Florida

 

St. Augustine

My memories of north Florida in late November/early December are filled with cool mornings, brilliant blue skies, bright sunshine, and starry nights. I remember only seeing the inside of Rhumb Line (the trawler we lived on for three years in Jacksonville) for breakfast, dinner, and bedtime because we were outdoors all the time. After months of hiding in the air conditioning or submerged in the pool so as not to melt, the dry, 75 degree days of December were unbeatable.
 
Together with our friends on their new-to-them catamaran, we reserved a mooring ball for Thanksgiving week in St. Augustine. St. Augustine has mastered the art of Christmas spirit. Decking the town in over a million white Christmas lights, complete with horse-drawn carriage rides, caroling trolley tours, and Christmas shopping galore, we were excited for a Christmas-feeling week with friends, in that perfect 75 degree weather, of course.

Spoiler alert: it didn’t go quite as planned. Between our kids passing off an upper-respiratory virus and repeated days of high winds and rain, we ended up canceling more plans than doing them and despite St. Augustine’s best efforts, we weren’t really infected with the Christmas spirit. Still, it was fun, as always, to spend time with friends and Hans got a few days of fun before he left for a two-week work stint. 

Matilda and Ginger

Trolley ghost tour

St. Augustine Night of Lights from the boat

Toward the end of our week on the mooring ball, I injured my back and was stuck in bed for a couple days. Hans called the marina and extended our stay for another week to give me time to recuperate and basically be able to move again. I’m very accustomed to and comfortable with being on the boat by myself with the kids, including moving it from place to place, keeping the batteries charged, running the watermaker, and making the kids do their schoolwork, but it is not a good feeling to be unhealthy when I’m alone. I immediately started making alternate plans if my back got worse, if I needed to go to the doctor, if I had a problem with the boat, etc. etc. Thankfully, my back started feeling better and better (thank you stretching and pain medications!) and the kids started to get healthy again too. I was glad to be in north Florida where we have a good network of friends, and, as always, I was surrounded by the ever-generous cruising community. Other boaters checked on me via text message or they stopped by the boat, so I never felt alone.

December 1st is when we pull out our Christmas decorations and when Snowflake, our elf, starts visiting us every day.

Always causing mischief in a new place.

And wearing a santa hat for swinging of course.

In the middle of our second week (the bonus week!) in St. Augustine, my dad and his girlfriend Jeane came to visit for a couple days. We did all things Christmas with them—some shopping, a trip to the Alligator Farm (a St. Augustine institution), a trolley tour of the lights, a horse-drawn carriage tour, and delicious dinners out. Friends from Jacksonville came to visit and Freja spent the weekend with a friend in Jacksonville. So even though it was rainy and we weren’t in the best of health, we certainly made the best of it.

Don't let the wild animals out!

A nice dinner at the Columbia restaurant, another St. Augustine tradition.

The horse loved Matilda and kept trying to snuggle.

Enjoying the lights from the horse drawn carriage tour.

Solo Sailing from St. Augustine to Titusville

When our second week on the mooring ball ended, it was time to head south. Hans’s family is visiting in the Bahamas for Christmas and New Years so we needed to get moving south to be ready to cross the Gulf Stream as soon as possible. My first solo day was a very short hop to Matanzas Inlet where we anchored off an old fort. The current was insanely strong, but it was a sand bottom so I felt good about the holding. We dinghied to the inlet entrance and ran around on the sandbars and looked for shells and tide pool creatures.

Matanzas Inlet

Matanzas Inlet

Fort Matanzas seen from anchor

Leaving Matanzas Inlet at dawn

The next couple days I made long hops in order to get to Titusville by Tuesday evening. SpaceX had a rocket launch scheduled for Tuesday at 17.37/5:37PM and Titusville is about as close as you can get to the launchpads without being on NASA property. I left bright and early with the tide and motored south on the ICW until mid-afternoon. I went through my first opening bridge, then Daytona where one of the bridges only had a 63’ clearance, and we finally anchored at the Ponce Inlet where I promptly hit bottom as I was trying to sneak in a little further. I had the centerboard halfway down so I just raised that and we floated off. Phew. We spent another afternoon exploring a sandbar inlet. It was typical Florida—amazing natural beauty edged by a highway, houses crammed side-by-side, jet skiers, and, in this spot, a small airport where little planes were constantly buzzing the inlet. So it was a gorgeous spot, you just needed to wear earplugs and only look in one direction. Our last day was straight and narrow—first through New Smyrna Beach and then (literally) straight down the Mosquito Lagoon, a big nature preserve immediately north of NASA. I could only take my eyes off the wheel for moments a time because, while the autopilot does a fantastic job of steering the boat, the winds and other boat wake make it impossible to keep on a straight course for more than a few minutes. The ICW is dredged in this part of Florida so the edges of the channel literally go straight up. My bathroom breaks were record fast and the kids helped by bringing me drinks and food. After another long day, we grabbed a mooring in Titusville and got ready for the rocket launch. Which was delayed. But only until Thursday which was perfect because Hans was arriving on Wednesday night—he’d get to see the launch also.

Passing a big brush fire

At anchor at Ponce Inlet

A rapidly disappearing sandbar at Ponce Inlet

Selfies at the sandbar

Leaving Ponce Inlet at dawn

Motoring straight down the Mosquito Lagoon

Swinging along the ICW

Kennedy Space Center and a SpaceX launch

We filled our time on Wednesday waiting for Hans by doing some schoolwork, going ashore for frozen yogurt, and a shopping spree at CVS. I am now stocked on shampoo and conditioner for at least the next six months. Hans arrived around 18.30/6:30PM and we had dinner ashore together. Thursday was the day we had all been looking forward to: visiting the Kennedy Space Center! We arrived when the opened the gates and spent the day gawking at massive rockets, space capsules, and the actual Atlantis space shuttle. The kids particularly loved the virtual reality type ride to Mars and a space shuttle simulation. We had tickets for the rocket launch viewing so we piled onto the bus and rode out to the Banana Creek launch viewing area. This was also the location of the Apollo exhibit and we saw great presentations and artifacts from the Apollo era. It was an expensive day—admission + the launch tickets cost over $500 for the four of us, but it was definitely worth it. We also bumped into one of Hans’s residency colleagues from Jacksonville who were there on a class field trip with their son.

Entering the Kennedy Space Center is jaw-dropping, to say the least.

A SpaceX rocket, with clear evidence that it's been to space a couple times.

The rocket's capsule

Atlantis

The rockets on Atlantis

A little slide interlude

A replica of one of the Mars rovers

crazy kids!

One of the Apollo rockets.

Waiting for the launch, about 3 miles away

Lift-off!

And separation. It was a SpaceX launch so one part of the rocket returned to the launch pad.
Super impressive.

Bahamas provisioning and weather watching

In anticipation of crossing to the Bahamas asap, on Friday we divided and conquered. Matilda and I spent another day motoring PW south, 40 or so miles from Titusville to Melbourne, and Hans and Freja spent that entire time going from store to store stocking up on necessities and big things (like a new portable freezer and a yeti cooler) since this is likely the last time PW will be in the States for the foreseeable future.

Matilda keeping herself entertained as we motored down the ICW to meet Hans and Freja.

Saturday was another long run down the ICW, 50 or so miles to the Ft. Pierce inlet. We filled up on diesel and gas; we’d planned to fill up on water too, but at $1/minute for hose usage (approximately 5/gallons a minute) we decided we’d just make our own water. We had leftovers for dinner on Saturday night and analyzed and re-analyzed the weather, deciding if we should leave on Sunday morning. We acted like we were going to leave, stowing everything, hoisting the dinghy on deck, and clearing the cockpit. We’d check the forecast at dawn and make our decision. I felt uneasy (I hate uncertainty!), but it was the best plan we could make so I went to bed knowing we were ready to sail, if the weather was good.