Feb 28 - May 22 - Atlanta hiatus

In which the world changes

Wow, so we don’t need to tell you what’s happening.   We arrived back to our Atlanta headquarters expecting William to come home for a week’s worth of spring break.  Sure we’d heard about the virus in China but nothing make us expect that our life, our investments and our plan to boat for a year on the great loop would be thrown into turmoil.   Sheesh!

We spent the most of the month of March in the HQ hunkered down.  Melanie continued her work but Rick just flounced around bored most of the time....he needs SOMETHING TO DO.   As of March 28th we are back on the boat, but have no further plans.  Claire has joined us and has already helped with the projects we’d planned.  We changed out blinds on the portholes (windows for you non- nautical folks) and did some sewing projects.   Blue Horizon looks so cute.  Thanks to our friends on Scout for hooking us up with the right kind/color of blinds.  It adds a nice bit of sophistication. 

We are in the Palm Cove Marina in Jacksonville Beach and will stay for a couple of weeks more at least.  The idea of doing the great loop is to be able to be a tourist, traveling up the coast, exploring towns, museums and enjoying restaurants along the way.  Since everything is basically closed we’re not sure what our goal is and what we should do..

We will keep you posted!

Sat March 28 - St. Augustine to Palm Cove Marina, Jacksonville, FL

In which we end this leg of the journey

Okay, so well, we haven’t kept the blog up to date.   We’ve been threatened by this darn virus (and honestly we just didn’t write anything) so we’re just now catching up.

After what I remember as a frustrating time in St. Augustine - not because of the virus but because Flagler College hasn’t figured out a way to sell tickets for a tour in the 21st Century, we dropped the mooring ball and continued our journey northward.   We need to be in Atlanta for William’s upcoming Spring break starting on March 9th so we are heading to Palm Cove Marina in Jacksonville Beach to leave the boat for a month until we can get back and continue the trip.

The wind started to pick up and we ended up coming into the marina with wind gusting at about 25 mph in the exact wrong direction for us to come up to the dock.  Needless to say it wasn’t fun and thank god for the bow thruster.  The dock hand met us and through his Herculean efforts got us to the dock without hitting anything - not the dock, not the piling and not the big beautiful boat next to us...whew!

We start the process of closing down the boat....stripping beds, emptying the refrigerator, organizing cupboards and closing all through-hulls so hopefully no water floods into the boat while we are gone...

Thurs - Friday, Feb 27 Palm Coast to St. Augustine

In which we return to explore the city we missed on our southward journey and are frustrated in our attempts to take a tour.

We had a shortish cruise from the lovely Palm Coast Marina to pick up a mooring ball in the St. Augustine municipal marina.  When we came through St. Augustine in early February it was very cold and we promised ourselves to return and really explore this historic city.   The cruise was uneventful and we picked up the mooring ball on the first try.   Now you land lubbers won't truly understand the finesse that it takes to grab the mooring line from a bobbing boat, but we take it as a sign that we are getting better at this boating thing that we were able to cruise right up to the ball, reach out with the boat hook and attach our two lines.   Below a picture of what it would look like if you took a picture of the boat on the ball...this is not our boat.



Here is a picture of Blue Horizon on a mooring ball at Carolina Beach (an earlier mooring).


Anyway, we made it to St. Augustine and took the shuttle boat in to check in with the Harbormaster and then take a walk. Our goal, since our previous stop, was to take a tour of Flagler College.  As you'll remember from our previous entry, Rick got very interested in the history of Florida and specifically of Henry Flagler who was basically the father of Florida.

In brief, after making lots of money as a partner with John D. Rockefeller in Standard Oil,  Henry Flagler took a vacation in St. Augustine.  He fell in love with the city and decided to build a hotel.  The result was the splendid 504 room Ponce de Leon Hotel.  He soon realized that he could boost traffic to the hotel if he built a better railroad to bring guests to the hotel.  That started him on the next phase of his life...building hotels and railroad lines down the east coast of Florida.   St. Augustine,  followed by Palm Beach, Miami and ultimately a railroad line all the way down to Key West.  If you're interested there is a great book called "Last Train to Paradise", by Les Standiford, that gives a very good high level history of Flagler and all he built.

The Ponce de Leon Hotel is now Flagler College and we wanted to take a tour.
But is was not to be.  Flagler College does not sell tickets on line so we went to buy tickets in person.  The ticket window closes at 4 pm.  No problem we can come back tomorrow morning.  There are tours at 10 am and 2 pm.   We arrived at 10:10 am, but no, the ticket window is closed when there is a tour on (it seems that the person selling the ticket also gives the tour).   No problem, we'll come back in an hour...oops, sold out.  So no tour.  We were very frustrated as you can imagine.   We expressed our frustration to the students working at the ticket booth and said it was "too bad that they didn't teach business at Flagler College".  They replied that "it was the biggest major at the school"...I won't tell you how we responded...



 
St. Augustine is a lovely city with lots of history and interesting architecture.  On Friday morning we had a wonderful breakfast at the Blue Hen cafe.  Great omelette and Melanie had wonderful biscuits and gravy.  For a woman without a gallbladder she is sure adventurous!

Since we would not be touring Flagler College we took a self guided tour of the fort - the Castillo de San Marcos.  This is the oldest masonry fort in the continental US.



As we walked along the streets we saw this sign and felt happy and relieved knowing we were safe.


We ended the day at our "regular" spot (okay, we went twice).  The A1A Brewery has a happy hour with a wonderful artichoke dip.  We ordered it and had a drink before catching the shuttle boat back to the waiting Blue Horizon...an overall nice day even if we didn't get our tour!

Wed - Feb 26. NSB to Palm Coast

In which we battle our own virus!

We have decided to quarantine ourselves on the boat!  Rick writing today - I finally convinced Melanie to let me write an entry.  Somewhere I picked up a cold and it isn’t fun.  We don’t really see many people, but maybe on a trip to Publix or at the play in Vero Beach I picked up a cold and then promptly passed it on to Melanie. We are thankful for our medicines supplied by our faithful reader Kim.  Very helpful to have a supply of anti-histamines and decongestants to lessen the symptoms.

We woke up early (if you can call it waking up after not sleeping much) in NSB and prepared to cast off for a drive to Palm Coast Marina in Palm Coast, FL.   The weather apps showed that it would start to rain around 3 pm so to beat the rain we set off at 8:30 am for the 6 hour cruise up the coast.   I think we both feel much more comfortable on the boat now - not so worried when the water gets shallow as we know that it will most likely not go below 5 feet of depth.   We backed out of the slip without incident and set Clark (the autopilot) to help us drive.  

We had some fun visitors during the morning:


We see dolphins constantly during the day.  The almost always make a beeline directly for the boat and then disappear underneath us.   Not sure if this is playtime for them or if by driving by we may stir up some food for them.   It is always fun to see them and we never get tired of seeing them pop-up even if we may see 50 or more in a day.

The drive was mostly uneventful with only one drawbridge too low for us to go under.  The bridge tender timed our arrival perfectly and we cruised past the open bridge only slowing slightly.  The sky was filled with clouds and the wind picked up as we slowed and motored into the marina. Fortunately the marina is well protected and we were able to pull off a picture perfect docking - I’m always a little apprehensive when we leave or arrive at docks.  I’m worried about damaging our nice boat if we smack into the dock, but this time wind cooperated and we kissed the dock lightly and Melanie had us tied up in a few short minutes.   About 20 minutes later the rain started coming down. Perfect timing!   We had a restful afternoon and evening hoping to get ahead of this cold....

Tues Feb 25 - NSB Day

In which it is Fat Tuesday

Yup, we're sick.  Here is what Rick does when he doesn't feel well: ride his bike 5 miles to a hardware store to return a part he bought last time we were here.  Here is what I do when I'm sick:  drape myself weakly over the furniture and act consumptive. Then I went out and had ice cream while I worked on the blog.  No one has proved that this does not cure the common cold.

We were going to leave today, but no one had the energy and we are on schedule, so stay we did.


Is this just the biggest damn steering wheel you have EVER SEEN on a boat?  Size must really matter...  Even if it is a racing vessel I can't figure out the advantage this diameter would lend.

I got back to the boat to find Rick wielding a drill, and that made me feel faint and feverish so I had to go lie down.  Here is a reinactiment of what I could hear coming from above:
Drill, drill
'Shit'
Drill, drill
'That's not going to work'
More drilling
'Wait, maybe if I....'
Alarming silence
'Ops'

Ops???????????  Yikes.

But when I came up he had installed two reading lights, which we had been sorely missing. I felt better immediately!

My new reading light!

Boat Name of the Day - House Cat.  Get it?!

Mon Feb 24 - Cocoa anchorage to New Smyrna Beach City Marina

In which we nearly die of boredom

We opted for a long day, as we need to be back in Jacksonville soon.  But that doesn't mean we liked it.  It was    S O     B O R I N G.  Seven hours of flat straight stretch with the auto pilot on most of the way.  (We call him Clark.  Some people call him Otto, or Jack).

The only diversion was when we were coming in to the dock at NSB and I dropped a fender, complete with brand new line and fender grip, overboard.  I was so mad at myself, but it was too shallow to chase after the fender, and we had the narrow fairway and docking to think about.

This does have a happy ending, however.  After we docked Rick dropped the dingy and we went looking.  We calculated the direction of current and wind, poked around the harbor and found it!  It even had the fender grip still attached - high fives all around!

Docked next to us were the Gold Loopers we had met before, and later we met the couple that will be giving the talk on the DownEast Loop in early May, at the Spring Rendezvous (Norkfolk VA).  We are looking forward to that event, and meeting a lot of new people.  Rick has even signed our boat up to be toured. That's what we nerdy Loopers do  -  we go to things names Rendezvous and Trawlerfest (yes, that's really a thing, and Rick really did go to it last spring), and we tour each others' boats.  What that really means is we are going to have to spruce this boat up; and by that I mean spend more money on it...

Both of us are coming down with a cold, so we got pizza to go from Prima - Pizza Cuchina and it was a dinner and TV night.  Would I love a pizza with tomato sauce and pepperoni - yes.  But due to a Phantom Gallbladder, those days are behind me and it was spinach white sauce.  Pretty yummy though. We are watching the HBO adaptation of Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials books.  I think you'd be pretty lost if you hadn't read the books, but the casting is good.  The books were an incredible examination of religion and the role of the Catholic Church, hidden inside of an amazing adventure story.  I'm still reading up on what I actually read..

Pix from the day:

This boat really tickles me - it's like a tugboat got dropped on to a sailing boat.

Can you see this dolphin without visual aids?

All my creative neurons were killed today by boredom, so....goodnight.

Sun Feb 23 - Vero Beach To Cocoa anchorage

In which it's deja-vu, all over again

The last time we came through here I complained about the arm-pit anchorage, right beside a freeway/bridge - so this time Rick solved it by finding us a new anchorage.  Right beside a freeway/bridge.

BUT - within view of what the literature says is, and I am not making this up, an awarding-winning water tower.  So there!  Lucky me:

AND, there were dolphins -

There were some less award-winning, but still cheerful sights:

Look - I made it look like a postcard!

And I decided my yummy cracker looked blessed (see previous post - that's how my brain works):

At night we decided to do some needle felting - at which we are both, I say generously, beginners.  Here is what we were going for:

We worked hard:

The deranged results:

Sigh..... We better not quit our day jobs.  Oh, crap - Rick already has...