Waveaway in St Augustine

Hello to All,

Ashton and I began our final leg north on Monday, 3 March. We fueled up and headed out into the glorious Florida weather bright and early...Ashton time...1000 AM. We had a very uneventful trip up to Melbourne were we chose an anchorage that would be protected from southerly winds. The weather was calling for thunderstorms later in the evening and all the next day so we pulled into a nice spot right behind the Melbourne Causeway. This spot already had a nice sailboat named "Carp Diem" sitting peacefully waiting out the weather. As we pulled in to avoid the sailboats rode, I pulled a little too close to some crab buoys and yep, got one wrapped around the port prop. We continued to anchor and now had one more chore for the next day.

Here is a picture of the "job" accomplishment...water was nasty and NOT WARM.

On Wednesday, 5 March we started north again with plans to pull up into an anchorage just north of New Smyrna Beach....just south of Daytona Beach. We had a great trip up with beautiful weather and light winds. However as we were going through the town of New Smyrna, in 18' of water, something got tangled, or I hit something with my starboard prop. It was getting close to sunset and we were sitting in the middle of the channel running on one engine (pulled the starboard engine back to idle) and we looked to our left and saw the municipal marina and thought it better to be at a place to fix whatever was wrong than to proceed on one engine to a tricky anchorage. We called and they directed us to a easy slip. So, with no daylight left, I donned my wet suit again and dove the boat using Ashtons scuba flashlight. The water was very nasty and cold again but I was relieved when I saw a big nylon jacket wrapped around the prop. It took about 15 mins to cut the thing off . All the while I was surrounded by fairly large fish which I felt was unusual for a marina. Long story short, here is a picture of the jacket and the fish didn't bite.

Thursday found us headed north to just south of St Augustine. and yes, another wonderful day at the beginning. However, as the afternoon wore on the storm clouds gathered and we felt the need to pull into a marina for protection...the anchorages around St Augustine are pretty open. We pulled in just as the lightning and winds hit...good timing. The next day we picked up Cathy from the Jacksonville airport and came back to the boat to wait out the storm.

Today the storm has left but there are 40+ mile an hour winds so we walked around St Augustine and played tourist. We also provisioned for a week as tomorrow we head up to Fernandina Beach to anchor and then our plan is to go "outside" and proceed direct to Hilton Head SC. We chose this by-pass Georgia route because their ICW is reportedly the worst kept anywhere this side of Jersey. And we ALL remember what happened when we tried to use the ICW in Jersey. We will let you know how it turns out!

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