Dear Family and Friends, We enclose some shots of St. Augustine.
Street Scenes
The Lightner Museum, once the fanciest hotel destination for the rich and famous featuring the largest indoor pool in the world at the time.
Flagler College was also a hotel although somewhat downscale from the hotel across the street.
The tree in the city square. The Spanish were required by their king to have formal squares in every city they established in the new world.
On Sunday, Dec. 16, Stardust departed St. Augustine Inlet for Port Canaveral, an overnight sail. Barb and I biked out to the St. Augustine light to wave good bye and took some photos of Stardust southbound. As Barb holds onto her hat at the top of the lighthouse, the white dot between Barb's head and her elbow is Stardust. They ran into really rough conditions around midnight after passing Ponce de Leon Inlet and rounding Cape Canaveral. I am sure they will relate the particulars on their blogsite:http://stardust-voyages.blogspot.com/
We did a few more boat chores and enjoyed St. Augustine a few more days. We set out at 0530 this morning to catch favorable tides headed for Ponce de Leon Inlet. The tide out the inlet was going out and even though the wind was less than 5 knots against the current there were standing waves that pitched the boat and washed the deck. It was very dark and we couldn’t see them anyway. Radar doesn’t show us the waves either and only two or three washed us before we got into smooth water in the ocean. The ocean swells of about 2 – 3 feet were very comfortable, but the wind was down (less than 5 knots as I mentioned before) and we wanted to reach the Ponce Inlet in about nine to ten hours so we motored with our main sail out tightly for stability. The sunrise was beautiful of course and the day was sunny with temperatures reaching the 70s. We reached Ponce Inlet, got confirmation on the radio from TowBoat US that the inlet and channel to the ICW would be no problem and we arrived at our planned anchorage behind New Smyrna Beach in Sheepshead Cut off the ICW by 1500 hrs.
We plan run down the ICW to visit with Harry and Linda of S/V Kuhela in Titusville tomorrow. We haven’t seen them since the Bahamas and they crossed the Gulf Stream a day before we did to return to the US last spring. It is good to see old friends again and for a cruiser, that is a big part of “what it is all about.”
Till next time – be well!
J&B
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