2010.03.07 Great Sale Cay - Cape Canaveral St Augustine

Greetings from sunny and WARM St. Augustine Florida

We have made a successful 26 hour passage from Great Sale Cay (Bahamas) to Cape Canaveral Fla....just in time to see the shuttle go up...quite a thrill...then a second 22 hour ocean passage to St Augustine , where we are now....we arrived at 2:00 in the morning, the moon forgot to rise so it was quite a lot of fun (sic) reading lights on the water to find our way into St Augustine inlet and then tackling a narrow entrance channel with a very strong current into the harbor....David did a masterful job getting us in safely...we were leading 3 other boats from the ocean to the Camachee Cove Yacht Harbour. Not sure how many will follow us on the next leg.

The first crossing was quite awesome, we went quite a bit further North than usual. It always amazes me to realize how long it takes to get off the Bahama bank…about eight hours until the bottom fall off on our depth meter….the Gulf Stream worked nicely to help us along on our treck North with about 3 knots of current …

WE EVEN FLEW THE SPINNAKER!!!! I though for sure there would be moth holes in it as we had not flown it in four years…but, no, it looked its very own boring self and we even remembered how to rig it!!! The weather was good and after another stunning sunset at sea (still no green flash) the sky was simply amazing, with zero light pollution, the stars regaled us with their splendor.

We had a very friendly flotilla of four boats, Sharon and Steve on Indian Summer, Dennis and Gail on MacGuffin, Bob and Connie on Wind Walker and Soli. We had met Wind Walker in Green Turtle at the beginning of the winter and then again at the end and they decided to tag along. We gave ourselves  a code name on the VHF " Musqueteers, musqueteers, switch and answer17"

The entrance into Cape Canaveral inlet was pretty straight forward, this is a major port for huge cruise ships….a couple of them passed us during the night heading into port. We went through customs without any problem.

The second passage was also quite a success…we were up at 0530 to watch the launch and left shortly thereafter….

The boys from the Navy were keeping a vigilant eye out in their submarine

We were all congratulating ourselves for having gone outside as we kept hearing Coast guards reports of bridge closings because of heavy traffic (shuttle launch spectators) and shoals of 3 feet in the dreaded Matanzas river.

I heard Jeanette (Myosotis) on the VHF and hailed her….I think she though we were lucky to be “outside” …then it got to be quite interesting as we came in from the safety of the ocean to this maze of many light, fixed and flashing, red and white…it was a definite “whoohoo” moment when I first identified the St Augustine inlet STA Mo(A) light (a short and a long for morse code lette A)…then it was hanging over the side with a powerful spotlight in hand trying to spot the red markers which are not lit (WHY NOT!!!)while trying not to blind David at the helm…we took “8” on the wrong side as we never saw it…luckily it was high tide so we came to no harm…after making the turn North into the ICW and going under the bridge we turned into the channel to the marina, which as I said before had a very strong current.., a couple of Stephen (Indian Summer)’s friends were there to greet us and catch our lines (at 2:30 in the morning!!!) boat people are such good folks.!!!

We have since been busy, doing civilized, mundane things, such as using lots and lots of fresh water since it is FREE, doing laundry and rinsing the salt off everything.. Mike (the refrigerator guy) came and changed the valve on our compressor (again) , Bo is changing the alternator belt they put in on our way down (which we tightened again about a thousand times during the winter) , Jim will be changing the macerator pump tomorrow and David actually remembered how to drive the loaner car from the marina.and we did a little food shopping.

How does the song go ?  "Sunrise sunset..."   can you tell the difference?

If you are tired of S&S (and I do not mean Stephen and Sharon) here is a food picture ...I did some cooking in Cape Canaveral...Cottage pie and Chicken cacciatore....

The next leg will be to Thunderbolt (Savannah)...weather permitting …loosely scheduled for Friday which should be around 20 hours...we are not doing "the ditch" this time around, we are only going outside on the ocean in order to avoid bridges and shoals. David's stamina at the helm is amazing...long may it last ...he is turning 69 tomorrow!!!. Happy birthday Skipper!

Monday 2010.03.22 Hope Town

NO EXCUSES!!!! That was the name a racing friend of ours gave his boat …and it fits our situation now !

Sharon and I are at the coffee shop in beautiful downtown Hope Town….I am having a soy latte and banana and guava cake …yum!!!think I am ready for the other half....especially since I forgot my wallet and she is paying....double yum!!!

It is absolutlely pouring, she came to pick me up in her dink, both of us wearing our foulies and we soaked the floor coming in….someone was following us with a mop! (pictures to follow).

We had quite a stormy night…thunder and lightening most of the night and monsoon type rain…. It is wonderful for the islanders, they need rain desperately.

The weather, otherwise, has been quite nice lately, finally getting warm, I ACTUALLY WENT SWIMMING! …the water is warming up nicely….of course all this is happening as we are about to start our move North. Having said that it is supposed to be lovely at home Wendy send me a pic of crocuses in her garden!

I don’t have a lot of time …how long can you sit with soy latte!!!! So I will send pics…they are worth a thousand words they say.

We went to the Hope Town firemen fair ...

We took the dinks and went to Tahiti beach...amazing range on these new dink engines "IT'S A YAMAHA!!!"

David's sand dollar harvest!

'twas a little shark...so cute!!!!

Lots of sea stars small and large.

and a pretty little jelly fish ...look but don't touch!!!

Then we headed back for home and the winners are......

Jo and John (Heartbeat) ...looks like they were towing a skier!!!

Sharon and I went to Marsh Harbour with the Donny ferry and had a girls day out... lunch and shopping (food of course you silly!!!) but I found a really neat presie for David at the hardware store!!!

A magnet on a telescopic handle...he fished out the tool he had dropped under the engine!!!! brilliant!!

We had a cocktail party on Soli and tried to see how many we could squeeze in...TWELVE ...we had a very good time, especially after David relinquished his bartending duties to Sharon and all our gin and rum evaporated!!!

We took another dink trip to Cracker P's this time...they must have known we were coming check out the flags.

Superb vistas from Lubbers Cay.

and took another little walk to Tahiti beach...no shark this time but a magnificent blue searay!!!
It was fun chasing after him on the dink as I was trying to snap pics...not sure he enjoyed it as much as we did...a little camera shy!

As CJ says...things never change... any oportunity is good to study the back of his eyelids!!!

On the way home we explored the coast line and found Rudy's hurricane hole and a lovely statue of a little girl doing a hand stand...probably from the foundry in Little Harbour.

Bye for now...

2010.02.24

Wednesday Feb 24th

What’s been happening since we last chatted….

Sharon and I went up to the light house for a visit… we had gone up 3 years ago with Jacqueline & Heinz, so it was time for another visit. We of course had to wait for a nice sunny day, which this year has not been a given, in order to take a lot of nice pictures….so now you can see where our home base is.

Last time we had also gone up at dusk when the light keeper light it, which was absolutely fascinating.

HI DAVID!!!

Then we of course did more beach walks and lo and behold, this past week end the weather was good and the forecast for the week following was more fronts coming in.

Soooo we just had to take advantage of this nice little window….actually everybody was on the same page…there was a mass exodus, most of the harbour emptied out.

Saturday morning, Indian Summer and Soli left HT close to high tide and we planned on meeting up with Hannyah and David (Dovolena) on Lynyard Cay. We unfortunately motored as the little wind we had was from the south, but it was a beautiful day and it felt good to be out on the open sea!

We met up with Dovolena …they had been anchored for a while as they went down the shallow passage which is much shorter…my skipper is driving the “Queen Mary” and we stick to “big ship” passages, but it mattered not we were in no hurry. The anchorage was such a pretty spot with a lovely beach, there were only half a dozen boats anchored there and everyone met up on the beach for “sun downers”. We barbecued steaks and had a peaceful night at anchor, David is so pleased with our new anchor…a 45 lbs Manson Supreme (Rocna type), the only anchor approved by Lloyds of London (stamped right on it!!!!).

On Sunday we decided to move the boats to Tilloo Cay, we had a lovely breeze from the SSE and had a grand sail. After beaching the dinks, we explored the beach which always has a lot of live sea biscuits, the trick is to find dead ones which do not fall apart….David did quite well, I found a small but interesting piece of coral and then tripped on a small bump on the beach…I started digging and uncovered the corner of a towel…but the time I had dug it all up it was a nice big towel loaded with sand…by the time I had dragged it back to the dink through the water it looked like it might make a nice addition to our linen closet! We could not see the sunset as it was starting to get overcast in preparation for ….you guessed it ….another front due on Monday.

Monday morning saw the not so intrepid duo weighing anchor to head for home….then AGAIN I heard the alternator belt slipping…David said it indeed was not charging, sooooooooo dropped anchors again and I went to pick up Steve and the men did their thing again, grunting all the way. The belt seemed to be as tight as could be and we set off again and got into HT harbour as the wind was picking up.

We had a lovely happy hour on board Heart Beat last evening as well as a knot tying seminar….promised I’d go back today re refresher course.

We are back ensconced in HT and swinging from our mooring….it is very windy about 25-30 knt ….Sharon and I have a date this morning to go to the coffee house (aka internet café) with our laptops to have a blogging session…and maybe a cappuccino… yum!!!