We left Fernandina Beach as planned this morning with both Mary and Mike and Arthur and Mamiko waving us off. Thanks very much to you all. 
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.
I dreamed I saw St. Augustine, alive as you or me!