Fri May 22 - Palm Cove Marina to Fernandina Beach Mooring Ball

In which we FINALLY get going again...

Oh for crying out loud.  I stepped away from my computer for ONE MINUTE (Covid hiatus) and some amateur wrote some posts... Well, I can't be bothered to read back because that's all water under the bridge, back when the world was different.  Hope those posts were representative of the high standard of journalism you have come to expect from this blog.

Stuck in Atlanta, William's spring break turned into online classes, husband with nothing to do under my feet AT EVERY TURN, blah blah, blah - fast forward.  William was going to come with us on the boat for a bit, as all his summer plans had (like everyone else's) fallen through.  But he suddenly got a job with C.O.R.E (look it up - his big boss is Sean Penn!!) at a Covid testing facility and will stay in Atlanta.  It's a great opportunity as he can count these as 'patient' hours' and he needs 2000 of those before he can apply to PA school.  Unless he decides to become an animator.  But we can't go into that here - that's gotta be a whole different blog.

Back in Jacksonville Beach Rick got some maintenance done on the boat (all I'm going to say about that is that, I'm sure you remember, BOAT stands for But it's Only Another Thousand).  But he keeps us safe so I just make appreciative noises and think about fabric when he launches into the details.  HOWEVER - I was VERY interested that he changed out the sacrificial zincs.  Because wouldn't that be a GREAT name for a rock band?!  The Sacrificial Zincs?!?!  That music would just write itself...

Zinc on right is new - zinc on left has been 'sacrificed'  - corroded by the electricity on the boat coming into contact with salt water (also called electrolysis).

We debated staying off the water for the mad drunk boating holiday called Memorial Day, but we are SICK of sitting still.  So we eased out of the slip, dusting off our boat skills as we went, and are heading north.  Not sure how far we will get because some of the critical locks may not open in time, but we are OVER sitting still.

Jax gave us some very dramatic skies before we left:

It was a quick hop (for me as I worked the whole time) to Fernandina Beach.  Along the way we saw several large pods of dolphins.  And relentless sun.  Remember, we were supposed to be chasing spring but we are so late in leaving that summer is here.  We have to move as quickly as possible north, at the dazzling speed of 8 miles/hour.  I am trying to make my peace with the fact that we will be sitting in pools of our own sweet sweat through the rest of FL, GA, SC and NC. 

Rick was sure there would not be any open mooring balls in Fernandina, and worried about it for a couple of days.  So of course there were plenty and we picked one up smooth as silk except for the moment when a ray SHOT out of the water behind Rick and he nearly fell overboard.  It turned out not to be a rare thing here (the ray, not Rick falling overboard) - the rays were showing a lot of irrational exuberance.

We jumped into the dingy and made a beeline for a NEW CITY that we HAVEN'T SEEN BEFORE.  Wearing masks, of course.  Since it's FL we were the only ones (sadly mask wearing has quickly become politicized so you could tell we were democrats {or people who care about not getting others sick}). 

Next time you complain about having to wash the car think of these kids who have this boat to wash.  Every day.

My very favorite way to get to know a new place is to walk a little bit and to then eat!  So we stopped for yummy lunch at Timoti's Seafood Shak, admired the cutie-pea downtown and then headed back to the boat for Friday cocktails!  I LOVE Fernandina Beach!!!

The Palace Saloon is said to be the oldest bar in FL

We had two very different views from our boat at dusk - wilderness vs pulp mill.  It was hard to ignore the pulp mill machinery operating 24/7. But we try to focus on the positive.