Wednesday, March 31, 2021. Weather: Temp: 89/65, Humidity: 98/72%, Top Wind: W35 mph 😳, Precip: None, Miles Traveled: 62
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It was a nice, calm morning, and even though the slack tide was before 6:00 and in the total dark, the water looked really calm at 6:30. YAY! We got everything ready to go, put on our headsets so we could communicate quietly, and we slipped away from our dock at 6:45. If anything, the tide would be wanting to push us back into the slip to have us stay longer, so Captain backed us waaay out, turned, and we motored on out. There were a couple of other boats with the same idea. This picture is after we passed under the Bridge of Lions heading north. There is a bigger boat back there waiting for the bridge to open, which we didn’t have to do, so we were on our way.
Tuesday, March 30, 2021. Weather: Temp: 75/65, Humidity: 98/77%, Top Wind: NE11 mph, Precip: None, Miles Traveled: None
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The temperature today was really nice, but it was humid! The breeze was cool, but just kind of a sticky day. We slept in and did some chores, then I went to check with the dockmaster to see what the waitlist looked like for us to stay until Saturday. If we can’t stay, I need to do some planning! Unfortunately, we were still #7 on the waitlist, and having that many cancellations come in today was not likely. It really is not a very big marina. We could have checked with another marina here in St Augustine, but I figured we might as well move along to our next place.
Monday, March 29, 2021. Weather: Temp: 76/66, Humidity: 81/63%, Top Wind: N14 mph, Precip: None, Miles Traveled: None
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The funny part of the weather temperature above is that the high of 75 was at 1:00am this morning. It kept dropping, and finally stablized at 68 for the afternoon, and is dropping more this evening. We made the rounds to some of our favorite places today and got at least 10,000 steps in. First stop – the winery. They make a port wine that we both really love, and it’s hard to find in retail stores. So of course, we went and did the free tasting. We got to taste 11 different wines! For free! 😋🍷
Sunday, March 28, 2021. Weather: Temp: 84/69, Humidity: 91/48%, Top Wind: SW16 mph, Precip: None, Miles Traveled: 25
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Are we crazy? 🤨🖐 WAIT! Don’t answer that. I prayed that things would work out smoothly this morning and that we’d be able to get into a slip at the marina when we arrived. I know God always answers prayers, yet not always with the answer we expect or hope for. But today, I was really hoping He would answer my specific request to get us into a slip right away. I told you about slack tide issues at St Augustine. Our two best chances to not have any insurance claims were at 9:30 and 3:30. We wouldn’t be able to get there by 9:30, but the current should still be reasonable at 10:00, which we could do. But then there was no guarantee that our slip would be vacant until 11:00, and at that point, the marina wouldn’t let us come in. And then what would we do?! The wind was predicted to pick up to 15mph by 4:00, so arriving for the afternoon slack tide not our first choice So….. up and atum and out of bed at 6:00 AGAIN 😴 so that we could leave before 7:00 for our 🎶three hour tour🎶. This getting up in the dark stuff is for the roosters! And we are not even IN Key West!🐔.
Saturday, March 27, 2021. Weather: Temp: 81/68, Humidity: 94/62%, Top Wind: SE13 mph, Precip: None, Miles Traveled: 29
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Today was a nice short day on the water. Just 29 miles, and about 3.5 hours. The weather was nice with a little breeze from the south, and we got to wake up and get up when we wanted. ☺️. We enjoyed Halifax Harbor Marina’s location. They have washrooms and laundry facilities, but like most marinas, we didn’t use them. Eventually (soon) I’m going to need to do some laundry. We liked the proximity to the beach street and we had a fun time here.
Friday, March 26, 2021. Weather: Temp: 83/71, Humidity: 95/60%, Top Wind: SE14 mph, Precip: None, Miles Traveled: 67
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We tried to get reservations at New Smyrna Beach Marina, but they had a boat club coming in for the whole weekend, not no space for us. There are other marinas in New Smyrna, but when looking at the weather forecast, it looked like Saturday afternoon could be windier than Friday afternoon. So….. we decided to press on and go farther on Friday, and make a shorter trip on Saturday, to try to take advantage of the possibilities of less wind. Rather than 52 miles to New Smyrna Beach, we went 67 miles to Halifax Harbor Marina in Daytona Beach. We’ve never been here before, and the marina gets really good reviews on Active Captain. (That is a user based review system that includes a lot of feedback on all kinds of things along the waterways. Kind of like TripAdvisor, only it’s very specific to waterway travel). All that to say, we got up WAAAY before the sunshine today! 🤨🌙. Like 6:00 early! Shheesh! Our plan was to leave Cocoa Village Marina before sunrise, as soon as there was light enough to see the channel. 67 miles doesn’t sound like much, but there are a lot of no-wake zones along the way, so our average speed today was less than 9mph. We thought it would take us at least 8, maybe 9 hours to get to our destination, so we wanted to leave as early as possible. That would help avoid some of the late afternoon winds, we hoped. But in the meantime…. we now have rocket fuel on board in our little red rocket! When we looked for a single serve coffee machine, the least expensive one we found was red. So – why not?!
Wednesday, March 24, 2021. Weather: Temp: 80/60, Humidity: 87/45%, Top Wind: SE7mph, Precip: None, Miles Traveled: 52
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We got up around sunrise time and got ready to go. The dew wasn’t bad this morning, so that made things much easier that the last couple of mornings. 😉. We were tied to a fairly short pier, so we untied our criss-crossed stern lines from the main dock, and I took my lassos off of the two front pilings at the bow, then the side tie spring line off, and away we go!
Tuesday, March 23, 2021. Weather: Temp: 77/58, Humidity: 94/39%, Top Wind: E-11 mph, Precip: None, Miles Traveled: 55
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Last night we agreed with Beachside that we wanted to go through the lock at the same time. It’s an 8’ drop, so it just makes sense to time it together, otherwise someone would likely have to wait awhile. We’ll drop lines sometime around 8:00. Sunrise is around 7:30. And wow – it was dew point when I got up at 7:00! Here is the view out the back of the boat. A little bit of steam rising from the flat surface of the river made for a beautifully peaceful setting! There was no breeze, and not too cold.
Monday, March 22, 2021. Weather: Temp: 72/54, Humidity: 95/50%, Top Wind: 11mph, Precip: None, Miles Traveled: 63
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We had such a nice peaceful night. The water was so smooth and calm. OH! I forgot to tell you that one of the upgrades that Island Girl got since our last trip out, is a new mattress on our bed. It is a custom made 8” thick mattress. 😃. Our old one was 4 inches…. and over 2o years old. This new one is SOOO much more comfortable, so we’ve been sleeping pretty darn good. Even at that, I woke up before the alarm clock went off, but I was rewarded with such a pretty sunrise.
Sunday, March 21, 2021. Weather: Temp: 67/54, Humidity: 87/53%, Top Wind: 13mph, Precip: None, Miles Traveled: 55
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I don’t know what Fort Myers did to deserve this plague, but one night was enough for us! Midges. They look like a mosquito, but thank goodness they don’t bite!! Here’s a close-up. They fly into your eyes, ears, nose, mouth, hair, clothes, every nook & cranny of the boat…. aghhhh!
