We left Halifax Harbor in the moonlight and passed under the Daytona Memorial Bridge at 6:55 when the bridge tender opened it for us. A few minutes later, we passed under the Main Street Bridge when it lifted for us, too.
Once again, it was a beautiful day. Sunny and 75. I was well into my fourth month of this voyage and I had only seen rain twice. We motored most of the morning, wondering where the big wind was. I looked at the instruments and realized that we were being set by a one knot current (slowing us down). This was going to make our long day even longer.
About 11:00 the wind started to pick up. We unrolled the genoa and it boosted our speed. After a half hour it really started to blow. We were doing 7.3 knots through the water, which was about 6 knots over the ground with the adverse current. There is an impassible inlet nearby, called Matanzas. As soon as we passed it, the adverse current became a positive current. The wind also built. We saw some gusts to 30 mph and had a steady 20 to 25mph breeze blowing over the stern quarter. The combination of the wind and tide had us moving at 8.4 knots over the ground. St Augustine was coming up fast.
We arrived at St. Augustine Municipal Marina at 2:30. Fortunately, the slip to which we were assigned was against the current, so I was able to motor in reverse into the slip. It was uneventful. In a 2 knot current, things can interesting in a hurry. We plugged in the electricity and turned on the heat, getting ready for a cold night. It got down to 48.
Pulling into St. Augustine reminded me of European cities on the Baltic Sea. The beautiful old buildings on the waters edge were unlike anything I had seen on this voyage. We had a great "tapas" dinner at the restaurant "Columbia" in the old city. Once again, we were struck by the slow economy and the number of empty tables. Bob and I got treated with great attention, because we are so handsome...and because we have a credit card.
When we pulled out of St. Augustine on Friday morning, we asked the bridge tender of the "Bridge of the Lions" to open his bridge for us at 9:00. He obliged, and we were on our way to Jacksonville Beach.
We were set by and adverse current until we passed the St. Augustine inlet. It is so cool to watch the instruments and see the current turn. We went from a one-knot set to a two-knot push in about 300 yards.
We hunkered down into a WNW wind and motored toward Jacksonville Beach. The high for Friday was 55 degrees, and in Florida that it was a disaster. We felt bad until my daughters called to report snow in Tennessee and Virginia.
We pulled into Beach Marine in Jacksonville Beach in the early afternoon. We were very happy to find that the marina had floating docks because the tidal range here is four and a half feet, the greatest I have seen on the trip so far. We cooked on board and enjoyed Agaliha's cabin heater as the temperature dropped to 39 overnight.
Saturday will be another cool and sunny day as we head north up the ICW to the St. John's River and turn west toward downtown Jacksonville.
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