St Augustine - a walk downtown and a visit to the local art association

 

There’s a nice park on the way to the walkway

St Augustine is just a great town to walk around in. They have a pedestrian only area lined with shops and placed to eat that’s an easy stroll from the marina. We bought some Spanish bread at a local bakery for our lunches this week and then we headed back to visit the local art association’s new show. 

The walkway is lined with shops and interesting things to see

Ann can’t go into any gallery unless she has an extended conversation with whoever’s in charge. Today was no different. I wandered around for about 1/2 hour while Ann got caught up on all the art news in St Augustine. The display area the association has is absolutely first rate. It could double as a basketball court, it’s that large - with the art displayed on the walls. 

Ann catches up on the happenings in the St Augustine art scene

I think we spent about two hours in the gallery. It’s free to enter but they have a contribution box by the table on the way in. The art is very varied and to top it off, they have art from the 7th and 8th grades on display too, at least this week. Some of that is most creative. 

I just love the flowers this time of the year down south

After the afternoon of art, Fleetwing has all the water tanks filled and we’re ready to start off again Wednesday morning for the Sisters Creek free dock. We’re told they still have the derelict boat tied up there but there’s room to dock away from it, we hope so - talk about giving us boaters a bad name with the locals! 

Then it’s on to Fernandina on Thursday which will be an anchor out since the marina is full, no docks are available.   

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. 

Bethune Park Anchorage in Daytona - at anchor

 

The dinghy dock is very nice and it comes with a park for walking Hoolie

The winds of yesterday topped out at 35 kts in the marina! Overnight, the winds did die down and this morning, it was less than 10 kts with full sunshine, a perfect day. It was a Sunday so there was lots of traffic out enjoying the sunny conditions. The only potential problem was Ponce de Leon and that was not a problem if you hugged the reds. 

So if you go north on the ICW, it’s a different 
Speed limit than if you go south?

We pulled into the Bethune Park anchorage around 2:15 and found lots of room in 11 ft of water. We replaced the anchor we lost in Caesars Creek, another 66 lb Spade but this time with 90 feet of 3/8 inch BBB chain instead of 60 ft. I put out all the chain and only about 10 feet of nylon line, plenty of rode.

We like this anchorage due to good holding, plenty of room, and a dinghy dock for Hoolie relief. I did have a scare tonight when I was halfway to the dinghy dock, the outboard motor died. It would start again but when I put it under load, it would quit. It could be a bunch of things but I tried the simplest things first. The easiest was to just replace the spark plug and lo and behold, that did the trick. The old spark plug still looked okay to me, no obvious buildup but it turned a no functioning outboard into a dependable one, whew! 

A calm end to a day of travel

We have reservations for two nights at St Augustine starting Monday before moving on to Sister’s Creek and Fernandina. 

Titusville - last day

 

All gussied up and ready to go

We had gusts today to 35 kts! It would not have been a good day to go north. The winds are predicted to subside over night to the 10 to 15 kt range which would be fine since they are also projected to decrease during the day. 

Playalinda (the bleach) was great to visit on a warm day!

I don’t know if the gusts had anything to do with it but I found a fish in our dinghy. We see fish jumping out of the water all the time around here and evidently, one did near us but landed in the dinghy instead of back in the water. He was ripe by the time I threw him overboard.

With the forecast, we got the last of the boat chores done and we’re all ready to continue our trip north. Our next stop will be the Bethune anchorage in Daytona followed by a two day stay at St Augustine. The lows are getting lower than what we were used to in Key West but the highs are still in the 80s, once this front passes through.

Titusville - Space X launch and a view of downtown

The next Space Station crew heads up!

The big event of the day was a Space X launch of crew for the Space Station. It went off without a hitch. Space X has a great safety record and the launches are all on previously used rockets! We watched the launch from the end of our home dock.  

Accelerating all the way

The Titusville Marina is about 1/3 of a mile from downtown. There’s a large CVS store there along with KFC, Taco Bell, and a Cumberland Farms convenience store. A little farther, there’s a Save a Lot supermarket. It doesn’t rival a Publix but it has a wider selection than the convenience stores. Titusville does have a service I’ve used for testing propane tanks. They will expire after 10 years and to get the certification extended, they have to be tested by a licensed store. Titusville has such a store, Boggs Gases, and for $20/ they will test your tank and stamp it with a certification good for another 5 years. It’s cheaper than buying a new tank, especially an all aluminum tank like I have on Fleetwing. 

Downtown Titusville - not as lively as Key West by any means, but a few stores

If you spend any time on a boat, you become your own expert at fixing things - you have to be. So today it was redoing both heads (ugh), teak, and fixing wayward cotter pins on lifelines. If you’re not familiar with an items that needs fixing, YouTube is just a click away. Somebody, somewhere ran into your problem and figured out how to fix it, complete with a YouTube tutorial - usually. They can be very helpful.

We have one more day here to let the winds subside and then we’re off on Sunday for points north.

Titusville - Tale of two restaurants

 

Friends enjoying good food - but more for the company - in an outdoor setting (but with a roof!)

With the covid levels at the lowest ever since the start of the pandemic, we’ve started eating out more. On Tuesday night, we had dinner with the McKeevers. They have a large RV and traveled from our home in Poughkeepsie to Key West with many stops along the way - and they’ve done that for longer than we’ve been going to Key West on our boat.

The indoor setting at Playalinda Brewery is fine too but it was quieter outside - note all the beers on tap

Needless to say, they know all the good places to eat on the east coast and they suggested Playalinda Brewery on Tuesday, it turned out to be a great choice. As the name suggests, they have a wide selection of beers, many brewed on site. What is not so obvious are the great sandwiches they offer. I took the plunge for a Ruben, even though it was far from its home in New York City. Somewhat to my surprise, it was quite good. Ann had an equally good steak sandwich and the prices were reasonable, from $11 to $13 per sandwich which came with fries. The beer was good too even though I’m not a great beer drinker but I couldn’t see ordering wine in that setting. 

Shilohs is a huge restaurant, they have a staff of over 100. The view to the right in the photo is 
Right at the Kennedy Space Center

For our next adventure out on Thursday, we chose Shilohs which is set on the Indian River with a direct view of the Kennedy Space Center. If a launch is going up, it’s a prime place to watch. The restaurant is focused on fish so I had the standard fish sandwich and Ann had the shrimp tacos, both were excellent. The prices were just a little higher at around $14/sandwich, we paid more in Key West. 

The inside is spacious, with high ceilings so you don’t feel crowded. 
The porch outside at the back of the photo is a viewing area for launches.

Having eaten our way through Titusville, it’s time to rest a bit for our trip continuation on Sunday and do a few more boat chores. I’ll take the rental car back to Enterprise which again involves a mile walk since they are still following covid restrictions and don’t have a driver for pickup or return. That used to be one of their big advantages - personal pickup service - but it stopped when covid became so prevalent and hasn’t restarted yet.

Titusville - We visit Black Point Drive and Playalynda

 

You can always depend upon seeing an alligator at Black Point Drive

Enterprise still has not gone back to their practice of picking you up for a rental. It used to be one of their biggest selling points but COVID put a stop to it and they haven’t restarted the feature. Due to that change, I had a one mile hike to the Enterprise office from the Titusville Marina. At least it’s all level ground. By the way, be ready for sticker shock when renting a car nowadays, up a little over 100% for me. 

Turtles are in abundance too

We used the afternoon touring our old haunts at Black Point wildlife drive and Playalynda beach. Black Point was almost barren of wildlife. I guess all the birds have left on their northward migration already, we  saw less than a dozen birds, mostly loners. We did see three alligators but not much else. 

The largest NASA rocket is ready for testing!

With a car, we will drive to Walmart and have the groceries put in the trunk at no extra cost. We chose our groceries using the Walmart website for an 11:00 am pickup on Thursday morning. We find the service very convenient and saves us time. 

Thursday night, I’ll take my “all-time date” out for dinner at Shilohs, one of our favorite restaurants in the area. After that, it’s waiting for a weather window to resume our northward trip, probably on Sunday. It’s been nice to relax and rest up for the remainder of the northward journey.