Thanksgiving in Daytona

Warning: Global Warming is back (or is it Global Warming Inc.). Our first three fall seasons away from Texas have been quite cold, but this year has been very pleasant so far.

Our trip from St. Augustine to Daytona Beach was uneventful, other than a little mishap at the Coronado Bridge in New Smyrna Beach. A few minutes before we arrived there, a beautiful 44 foot sailboat knocked over a large "no wake" sign that was right in front of the bridge. The sign ended up under water in our starboard side of the channel. It was not a problem for us, but the bridge tender got a bit excited. We felt bad for the crew that hit it. Of course the Coast Guard had to be involved since one of their signs had been hit. The current is very strong there, and I think the tender faked them out a bit on the opening--told them to proceed, then had them hold up and wait for another boat.


Waiting for the bridge in New Smyrna Beach to open. Close to the bridge on the right, you can see part of the structure that used to hold the "no wake" sign.

We were safely anchored in Daytona Beach, and with Thanksgiving a couple of days away, Lisa thought we should find a Cracker Barrel that was serving the traditional meal. With the magic of Google Maps she found one that was within "walking distance" of our anchorage. It was near the Daytona 500 Speedway--trust me, it takes a while to walk around that complex. From our anchorage, it ended up being 11 miles round trip, but we got to sit down and eat at the halfway point. The Cracker Barrel baked pies through the night for a month to be ready for Thanksgiving. That way they could use all the ovens just for pies after the regular cooks went home. I was very surprised that many people went there for the Thanksgiving meal. They were having a big classic car show at the speedway next door which contributed greatly to the long waiting line.

From Daytona Beach, we made a short 20 mile trek to Cocoa. This was our first time to stop at Cocoa, and we really wanted to check out their famous hardware store. It is really something else. They have countless wrenches as big as motor cycles, and they have many items that I believe have been on their shelves for 20 years. Lisa and I could only think of the nightmare at inventory time--and why would they keep stuff that doesn't move. But it's a cool store, and they have things no place else would stock.

The End. For now.

St. Simons to Daytona Beach

The sidewalks of the St. Simons area took quite a beating courtesy of my Tevas and Lisa's Keens. They may have suffered more tonnage damage from the Tevas, but were definitely more offended by the Keens. They are turquoise after all.

We debated making a short move to Jekyll Island where we could rent bikes to explore the island, but in the end we settled for a 40 nautical mile jaunt to Fernandina Beach. Since we did this outside, nearly half of the trip was going out the St. Simons Inlet and coming in the St. Marys Inlet, but the water is deeper out there. We like deep water. It also gave us a couple of hours to make water.

Normally, we rent a mooring when in Fernandina, but they were all full, so we anchored in 32 feet of water in a river just outside the mooring field. We weathered a short spell of nasty winds and then moved on towards St. Augustine. Dawn arrived 2 hours before low tide, which would have put us in a very thin part of the ICW at the wrong time. So, we went outside again.

The St. Augustine Inlet is not a class A inlet, and although it is used often by large (not ships) boats, it has claimed it's share of victims over the last couple of years. They have the money to dredge it, but the environmentalists and home owner associations keep fighting the city and making attorneys and study groups rich. Lisa called a Tow Boat US captain for advice on the inlet, and it didn't take him 2 seconds to convince her to use the St. Johns River Inlet (near Jacksonville) instead.

We should have stayed on the ICW. We underestimated the effect of the 5-7 foot swells colliding with the strong ebb in the St. Marys Inlet. We took quite a beating until we were able to leave the channel and bear off to the south. The fog was quite dense as well, and we were thankful that we had radar.

When we reached the shelter of the St. Johns jetties, things smoothed out and our muscles (yeah, we still have a trace of them left) were able to relax. A quick check confirmed we still had all of our teeth. Our plan was to anchor in an ox bow about 13 miles north of St. Augustine and then move on to St. Augustine the following day. We arrived in early afternoon and were the first boat in the anchorage, but we by sunset we had 10 neighbors.

Sunrise at the ox bow. A single-hander brought this pretty yawl in just before sunset the previous day.

Fog was forecast for the morning, but not much showed up. 

There is no doubt that St. Augustine is a tourist town, but it is fun to walk the streets, look at the shops, and wonder why people would buy any of that junk--except for Kilwins ice cream. It is also amusing to enter the art galleries and watch the attendants stare at the Tevas/Keens, work their eyes past the sunglasses dangling from a shirt button, then past the backpack, then on up to the hats, force a smile and then quickly move on to the next couple with designer clothes and redesigned body parts. But that's only at the galleries. In general, neither Ethan or Billy Ray would feel out of place in town. It really is a nice town.


A westward view from a coffee shop.


An eastward view from a coffee shop. OK, another slow picture week.

We enjoyed 2 days at St. Augustine, then moved on to Daytona Beach via the ICW. Daytona has the coolest marine store in the whole entire universe.

One Front Plus Two Fronts Equals Two Fronts After Another

We left Belhaven under sail, and with the exception of motoring through a 12 mile canal, we were able to sail all the way to South River where we would hole up for the next onslaught of bad weather. Broad Creek would have been more convenient, but since it lies so close to the very busy ICW, we thought it might be too crowded for our liking.

After 5 very windy days and nights in South River, we were presented with a small window to make an outside run to Wrightsville Beach. We took advantage of a chilly but beautiful day to make a run to Cape Lookout Bight where we would stage for an early morning departure to Wrightsville Beach the following day.

Unlike our previous visits to the crowded bight, we were the only boat in the anchorage. Our 3:40 departure the following morning, brought terrific sailing for the first 3 hours, then the wind gave way to trawler weather. Fortunately, the forecast of 30 degree morning temps did not appear, and it was a spectacular day even though we had to play trawler for most of it.

As we neared the Masonboro Inlet, we had a strong urge to keep on going. The sea was comfortable and the weather beautiful, but a gale was forecast so we continued through the inlet and on to the refuge of Wrightsville Beach.

As forecast, the gale did arrive and brought with it some excitement, or stress, or angst depending on your disposition. This is a very popular anchorage, which translates into very crowded--especially in the midst of the southerly migration of 150% of all Canadians, and 125% of all Northeasterners. That's NFL math. It really does add up.

Thankfully, for the couple of days of big wind, most of the boaters anchored in a responsible manner, and a surprising number paid attention to the conditions. The few that dragged were on top of the situation pronto. Just before dusk, an unmanned (but not derelict) race boat began dragging through the anchorage. It started out near the bridge and dragged a mile or so until it ended up on an empty dock. One trawler had to weigh anchor and move to avoid being hit, and a catamaran ran one engine to swing over a bit to avoid a collision, but that was the extent of that.

A half hour later an unmanned McGreggor 26 took the same path through the anchorage until it's anchor caught the anchor rode of a trawler that was in his path. The rest of the night was spent on anchor watch until 4 or 5 am when the winds subsided to the mid 20s.


A calm Wrightsville anchorage after the winds laid down and many boats had cleared out.

We waited a couple of more days for the seas to subside (the Coast Guard reported some 28 footers) before making our way to St. Simons Georgia. To avoid a long detour around the Frying Pan Shoals, we took the ICW to Snows Cut, then sped down the Cape Fear River where we passed Southport before entering the Atlantic Ocean. At one point we were registering 10.4 knots with the aid of the ebb on Cape Fear River.


ICW on the way to Snows Cut. 

Once again, we were blessed with nippy, but beautiful weather with a nearly full and then full moon lighting our way for the 2 nights "outside". It was rolly with wind waves from the northeast being somewhat affected by the southeast swell from the tropical storm 700 or so miles to the southeast. It was basically a dead run, so we were yawing quite a bit. With the genoa poled out to windward, and the main secured to leeward, we had an exciting wing and wing sail until the late afternoon. At that point the waves were slamming our stern around causing the wind to periodically show up on the wrong side of the sails. Not good. So we took the pole down, dowsed the main and ran with the genoa. At some point the waves persisted in causing the genny to collapse so we reverted to motoring with a reefed staysail. We had tried gybing back and forth for a while, but on the one tack the beam seas were no bueno for our healtho. And we don't have a new genoa in our budget. After a period of motoring, conditions improved and we were able to sail the majority of the way.


Sunset on day one.

Our GPS/Chartplotter crashed at 2 pm yesterday, so I had to revert back to the old fashion way of navigating--I rebooted the chartplotter. I don't know if it was caused by the failed FEMA test or not. But instead of conducting a test, FEMA could save a lot of hassle if they would just get China to show them how our system works.

It's hard to capture a swell in a picture unless you have another sailboat posing in the adjoining trough--which we didn't.

We timed our Wrightsville Beach departure to catch a fair current down the Cape Fear River. The plan was to reenter at St Simons, Fernandina / St Marys, or perhaps St Augustine depending on our speed. It turned out we made very good time, but the word was out that Fernandina was very crowded, and I couldn't convince the Weather Babe to use the St. Augustine Inlet, so...we did my least favorite thing. We slowed down on purpose. Like I said before, our fast is slow, so to slow down from slow makes me crazy. We like St. Simons anyway. An hour after sunrise we were anchored in the Frederica River. Four hours later we had finished 6 loads of laudry, showered and made it back to the mothership before the winds and chop picked up.

We will sit out the next front which has already appeared, before moving on.