Last Days in Florida

Since the last entry, we traveled a bit of the Florida ICW and finally made it to Georgia today although all didn't quite go according to plan. After leaving Vero Beach, we stopped for the night in Coco before moving on to Daytona Beach. There we met up with friends Dan and Deb on About Time. We haven't seen them since Marathon two years ago and were happy to meet up with them again.

One Henry Flagler's creations in St. Augustine

We then made it to St. Augustine for a weekend visit. We never tire of this oldest city. We took the chocolate factory tour this time – really worthwhile. We also had a Mother's Day meal at a great restaurant – The Floridian – thanks to our daughter Jenn who arranged a gift certificate for her mother. Of course we also took time to do laundry, fill up on fuel and water and to get some groceries before pushing on.

The travel from St. Augustine appeared to be a bit tricky due to weather and tides. Between St. Augustine and Cumberland Island, GA are some of the shallow stretches of ICW we really don't want to travel through at low tide. Additionally there are some strong tidal currents to contend with that further impact our travel timing. The weather forecast called for likely thunderstorms each day, so we wanted to avoid those while traveling if we could. Hence we devised a plan that called for a 13 mile day yesterday to an anchorage we'd often thought would be attractive – Pine Island. It turned out to be a very pretty and desolate spot. Today we left later than normal to hit the tides and currents at the right time. We still thought we'd arrive at our planned anchorage by 5 PM.

Of course we can't plan for all circumstances that we'd face. And here's where we find an example of the uncertainty of boat travel beyond dealing with weather issues. We learned after pulling up the anchor and heading out this morning that a railroad bridge that would have to be open for us near Fernandina Beach was closed most of the day due to some maintenance issues. It wouldn't open till 5:30 PM. Think of it like learning of some major road construction on a highway you are traveling. You'll be held up for some time, and there's no chance to get onto another road. You're just stuck with that situation. For us it meant we wouldn't be arriving at our planned destination till well after 7 PM. We could handle this, but it just made for a long day of travel.

Thank goodness for our air card and computer. We were able to check out the weather radar picture and adjust our speed to avoid the worst of one thunderstorm. After hearing weather warnings of large hail and wind gusts up to 60 mph, we were relieved to get only some rain.

We're happy to have made it to Cumberland Island, GA. It's a stop we always look forward to. Perhaps I'll have some stories to share about this year's stop in the next entry. Till then...

Carpe Diem!

Captain Bob