| St Augustine FL
We are now down the coast with St Augustine as our holiday destination. We plan to stay here through the year's end and then head for the Bahamas when a good weather window opens up in January or February.
We left Baltimore after the first of November - waiting out a double cold front down from Canada. We over-nighted down the the Chesapeake to Portsmouth. There after a bit of a rest we thought we would head on the ICW to avoid rounding Cape Hatteras. Unfortunately, we were slammed by a nor'easter and rode it out on a bucking bronco anchor for a couple of days with winds over 45 mph. When the weather passed, we headed down the ICW and spent a night at Coinjock. More than 30 sailboats and 20 power boats were all clustered togther. The Great Bridge Lock had to cycle twice to get all the boats through, quite an armada of boats trying to get south for the winter.
The weather has been a series of cold fronts bringing temperatures down into the 20s at night. We are pretty cozy zipped up in our full enclosure dodger but night time brings ice on the deck, so we have been spending most nights at marinas where we can run the 110V heater.
While we waited out one the cold fronts in Beaufort, NC, we met a delightful Swiss couple named Maria and Charlie. They have a house in Basel and spend half the year cruising on their Bristol 45 Blue Moon. We have made a couple of overnight sails outside on the Atlantic with them and it is very pleasing to pass a dark night on the ocean with good friends close by in radio contact.
We left our new friends in Brunswick where they are leaving Blue Moon for the holidays and motored down to Fernandina for a night. Early the next morning we took off on the last leg to St Augustine. We rode some monster current most of the day and arrived for the 2:30 bridge opening into the city marina. Along the way we met some nice folks from Montreal on their boat Mychka. Denis and Sylvie provided some great piloting through some very shallow places.
While we are here we plan to haul the boat for new bottom paint, get the hull waxed, install a new water maker, and replace our holding tank. After it started leaking in St Pete, we coated the inside with epoxy but over time the epoxy has de-laminated and a sheet of it has covered the tank exit through the macerator. Needless to say we don't like to be dependent on pump-outs at marinas when we should be able to dump the stuff offshore in the ocean.
Happy Holidays to all! More updates after the new year. Cheers!
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