St Augustine - at a dock

 

Apparently, they took a wrong turn at Ft Matanzas. You can see the green buoy at right. 
This view is looking south so the green buoy should have been passed to port.

It was a beautiful day to go north today on the ICW with temps in the 70s and light winds, at least until we reached St Augustine - then the winds piped up to the high teens. We passed through Ft Matanzas and the least I saw on the Bob423 track was 10.5 MLLW. All was not fine however as the photo shows. Someone found the shoal to the left of the green when going south. BoatUS was attempting to pull him off the shoal with not much success. I wonder if he knew about the Bob423 tracks?

You know you’re getting close to St Augustine when you see pirates!

The weather was calm until we approached St Augustine and their fuel dock. Then the wind piped up and we were seeing 15 to 20 kts with wave action pushing up against the dock with much rocking. I took on fuel and got off the dock with the backing maneuver with an aft fender between us and the dock. That pushed the bow out and we exited. 

Going into our assigned dock was another matter. We had to go bow in with a 2 kt current behind us and with the wind blowing us off our dock. It was an exciting time but we didn’t hit anything so I guess it was successful. Once docked, it was nice and quiet. 

We’ll be here tomorrow and will leave Wednesday for the free dock at Sisters Creek before continuing on to Fernandina Thursday. I tried to get a dock at Fernandina but they were full for the entire weekend. We will just anchor out and save dockage fees.