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.
Another look back at the Bridge of Lions. The town of St Augustine is in the right side of this picture (west end of the bridge as we’re looking south behind us.)
We were about a half hour before sunrise, but there was plenty enough light to see where we were going.
The moon was still pretty high in the sky.
This is looking out the St Augustine inlet to the Atlantic ocean. We could barely feel the influence of the ocean with some gentle rolling waves. It was a nice calm morning, with lots of dew on the windows.
I know you’re over there, Mr Sunshine!
We saw a lot of bird islands on our travels today.
And a lot of really beautiful homes along the Ponte Vedra Beach area.
Homes of all different styles and sizes, but mostly big! These didn’t have docks, because there was a canal that went in behind with a marina.
Dude. And I bet only two people live there?
We had several dolphin visitors, and we saw several manatee. Dolphin aren’t always easy to get pictures of, but manatee are much harder to get when you’re moving. And you just hope that they bumble their big sea-cow bodies out of the way so they don’t get caught by the prop! We saw a few of them pop their nose up right in the middle of the channel in front of us, so we slowed way down and idled across the area.
Then we got out of the really long man-made-looking channel and were now cruising into lowlands.
The tide was coming in, so when we left St Augustine, we were getting a nice push in the butt. But there are several inlets that contribute to water movings one way or the other. At one point, we had a bridge to go under, and the current coming at us was nearly 4 knots.
There was a bit of white water rapids in there, and it was really squirrelly swirly. It really reminded us of boating in the Pacific Northwest, like going under the Narrows Bridge in Tacoma.
By 11:00, we popped out of the ICW and crossed the St Johns River. This is a big shipping inlet, and is also the waterway that winds itself down to Jacksonville and beyond. There is a shipyard here and a Coast Guard presence.
Back into the ICW, just north of the St Johns River is a free dock available for overnight! Our timing has never worked out for us to take advantage of it, but it is a nice looking dock (no power or water, just a place to tie up).
Along this low country area, there are some amazingly loooong docks. This one starts at a house with a red roof way on the right edge of the picture, and goes all the way to the left where the actual boat dock is. You’d need a golf cart just to get to your boat!
We arrived at Oasis Fernandina Harbor Marina at about 2:00. We had to hold position for a little bit while they adjusted some boat positioning on the dock to make room for us. It was quite a toasty day, hitting nearly 90 degrees, and we were looking forward to getting docked, plugging in, and cranking up the AC!
We reserved to stay here for three nights because there is some really windy weather coming. I requested a spot on the inside, but alas, we we put on the outside of the outside dock, nose to nose with that cruise ship out there! Darn.
I took a quick stroll up to town, just to scope the lay of the land. What a cute historical place! We’ve never been here before, so this will be fun.
I stopped in the visitors center and got the scoop on a walking tour of some historic buildings, and info about the island hopper transportation in case we might need it.
This was a beautiful sunset. There are mooring balls out in the bay that can be rented from the marina, or boats can anchor here.
And here is our neighbor on the dock; The American Star.
About 7:00 we had just finished eating dinner and I was doing the dishes. It was still about 80 degrees outside, so we had the air conditioners running. They cycle on and off with blowing cool air. The TV was on, and Captain was trying to see if we could get wi-fi (no luck). Then the TV went off. He turned it back on, and we thought that was weird. About an hour later, we noticed that it was getting warm and that the coolers weren’t cycling on. 🤔 Hmm…. whassup? Ah-ha! The dock power was out! We didn’t even notice right away, because the inverter just kicked in and everything just kept working…. except the coolers. They don’t run on the inverter. Dang. A little earlier, I had noticed the guy across the dock, who was plugged into the same pedestal as us, was out doing something with his cord, and I hadn’t thought much of it. Maybe he tripped our breaker? Kenny went out and flipped the breakers on it, but it didn’t help. He noticed that the “night light” top of our pedestal was not on, so that meant the whole pedestal lost power. Other ones on the dock looked OK, but ours was dark. We called the marina office and left a message, but there was no emergency number to call. The neighbor guy said he didn’t have any luck reaching anybody either, so he had his generator running. Dang. Looks like there won’t be any AC tonight. There was some breeze outside, so I went down to the bedroom to open windows and the top hatch to try to help it cool down for sleeping. I noticed that our burgee flag was kind of whipping in the breeze, so I figured I would go out and tie it so that it wouldn’t be whipping and making noise while we tried to sleep with the hatch open. Normally we don’t hear it with the AC on.
We knew there was going to be some windy weather coming, but all of the sudden -BAM! A huge blast came out of nowhere! It was so strong and so sudden that we thought maybe a tornado was coming! YIKES! Sure enough! Maybe not a tornado, (we hoped and prayed!) but gusts to 45 mph?! I quickly put the front hatch back down so that it wouldn’t blow off.
The highest wind that our little weather station picked up was 34mph. You can see here that the temperature inside was still 79 degrees at nearly 11:00pm. The wind was from the northwest, which is precisely dead smack on our starboard side of the boat. It smashed us up against the dock; fortunately it is a big fixed dock, so we had fenders down to cushion us. And the poor little buggers were almost pancaked.
I tried to get some pictures out the back looking toward the next boat. It was rough out there! At least we have good batteries, and it was cooling down outside, so we left the door open for a little while to cool down the inside so we could sleep.
And we’re going to have three more days of wind, rockin and rollin. That IS why we chose to stay here for three nights, but the outside of the dock with a NW wind is not going to be restful. Secure, but not restful. Oh boy!