Crossing too the US and St Augustine

Time to cross

Sunday May 7th

The “weather window” has arrived. We have Sirius weather on the chart plotter now which shows live, and forecast weather plus other sources on the internet which says we will have a little wind 6 to 10 knots and a 2 to 3 foot sea. Great!

Off we go then, heading on the east coast of the US and trying to get as far north as we can then while we are far enough out from land be carried by the gulf stream which increases the speed.

Just how wrong can these forecasts be ? All the expense getting Sirius weather, what a wast of money. Everything it showed was wrong, so much for live weather. The monthly contract will be cancelled along with some ear bending.

Well, at first on the Bahamas banks we enjoyed the trip until the wind increased to 24 knots, the sea increased to 4ft then 5ft so let just say it wasn’t very pleasant at all. So the expected trip to get as far north changed to lets just get to somewhere calm where we can clear in. At first we considered Cape Canaveral but tide times, bridge times, nowhere to anchor and going inside the ICW in the dark was out.

Monday May 8th 17:00

So we slogged on to St Augustine, what a relief when we found the entrance. I called the marina and they said there was a mooring ball available very close to the Bridge of Lions, phew!

The bridge of Lions is very pretty when its lit up at night.

We cleared in by phone and rented a car to get to the CBP office way out of town at the airport. There is no bus service or transport close to the office and a taxi was way too expensive. This office and officer was nothing but a pain. 4 3/4 hours later we had cleared in. So slow and as its a small airport, planes have priority. The officer threatened others there that if they hadn’t cleared in first by phone that they could be fined 5000 $.

A quick trip to the supermarket for fresh goodies, it was so tempting to buy too much, well we do call this “the land of plenty”.

Off out for some provisions and a walk

St Augustine is a place we have visited before when we did the land trip we quite liked it then. There was a cruisers night at a bar in town so we went and met fellow cruisers, there was free food, live music and the drinks were happy hour prices too. On the way back we went passed a bar with an open mike night, the music was great, there was a fantastic ukulele player Matthew Brian Kirkland he writes his own music, check him out if you are interested. I met Mathew and told him about me learning to play he was pretty encouraging but I wasn’t sure if I should continue or throw my ukulele overboard as I could never be as good as him. It was such a pity everyone was so loud in there the poor artists were sometimes difficult to hear.

The old town is in a old walled area lined with all kinds of gift shops, small museums bars and restaurants. The area outside has lots of art galleries which we browsed around.

A great place to walk, no cars here

An original old wooden building now selling ice cream and coffee

This place is in the old town

So is this, the original old wooden school house

The Fort wasn’t too far away from where we were, we didn’t visit as we had been there before.

The Fort from the boat

 We walked to the Lightner Museum, such a shame it was about to close when we got there but we did wander around the gardens.

Maybe one day we will return to take a look inside

So many things to see around St Augustine, we weren't sure if this was original or a copy

Lots of horse buggies around but this one is for the "girlie friends"

Not too far from the boat the streets are full of places to eat, gift shops, art galleries, antique shops, banks. We had fun exploring.

This was in one gallery, weird stuff

This I found amusing, it was on the door of a bank

I have lots of pictures of St Augustine but way too many to post on here.

Ok there are lots of other blogs to do yet and at the moment the internet is only via the telephone. So we have to go ashore with the computer in the dinghy.

So its BFN for now

Glenys and Don

M.Y. Pearl