Saturday, January 9, 2010

Sunshine State?





St. Augustine, FL still has no warmth. It’s not heartening that NPR reports the world has never had this experience of frigid weather everywhere in the world: North America, Europe, Asia are all freezing.

I woke pre-dawn at Golden Isles Marina in St. Simons, packed my bag to go up to shower, and poked my head out the hatch in the dark. You can imagine my heart-pounding start when I met a man in a ski mask stepping on Act III and reaching into the cockpit.  “Uh…good morning,” I stuttered. “Good morning,” he replied, calmly, “I’m just going to leave this here,” and he started to put a plain bag down on the cockpit cushion. “What is it?” I worried. “Muffins.”  Who would expect?

We met Dave and Bicki from Nellie D again in Fernandina Beach. We sailed outside from St. Simons to Fernandina, while they came down the ICW, and we arrived at the same place within an hour or so of each other. We enjoyed a fine meal out at The Crab Trap, and wondered over “Trailer Park Treasures” across the street. Bill and I enjoyed a little jazz saxaphone at Smithwick’s, a classy all white (the decor, that is) after-dinner bar, with some fine wine tasting to boot.

The cold weather and long passages are keeping us on the ICW. We stopped overnight at Jacksonville Beach, where we admired someone's winter boat building project (see photo), then here to St. Augustine, a great funky town with lots of live music. We love the Sailor’s Exchange and kept our purchases reasonable, and Bill scored a great new toy at the local music pawn shop: a laptop snare drum. He had stowed sticks and brushes, so now we can join any jam.


We’ll likely stay an extra day here before heading toward Daytona Beach, as it’s extremely pleasant and expected to warm up day after tomorrow.




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