St Augustine FL

We arrived in St Augustine FL Friday morning.  We left Matthews Point Marina at about 9:30 Tuesday morning.  It was rainy and cool but not as cold as last year.  We stopped at Morehead City Yacht Basin to top off fuel then motored out Beaufort Inlet and turned southwest and raised the sails.  We were greeted by some dolphins while at the Yacht Basin and we always take that as a sign of good luck.  The winds were out of the northeast so we were able to sail.  About 5:00 am the winds dropped and we had to start motoring.  We motored and sailed off and on during the rest of the trip.  The final count of motor hours showed that we were able to sail almost 50% of the time.  This saved us a lot of fuel and when we arrived in St Augustine we had only used half of an 80 gallon tank.  By Thursday the weather had cleared and we had partly cloudy to clear skied for the last days with the last night clear with the brightest stars I have seen in a long time.  Several times during the trip we were visited with dolphins coming to play in our bow wave.  Cori caught four fish but two were not a kind that are worth eating and the other two got off the hook before she could get them aboard.  Good thing we brought a lot of food.

Thursday morning we heard another boat hail us.  It was Joe on "Time in a Bottle" another Pearson 424.  We had met Joe several years ago in Oriental.  We didn't see any other boats or ships until we were south of Charleston and nothing ever came close to us.

We arrived at St Augustine just after sunrise and motored in the inlet and dropped anchor just off from the old fort.  We spent the rest of the day straightening out the boat, getting organised (Cori) and taking a nap (Dale).  Saturday morning we launched the dinghy and went to the marina to sign in and pay the fee for the use of the facilities.  After showers we spent the day sightseeing in the Old City.  Back at the boat now we are relaxing and getting caught up with emails and other computer related stuff since we are able to access the marinas WiFi.

Highlights of the trip: being out without having to worry about traffic and other boats.  The waves on Tuesday night glowing with phosphorescence as they broke around us.  Two nights of traveling under sail instead of motoring. Clear skies Thursday night with numerous shooting stars.  Catching and almost landing several Mahi Mahi.

We are planning to stay here for several days then move down to Palm Coast to leave the boat at a marina over Thanksgiving.  We will be joining Cori's family in Spearfish SD for Thanksgiving.  Once we are back we will continue south and wait for a weather window to cross over to the Bahamas.