We got an early start at 7:30 am for the 57 mile trip to St. Augustine in order to "beat" the afternoon showers. So, of course, there were no showers, but we stayed cool in a gentle (5 mph) head wind. How do you say "perfect day on the water" ???
We had about 4 bascule bridges to pass under, but this one was too low so we had to request an opening.
Several of the others were pretty close, and for one the Admiral even lowered the VHF radio antennas. They are on rotating mounts so it is only a couple of minute job. The antennas are 8 feet tall but only add about 3 feet to our overall air clearance. It is a weekday so we passed very few boats all day. In fact,
we probably passed as many kayaks as we did power boats.
As we approached our destination, we were greeted by this pirate ship loaded with "friendly" pirates. The St. Augustine City Marina is just out of the picture to the left and the Bridge of Lions is in the background. The marina is right downtown and has wonderful floating docks. The marina employee who helped us tie up only rated my docking as "very good", but he still got a nice tip...
Before (and in search of) dinner we did a walking tour through part of the historic district. This picture is of the oldest wooden schoolhouse in the US. You cannot see it in this view, but the whole building leans about 10 degrees to the left. Lots of great (and many not so great) shops and restaurants. After dinner, we walked back to Lucky Us along the waterfront. After having visited the Salvador Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, it was amazing to see original prints on sale in one of three great art galleries that we visited...
The National Park Service maintains the historic (Spanish) Fort San Marcos that protected Spanish merchant ships in the 17th Century. It is centrally located at the intersection of the present day IntraCoastal Waterway and the pass out into the Atlantic Ocean.
The Lions Bridge was shown earlier in the background of the pirate ship picture, and here is the Admiral standing next to one of the magnificent lions. If you look very closely, you can see Lucky Us between the Admiral's left shoulder and the lion.
As you can can probably tell in the lion picture, it was getting dark so we headed back to Lucky Us. As we approached the pier where we are docked, we passed through a "crowd" of 12 armed US Customs and Boarder Patrol agents. Shortly after we were back aboard Lucky Us, they walked by and headed out in 4 patrol boats... Well, the marina did say that they had 24 hour security.
We are staying here at least 2 night so tomorrow will undoubtedly include more sight seeing. So far, it is a fun town to visit.
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