The sail from Ft. Pierce to St. Augustine (April 30th) was pretty uneventful. It’s a great town with lots of walking/biking paths, but like much of FL and along the East Coast, we are limited in our choice of anchorages and marinas because our mast is 75 ft. high and so we don’t fit under most of the bridges. We were headed to St. Augustine Municipal marina, which was on the other side of the Bridge of Lions, but this is an “opening” bridge which opens every 30 minutes (on the hour and ½ hour) for us to pass through.
Once on the other side, no slips were available for our boat, so we picked up a mooring ball (a simple way to “anchor” the boat without actually dropping the anchor). The picture shows a monohull attached to a mooring.
St. Augustine was a convenient place for Anthony to stay on the boat while I flew back to Colorado for the end of the Spring Semester activities and wedding dress fittings. Our daughter was getting married in about 2 ½ months and I was a little more focused on land and wedding details!
It seems I missed quite a “lightening show” while I was gone. It’s certainly a beautiful and awesome thing to watch, but a little scary when you’re watching from a boat with a 75 ft. tall mast. A lightning strike to our boat could take out our electronics and/or leave a hole in the bottom which could sink us. Check out this video taken from our boat!
We couldn’t stay long in St. Augustine because our son Ian and his friend Jackson were coming for a visit directly after graduation (Colorado State University). Indulge me in a proud mom moment: Even after transferring schools his freshmen year and losing an entire semester of work, and taking SP 21 off to work instead, Ian caught up during the summers and graduated in 4 years – We are very proud!
Anyhoo…. We had originally planned to meet them in Baltimore, play golf, see an Orioles game, eat lots of crab cakes, and so forth, but Mother Nature nixed those plans. This photo is from our weather software forecasting heavy winds during the time we’d be sailing to Baltimore. The number of “bars’ on the “F” symbol indicate strength and direction, and the colors indicate such as well. This tells us that the winds were strong (~20-25 knots) from the North (the direction we wanted to go – “on the nose”) and there’s lots of “red” on this map. Never sail into lots of “red”!
Obviously, we needed a plan B, so we chose to stop in Hilton Head – not a horrible alternative with plenty of options for golf! We have many fond memories of Hilton Head – Anthony’s parents had a house there for a while and that’s where we set off for our circumnavigation in SeaFever (boat #2).
Hilton Head was ~160 NMs north and we wanted to make as much progress as possible, so we left St. Augustine at dawn. With great wind and a little help from Gulf Stream current, we arrived at St. Catherine’s Island, GA. You can only get here by boat, so we pretty much had the place to ourselves!
Hilton Head in May is gorgeous and lucky for us the temperature was still on the cool side so it was very comfortable being on the boat. Unfortunately, I came down with COVID shortly after arriving and then Anthony got it 3 days later. I had all the classic symptoms of a cold, as well as the fatigue and brain fog. Anthony had those as well, but milder since he was able to take Paxlovid soon after his positive test. At least it’s easy to “isolate” on a boat!!
Luckily we were both starting to feel better by the time Ian arrived (although the fatigue and brain fog continued for a few more days) and we had a great time with them on the boat. He and Jackson played golf everyday except 1! We did fit it in a short sail as well – and made them work for it!
All too soon, it was time for them to head back to Colorado (right as a freak snowstorm hit Denver – it was travel hell for both of them) and us to move further north towards Chestertown, MD where would put Moxie to “bed” for the summer. Onward, we go!