to your car!
11-11-98 Happy Veteran's Day. We're in Titusville (ICW Mile 878), planning to have our boat hauled out of the water tomorrow to replace the cutlass bearing on our engine shaft. It's causing vibration problems and we need to get it fixed before we leave the states. We'll do the work ourselves (except for hauling the boat, of course). We saw our first manatee yesterday here in Titusville. Hope to be able to catch one with the digital camera so we can share it with everyone. We've seen lots of dolphin, too on our trip ever since North Carolina. Everyday we see at least one or two, we never tire of seeing them. We're amazed that so many are in the rivers and sounds. One day a group of them were riding our bow wake (just under the surface at the bow of the boat), and I was kneeling on the foredeck watching them. One actually squirted me with its blowhole - what a great experience! We arrived in Titusville too late to see the historic voyage of John Glenn on the shuttle - Cape Canaveral is just a few miles across the river. Maybe we'll see something launched in the next few days. Hopefully it's not too cold yet up north, it was 85 here today!
11-16-98 We're still in Titusville, too many friends here and too many projects to work on. We've been here almost a week now. We've been enjoying the wildlife around here - specifically manatees. They are such strange-looking creatures. They're marine mammals that live in the Florida rivers. They are protected, since they're endangered. Manatees are often hit by power boat propellers, so all along the rivers there are speed restrictions. A few came into the marina and we got some great pictures of them. We scratched one's belly while she (weighing in at about 1500 pounds) was drinking from a leaky water spigot connection on a dock. She seemed to like it, the skin felt like slimy leather and she had a few barnacles growing on her. It was pretty cool. We also had a reunion this past weekend with some of our boating friends we met 10 years ago on our first sailing adventure to the Bahamas. We've been getting together every fall, and Titusville was this year's location. (One year we had it at our house in Toms River,NJ). Our friends are from New York state, Maryland, Pennsylvania, and Florida. It was alot of fun: eating, drinking, boat stories, shopping, playing scrabble, flea marketing, etc. See a photo of all of us on our friends trawler named "Pollyanna". We did have the boat hauled before the reunion party - out one day and in the next day. We replaced the bearing for the engine shaft. The bearing is a rubber-lined naval brass sleeve which allows the shaft to turn freely, supposedly without vibration. The rubber was worn and with all the motoring we've done in the ICW, we had vibrations problems. Hopefully that's resolved. We also started on some major food and beverage provisioning, since some of our friends had cars. We stocked up on canned goods - vegetables, fruit, soup, spaghetti sauce, soda, beer,etc. And somehow the bags and bags of "stuff" all disappeared into the storage lockers on the boat. (10 cans of corn, 14 cans of spaghetti sauce, 12 cans of sliced pineapple, 6 cases of beer, ..... You can see a picture of some of the soda and beer sitting on the dock, waiting to be stored. The only thing we missed while here in Titusville is a shuttle launch. Next one is due Dec 3rd, but we should be in Lauderdale or Miami by then.
11-26-98 Happy Thanksgiving everyone! We are in Pompano, just north of Ft. Lauderdale, docked at a friend of the family's house. Susan and Doug Bowden were nice enough to offer us dock space and Thanksgiving dinner. We couldn't pass that up, what a treat. They have a beautiful home on a lagoon and they made us feel welcome and part of their family. Colleen's Uncle Bernie lives close by and he's been our family link, tour guide and chauffeur. We plan to be in Lauderdale for another week or so, finishing up provisioning and taking care of administrative details, such as last round of immunization shots, Florida driver licenses, estimated income taxes, .... alot to think about knowing we'll be out of the USA for a quite a length of time. You can see pictures of us and the Bowden family at Thanksgiving on the PHOTOS page. We plan to travel to Key Biscayne from Lauderdale to await good weather so we can cross the Gulf Stream over to the Bahamas in the next couple of weeks. The first islands of the Bahamas are only 50 miles off the coast of Florida. We're getting excited to go, but also apprehensive about leaving the states, have we thought of everything??????
11-29-98 We moved from the Bowden's lagoon the day after Thanksgiving a little further south to the New River in Ft. Lauderdale. We reunited with our friends Joe and Barbara Morgan on their sailboat "Uncle Harry" at Summerfield's Boat Works. We've been visiting with boating friends and running all over town with Uncle Bernie purchasing last minute necessities. We attempted to buy a new inflatable dinghy, since ours is over 10 years old, but the one we want will take 3-4 weeks to special order from England and we don't want to be tied down to that schedule, so we'll get by on the one we have. Uncle Bernie has been great, driving us around to boating stores, amazed by what we are buying and how much it all costs! For example, we had to buy courtesy flags for foreign countries we plan to visit. It is maritime protocol to fly your national flag and a courtesy national flag for the country you are visiting. We've bought quite a few used ones from other boaters along our trip, but had to buy three new ones here in Ft. Lauderdale since we couldn't find them anywhere - Cook Islands, Vanuatu, and Fiji. The flags cost $40 each! I've also made some of the simpler flags, but some flag designs are pretty elaborate (not just a few stars and stripes).
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