St Augustine - At a mooring

One of the pedestrian walkways in St Augustine

There are some rules of sailing that sailors are very familiar with but are unknown to the general public. The best know one is that any sailor knows he can control the wind. All he (or she) has to do it chose the direction he wishes to go in and the wind will kick up directly out of that direction (guaranteed!) We used to play this game in Long Island Sound where we would plan our next anchorage out loud and secretly plan to go in the opposite direction (silently, hand signals, lots of pointing, etc.). Sure enough the wind would be out of the direction we first planned (out loud) but when we turned and showed our true intentions, the wind would die for awhile and then reform on the nose again!! I kid you not, it has happened!

Hoolie and Ann always attract a crowd

The second, less know rule is that the phone will ring only when you are in some crisis at the helm. Today is a good example. As we were pulling into the fuel dock at St Augustine, a jet ski was directly in front of the boat - I'm sure that she thought that she had the right of way since that's the way it works on land. Ann blew the horn at her, after all we can't stop on a dime, especially in two knots of current! At that point the phone rings! Now were having the kitchen redone so we have to answer the phone in case of questions not to mention calls from others. I rip the phone off my belt and toss it to Ann as I handle the lines coming into the dock with Ann at the wheel and backing off with the prop to slow down (one hand for the wheel, one hand for the throttle and the other hand for the phone...) It turns out the call was from our alarm company, the house alarm had gone off - do we want the police called? Well, it turns out that our contractor doing he kitchen had entered the house and entered the wrong code - the alarm went off before he could correct the mistake. The second call came from the contractor shortly thereafter (with Ann backing down on the throttle so we could secure the boat to the dock). We had motored for 6 hours without a single call and got two just as we were docking - normal happenings for a sailor.

We're at St Augustine and it's a beautiful town to walk around in. They have many streets for just pedestrians, no cars and lot and lots of shops to look around in. Some of the houses dated to the 1600's! I would always recommend stopping by when you're on the ICW! On Friday we're going to a private marina just north of Jacksonville.