This our 4th night in the marina – fortunately it’s a municipal marina so quite reasonably priced. It’s got nice restrooms, laundry and great staff but big downside is the lack of wi-fi. Hence the lack of regular posts and more especially photos.

However in the last few days we’ve managed to get the dinghy repaired, the provisions topped up, and the laundry done. We also paid a visit to the customs and immigration at the port to organize our departure and today we did a bit of sightseeing – well if that’s what you could call it!

In order to take the dinghy in and collect it again we needed to have some kind of transport – so we hired a pickup truck – only $19.95 for 8 hours and 59c/mile. Well, since I’ve been doing all the driving here and am supposedly used to it now (on the wrong side of the road and all), I was once again the nominated driver. As you can imagine the pickup is slightly larger than my low slung, narrow Toyota Celica! Lance seemed to be sitting so far away in the passenger seat!

Anyway we decided to go to South Beach, find a McDonalds to tap into their wi-fi and of course look at the beach and perhaps even go for a walk on it. Well that was the plan!

The main road of South Beach was long and narrow, with cars and people everywhere. We couldn’t even see the beach as there were parks, buildings and dunes – besides I was concentrating on keeping the pickup in our lane without taking out any pedestrians, cyclists or other vehicles! One side of the road was lined with restaurants (not McDonalds!) and each one had valet parking charging about $10 to $15. So this added a new dimension- cars stopping, drivers getting out (remember the drivers are on the left so they step out into our lane), valet drivers getting in and nosing out in to the traffic! Suffice to say we beat a hasty retreat from South Beach and headed up to North Beach where we did find a McDonalds, a parking for the monster truck and a place to go for a walk on the beach.

Sad to say we didn’t see Horatio or any of the CSI team around!

So there we were, slowly ambling down the waterway when I see a large sportfisher approaching at speed from behind. I tell Mary to fasten her seat belt but, no, she’s had enough of this rudeness!!

She grabs the radio microphone and blasts out “WILL THAT SPORTFISHER APPROACHING SO FAST IN VERO BEACH HARBOUR PLEASE SLOW DOWN TO PASS US!!!!”

Don’t worry about identifying ourselves or our position!! That sportfisher knows who he is and THE ADMIRAL HAS SPOKEN!!!!

I look back and, sure enough, he has backed down and passes us a very sedate pace and gives us a friendly wave with a sheepish grin as he passes

Now some more on anchoring!

We have deployed my new Manson Supreme anchor for the past 5 nights and it has set first time every time and held like a dream – even in changing currents I am well pleased!!

And what about my new water maker? Well, we’ve been using water very liberally with nice showers including hair washing etc. We’ve not been conserving water at all. So, I have run the water maker for a total of 2 1/2 hours since our last fill at a marina. Well guess what? I accidentally noticed – I didn’t actually look as I wasn’t expecting it – that the water was flowing out of the tank’s overflow pipe!!! I had produced more in 2 1/2 hours than we had used in 5 days!!! I love it Who knows when the tank had reached full???

Dinghy saga. This continues as the repair in Fernandina Beach has not been successful so we have to take the dinghy to another dealer for an assessment and hopefully a replacement!

So what else? Well everything has been running pretty smoothly So no dramas to write about!

Our trip down over the last few days became more interesting as the days went past.

We considered heading out of the ICW at West Palm Beach and heading down the coast to Fort Lauderdale (53 miles), but in the end decided to tackle the inside passage with it’s myriad of low bridges, its plethora of boaters and the concrete walls of this part of the ICW. In addition there are a lot of slow speed areas in many of the areas where manatees like to laze.

All in all we had a great trip and are glad we did it. We were lucky too though because even though today is Saturday, the morning started off pretty wet and only really improved by lunchtime. So I guess a lot of local boaters stayed at home. For the most part we were in a group of one other launch and 4, sometimes 5 sailboats heading south.

And we did have one experience of the bouncing effect when a big launch went past north bound and his wake bounced from one side of the channel to the other. It was pretty much like a washing machine!

All the nights at anchor have been very peaceful – but it’s amazing how different an anchorage can sound in the book. Think of Manatee Pocket and look at the chart and I’m envisioning a quiet secluded anchorage in the middle of nowhere. Well how wrong could I be – it was surrounded by houses, marinas and other boats!

Last night we anchored alone in quite a big bay and before long there were three other boats pretty much ‘hugging’ us. In addition to that we realized that on the shoreline there was a restaurant with live music – and a railway line with some noisy trains.

Tonight we’re out of the hustle and bustle and anchored in a large anchorage bordering the university.

Tomorrow we move into a marina again – yay – hopefully some wi-fi – what am I going to do in the Bahamas? My wi-fi booster is just not doing it’s job.

Then more on the dinghy saga -it’s still leaking, so on Monday we plan to hire a pick up truck for a couple of hours and take the dinghy to an inflatable repairer recommended by Mercury. At this stage we are just holding out for a fix as of course it’s now Christmas and there’ll be more delays on getting a replacement at this time.

But that done, we’ll provision up, check out through immigration and wait for our weather window to cross to the Bahamas.

Oh yes, for those who are as ignorant as we were – manatees are quite large aquatic mammals that like to laze around in the shallows. We’ve had a couple of glimpses of movements in the water but we’ve still not really seen them.

Talking about rain, my friend, Tom, tells me that December is a rather dry month in St Augustine but while we were there, they recorded the highest rainfall in one day in December ever and the highest Sat/Sun/Mon rainfall ever!!!!

Anyway, we motored around a little until it eased up slightly, entered Rockhouse Creek and set my anchor. What a delight to set my new Manson Supreme It set the first time and held for 2 tide/current changes. We were alone in the creek initially but later a larger trawler also anchored nearby.

No photos today as we have no decent internet access – just some 3G on the iPad.

Up at sparrows this morning for a long boring day apart from Haulover Canal where we hoped to spot manatees, alligators and other wildlife but just saw fishers lining the banks as well as in their small boats. The canal, though very short, was very pretty.

Tonight we’re anchored a short way off the ICW near Dragon Point. Once again, the Manson set perfectly first time! This expanse where we are anchored is quite a few miles long but another boat had to follow us and anchor about 200m away. Why so close I ask myself. Herd mentality!

Had a great BBQ and then a lovely hot shower while the generator was going with my new water maker producing 20gal of water per hour :):) Mary, of course also had a hot shower, washed her hair and then blow dried it! She’s happy:)

We’re about 185 miles (already done 914 on the ICW and about 140 on the Chesapeake!!) from Miami now but will take it fairly slowly and hope to be there on Sunday

For instance, travelling down from Fernandina Beach to St Augustine it was cold, cloudy and windy. Quite miserable really! But, it was Saturday which is a bad day for travelling as every other weekend boater and his dog would be out on the water. As it was, the bad weather kept everyone at home and we had a pleasant, non-congested, non-bumpy journey

Also, we have been “stuck” on St Augustine since Saturday due to big winds and drenching rain.

If you look at the next photo, you can see how rough the water is on the far side of the dock and how calm it is on our side – just from the wind!!

This one after some drenching rain overnight and a high tide this morning:
See the water level at that white car!!

Why do you think those palms need supporting??

So, has it been a bad thing? Well no. It gave us time to get an extra support for the davits manufactured at short notice It also gave us the opportunity to spend more time with Tom whom I’ve “met” on the Bayliner Owners Club Forum and he has given us some great chart books for the Bahamas and the East Coast of Florida!!

Tom also was kind enough to provide us with transport for some more provisioning as well as a sightseeing tiki tour of St Augustine. We then enjoyed a fabulous lunch with him and his wife at a local restaurant.

Great lobster bisque as a starter and Mahi Mahi as a main. This was my first introduction to Mahi and I am even more determined to catch the odd one or two or more on our trip to and around the Bahamas. It was yummy.

So, now everything has been stowed and it’ll be an early start in the morning for the next section – probably to Daytona Beach but possibly to New Smyrna. We’ll see. We’ll be anchoring out so probably won’t have internet access for a while!

We had a great day travelling down to St Augustine, though we did have to suffer some bumpy wakes from a couple of north bound boats who didn’t slow down!

There were a lot of mansions along the waterway as usual but also some very small, older ones which in New Zealand we would usually call a bach. (I think it’s derived from bachelor pad)

As we passed Jacksonville we went past the Florida Mayo Clinic – there seem to be three locations – the other two are in Arizona and Minnesota.

We also saw why we stick between the markers on the ICW. Southbound we keep the green ones to our left and the red ones to the right. There is a lot of shoaling around as you can see from the photos of the birds. And if you’re really not careful you could end up on the bottom like the yacht in the one after that!!

Before we left this morning we saw the weather would be deteriorating from tonight but we knew we’d at least be on our way. So here we are another 50 miles down the track but we’ll probably be here ’til Monday at least. The winds are forecast to be gusting gale force. Even on an inside slip at the marina we are bouncing around quite a bit. I’m really glad we’re not on a mooring ball and having to dinghy to town.

Tom, Lance’s contact from the Bayliner Forum came to visit us on our arrival and welcomed us to St Augustine. It was great to meet him and we’ll catch up again tomorrow.

We struck it lucky when he advised us to book in to the marina as it’s choc a bloc full of boats for the Boat Parade of Lights tonight. Despite the weather, quite a few boats took part and we had a good vantage point from the side of the bridge.

The whole waterfront is beautifully lit up for the festive season and very pretty. And we found one cobbled street that reminded us of Innsbruck – but is also probably similar to many other parts of Europe – it had several restaurants and one was Spanish and one was Greek.

We’re looking forward to doing some more exploring tomorrow – there’s an even older fort than the one we saw the other day.

The watermaker is in, (it’s really quite amazing), the dinghy has had something of a repair [thumbs down Mercury Marine - we're giving you a very poor rating for not yet coming to the party! ], the new anchor is all ready to be used and a few other odds and bobs have been sorted out.

We’ve got our wetsuits, snorkelling gear, fishing rods etc and almost all the provisioning is done. Although we do of course still have to eat everyday so I’ll have to keep replenishing where I can!

Last night we enjoyed another lovely dinner with Mary and Mike from Paradise Yacht Sales. http://www.paradiseyachtsales.blogspot.com/

They have been wonderful during our 3 week stay here and they even ran me up to the grocery store yesterday for a few last minute items -  we’d returned the rental car the day before. We’ll certainly miss them as we move on but we’re planning to store Amanzi here when we return, so we’ll get to catch up again in March. Meanwhile they’ll continue to read our regular blogs which we’ve promised to keep going. (I can hear you all saying YAY!) Of course once we get to the Bahamas our internet access will probably be severely curtailed and I’ll no doubt have severe withdrawal symptoms.

We’ve said goodbye to Arthur and Mamiko – they will be following us early next week – so you never know, we may just meet up again somewhere down ‘the ditch’ (no, not the Tasman – it’s actually another name for the ICW).

Meanwhile though we’ll go and join the hordes of boaties that are waiting for a good weather window to cross to the Bahamas. We’ve heard that the further we go towards Miami, the narrower the waterway becomes, the more boats there are out and about and that well mannered boaties are in very short supply! Many power boats will apparently think nothing of buzzing past at great speeds creating large wakes. It surely can’t be worse than heading out of Auckland Harbour – or can it? At times that used to feel like being in a washing machine – although I have to admit that was during the Americas Cup when every boat of every description seemed to be out on the water!

Great Egret

This Great Egret (not to be mistaken for a White Heron) is a frequent visitor to our dock, and he/she invariably leaves us a few presents on the dock that would put the average New Zealand dairy cow to shame!! Gotta hose it all off every morning before it attracts hordes of flies.

Most projects are now done: the watermaker just needs the final hookup and testing and the anchor situation has been resolved.
I “appropriated” this anchor and chain and I now know we won’t be dragging again.

"This anchor might just be big enough!"

Mind you, If I load it on board we will probably never be going anywhere except to the bottom of the sea, so I “un-appropriated” it again.

However, the anchor siutation has been resolved. I had a bit of the bowsprit cut off and my Manson Supreme fits like a dream. Ha, ha, get it? Supreme rhymes with dream. Hey I’m a budding poet! Plus there is meaning in the word “dream” as I’ll be able to sleep peacefully and dream sweet dreams knowing this anchor will stay put!

On Saturday we went to Fort Clinch which is a couple of miles up the road.  It was really interesting and it was a real bonus as on the first weekend of each month they have actors dressed in period costume portraying life as it was back in the day.

In the Fort Clinch park there is also a very, very, very lonnnngggg fishing pier and although the weather was pretty windy and cold, and the Atlantic breakers were surging in, there were still quite a few hardy fishermen (and women) catching fish right at the very end. It was an amazing pier with benches every so often (so what? you say) – well what about fishing rod holders at various intervals and tables for de-scaling and cleaning fish? And with fresh running water nogal!!!!

The drive through the park to the fort was also very pretty with spanish moss dangling down from all the live oak trees.

Yesterday we went into the Fernandina Beach historic section. We’ve been there before but this time spent some time wandering around and looking at all the old historic homes. We had lunch near the downtown marina and of course went to watch other boats coming and going. There is always something going on.

We dropped in on Mike and Mary (www.paradiseyachts.net) when we got back to the marina as they had been away for a couple of days showing boats. We were introduced to Rum Runners Cocktails – far too delicious for our own good!