St Augustine and the Atlantic

By the time we pulled up the anchor and fueled up in Fernandina Beach Sunday morning we were already sweating and quickly changed into summer clothes!  We had to brush the dust off our shorts and t-shirts but were so happy we have beat the cold!

We also decided to start using our single piece of exercise equipment, the Shake Weight.  It's hard and makes us look silly but its better than nothing.

The Independence 2

Most Awesome Ship Ever

Gettin fancy in the kitchen. Christine made our favorite, Green Bean Casserole.  We don't have an oven but the rice cooker is very versatile

Under our new short days rule we anchored just before Jacksonville.  We ran aground once and not much else exciting there. We made it to St Augustine Monday and could see the Atlantic coming into the city.  Mile Marker 778

We anchored and quickly went into town.  It cost us $10 to land our dinghy which we weren't happy about but it was worth it as the city was full of shops and fun to walk around.

We found a happy hour that sold us 4 beers and 2 slices of pizza for $1!  We ended up also buying a whole pizza but it was still a good deal.  There were a lot of ice cream shops, art galleries, and Cuban stores.  We ended up getting a bottle of hot sauce as our souvenir.

 We awoke Tuesday and decided to stay put.  We relaxed in the morning and went for a dinghy ride in the afternoon.  But not just any dinghy ride, a dinghy ride to the Atlantic Ocean!  As in the pic earlier we could see the Atlantic Ocean on our way in, and since St Augustine was inland we still wanted to go to a beach.  So we decided we would dinghy around the corner through a piece of the Atlantic Ocean to the front of the beach of the Anastasia State Park.

The water got choppier the further we went but it was never too bad and soon we were behind the real waves on our way to the beach.  The waves were only a couple feet and we rode one in all the way to shore. We pulled up the dinghy engine and beached Sawyer.  There wasn't much on this island, just sand, shells, dunes, and one disgruntled metal detector dude but it was still fun to have to beach under our feet.

Soon we had to get back before it got too dark and we noticed the tide came in and was trying to take Sawyer out to sea.  We ran as fast as we could back to the dinghy before it left without us.  Then the hard part, getting back out past the waves!  It took us a couple tries of getting knocked down by the waves and after we gave up trying to stay dry we ran the dinghy out into deeper water, started it up, hopped in and jetted off over the waves.  Luckily we keep a hand held bilge pump in the dinghy cuz the waves had put a lot of water in with us.  We took turns driving and pumping out water until we were back to our harbor. 

My cell phone got wet and no longer works but we were turning them off in a week anyway so it wasn't too big of a loss.

We passed this really cool sailboat on the way back in

As we approached our boat we ran into familiar faces,  Hans and Laura aboard Knotty Cat had just anchored!  We were a little embarrassed to be soaking wet from our recent Atlantic crossing but still stopped by to say hello.  We were leaving in the morning though so we went back to the boat for an early night.

We also met a personal milestone, we now have 1500 miles of sailing experience in our career.  We are still noobs tho.