We arrived in Fort Pierce around 3 PM after a great travel day. The weather was absolutely beautiful, with no wind. We are docked at the Fort Pierce City Marina, a very good place to stay.
Tomorrow morning, we are going to the Farmers Market held in the park adjacent to the marina. This is our fourth time visiting the Farmers Market, and we are looking forward to it.-
We had a good travel day today. We were docked in Cocoa Beach at the Cocoa Village Marina at around 1 PM. This is a really nice Marina in a good location. We walked to downtown (3 blocks) and visited the oldest and largest hardware store in Florida. This store has been in business since 1885, and has been owned by five generations in the same family. This place is awesome. They have lard stands and wooden wagon wheels for sale. They have almost anything that You can imagine in a hardware store, and the prices were very good. I would love to spend three or four days in this large hardware store that is housed in two twin story buildings that are interconnected.
We left the hardware store and visited some of the other stores in the area. The downtown area is really beautiful, and we really enjoyed the ice cream store.
We met the other boaters in our traveling group at Ryans Pizza for dinner. There were 11 of us having dinner together, and we really enjoyed a good meal and lots of good company.
We returned to the dock to sit out on the dock and watch a NASA rocket launch. At exactly 730, the sky lit up. It was really beautiful, with the light reflecting on the water. The NASA space center is about 10 miles away, and we could hear the loud sound of the rocket as it was takinfg off.
Tomorrow morning, we will travel to Fort Pierce to be there for the Saturday Farmers Market. We will probably leave there on Sunday morning, and head to Fort Lauderdale. We will spend a few days in Fort Lauderdale before heading toward the Lower Keys.
We had a good travel day today. We left the marina at 0700 and arrived at our destination around 3 PM. We had a long day today, traveling almost 70 miles.
We are docked in the CIty Park!! The City Park has a large dock, and we are spending the night here.
Tomorrow, we will spend the night at the Cocoa Village Marina at Cocoa Beach. Friday night should be spent in Fort Pierce, in time for the Saturday farmers market.
We arrived in St Augustine yesterday in the early afternoon. I was very surprised when we were met at the dock by an old friend from Holden Beach. David is the Dockmaster at this Marina.
We have had two good days here. David loaned his vehicle, so we have made trips to West Marine and to Wal-Mart, among other places. We were able to catch up on some of our boat chores, and really enjoy our break from traveling. We have eaten both nights at a very good restaurant that is within easy walking distance. We are docked within 2 blocks of the winery, and they offer free wine tasting tours all day long.
Tomorrow, we will get an early start, and it will be a long travel day to reach our planned destination. We are making long days so that we can reach Ft Pierce in time for the Saturday Farmers Market. We are planning to spend two days sight seeing in Ft Pierce, then we will move on to Ft Lauderdale and spend three days there.
The trip is going really good. The weather has been very nice, and the friends are really great people. We are really enjoying ourselves. Lil’ David continues to perform without problems or concerns. Life is good.
We are rafted and anchored in Ft George River, Fl. We are about 40 miles from St Augustine, Fl. We are planning to travel to St Augustine tomorrow, and spend a few days there to take a travel break.
We had a really good day today. The winds were moderate, and the weather was very nice, with the temperatures in the low 60s. We had a very good dinner tonight, and watched a good football game.
Today is Friday the 13th !!! At 0300 last night, I went out on deck to verify our position at anchor. The three boats were rafted together in our normal fashion. The winds were gusting to 40 MPH, and we had no wind protection from the shore. I was surprised to see that we had dragged our anchors for about 100 ft, and Lil David was aground. The other two boats were toward the center of the channel, so they were still floating. Checked that everything was OK, and settled down to spend the rest of the night making sure that everything went OK. At 0600, everybody came out on deck to view our positio while the tide continued to fall and then again in the rising tide. The tide for last night was 9.4 feet. At o7oo we seperated the boats, and the two that were floating were allowed to drift out into the channel to wait on the tide to refloat Lil David. At o745, were were floating, and as we retreived our anchor, we were pulled to the center of the channel. We were underway by 0800, so the anchor drag caused our departure to be delayed by 30 minutes.
Tonight, we are rafted and anchored in a really nice anchorage on the Duplin River in Georgia. Tomorrow, we are planning to go to Brunswick to fuel and spend the night. This should give us enough fuel to go to Marathon. We have not decided whether to spend a second night in Brunswick or to go on to Fernandina Beach, Fl and spend Sunday night there.
Tonight we are docked at Brunswick Landing Marina in Brunswick, Ga. We were successful in navigating the Little Mud River today. There were several times that we held our breath as we eased our way through the shallow areas.
Tonight, we all went to the Pizza restaurant for dinner. The restaurant is 3 to 4 blocks from the marina, so it was an easy walk. The food was very good, and the company was even better. Everyone enjoyed the evening.
We were joined by Bonnie and John on BON VOYAGE. They are heading to the Florida West Coast, and will be traveling with us for a while. We really enjoyed their company.
Tomorrow, we will cross the St. Marys River into Florida. We will make a short day and stop somewhere around Fernandina Beach. We are going to travel for the next two days, since we will have good weather. Rain and windy weather is forecast for early next week, so we will take a couple of days off when we reach St Augustine. That is a great place to spend a few days ashore.
Tonight, We are rafted and anchored in Herb River Ga. It is a beautiful anchorage. We arrived here today around 1:30 PM, and were anchored and rafted in short order. We are getting good at manuevering into a rafted configuration with the anchors deployed.
The weather was beautiful today, and we really enjoyed our travels.
Today was lefftover day, and we gathered all of our leftovers and we all met on C-LIFE for dinner. It was a really great dinner with lots of fun and good conversation. We are really enjoying each others company.
We have had a really great trip thus far. No problems or failures on any of the boats, and we have avoided all of the navigation pitfalls.
We have been enjoying lots of good food and good company. The wine flows freely in the afternoons and good times are had by all. We are a very compatible group, and we really get along good together. I am really looking forward to spending the next few months with this group.
Tomorrow morning, we will transit a very tricky area, Hells Gate and also the Florida Straights. Stopping here today will allow us to transit that area with a rising tide, so if we hit bottom, the rising tide should free us. Hopefully, we will make an uneventful transit of these two troublesome areas.
We will probably anchor tomorrow night, and spend the weekend in a marina. We are debating between Brunswick Ga. and Fernandino Beach, Fl. Either way, we will take a break and lounge around this weekend.
We had a rainy travel day today, but it was fairly warm. We arrived at the marina at around 2 PM, and the wives went shopping. No onboard cooking today, we will be eating out.
The weather cleared in the early afternoon, and we kicked back and relaxed for a while.
We are fortunate that the high tides are occuring around noon, so we have good water depths during our travel days. The tide range is 8 to 9 feet, so this is a serious concern. Luckily, we are traveling during the period when the tides are rising.
We are having a great time. The weather has been perfect, and the company has been really great.
We left the anchorage this morning at 0730. We passed through the Charleston Harbor around noon, and continued traveling South. Not many boats on the water, but we are spotting lots of eagles and there are a lot of dolphins travelling North.
At 3:30 PM, we rafted and anchored in Church Creek, and prepared dinner. We gathered on C-Life and ate dinner. What a meal!!!
Tomorrow, we will dock for the night at Port Royal Marina in Beaufort, SC. (they have a courtesy car) We should arrive there in the early afternoon, and we will go shopping and take a break. The wives are looking forward to going shopping and eating at a real restaurant for a change.