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We debated taking the Ft Lauderdale Tour Boat or starting our sail.  All being sailors the vote was to SAIL.  The first part of the trip was motoring thru 8 more bridges but our experience was more like what we were use to…….pleasant and uneventful.  We arrive around 4:00 to Card Sound and Scotty’s Landing.  They were expecting thing to be slow so they agreed to let us just stay tied up to their dock for the night.  We had great hamburgers and then Rusty did a walk-about and found an awesome primarily organic neighborhood grocery.  We communicated via phone and eliminated the need for a trip to Publix the next day.  Only one little snag, it started a downpour as Rusty was checking out.  Karen to the rescue, she took two umbrella’s and her handy-dandy Iphone and met Rusty at the store.

The next morning we were off….

Last Bridge for awhile1

SYL at Scotty's Landing at Dinner Key

The slip at Las Olas was indeed perfect.  Karen arrived without much fuss other than the taxi driver was clueless about the where the City Marina was located.  Karen’s niffy app on her iphone brought her right to the dock.  I guess not many boaters use taxi’s so I guess it was not surprising the taxi driver was confused. Also a lot of things are named Las Olas in the general area.  The weather outlook was not great, so we debated  on what our next move was going to be.  We  decided to stay onboard and have homemade pizza and visit and reevalute in the morning.   It was really nice seeing Karen…

Yesterday was quite an experience.  If you are interested in a blow by blow go to our FB “Sitton On The Beach”.  I ventilated fairly often on there yesterday.  We had 27 bridges that required openings and most of them were restricted.  For those of you who may not know, restricted just means they have an opening schedule, usually on the hour and 1/2 hour or quarter to and quarter past the hour.  You would think that the restricted would be the most problematic but that did not prove to be true.  On several of the “on demand” bridges we had problems, unnecessary problems.  On every bridge I would call ahead and give the bridge tender a headsup we were coming and if any other boaters were with us.  On three different occasions I called the bridgetender, he told us to keep on coming, we could be seen coming for miles and then when we got there he stalled opening the bridge.  At the beginning of the day we had the main and jib sails up helping to maintain speed.  They were a significant help with a current that was running against us.  Sails up in a narrow channel are a problem however,  when you suddenly have to turn around in a narrow, busy space.  After the third time a bridgetender delayed ( for no apparent reason) we took our sails down.  The worst time was when we were nearly ran over by a tour boat…..I really don’t want to retell that story so if you want the gory details go to our FB page.

We have been traveling the ICW for many years and the rogue bridgetender was very unusual…….and it wasn’t even a full moon….I know I looked1

12:00pm  WOoHOo!!!   I left a pitifull plea with Las Olas Marina which was our 1st choice marina but who told us there was no room.  They found us a spot.  One the don’t normally rent because it is not at the floating dock and it is fairly shallow which is not an issue for us.  It is exactly where I wanted to be for a couple of days with Karen.  Tomorrow we will take the water taxi  which is $20.00 a day and you can get on and off and it gives you a little tour of the area.   It was suppose to be overcast all day and now the sun is shining brightly like it knows someone special is on their way here…….:)

Well, it is now 1:00 and we have been so busy I have not fed my poor husband and he is looking faint.  I think a grill cheese is in order……

Sea Yawl Later!

Linda

Good morning all,

It is Friday morning and we have been underway since light which was about 6:30am.  We had an interesting day yesterday.  We have been listening to the drone of the motors for days now and even though Rusty is a powerer boater by heart (I don’t think he would admit it) even he has had enough of the constant noise.  Yesterday we were motoring along the ICW and he noticed an outlet to the “big water” (Atlantic) and casually mentioned it.  I said, “Lets go” and we did.  There was a little wind and we could sail about 3 knts which was fine with us until we got “the call”.  Karen was coming.  Oh my Gosh we are soooo excited.  I said, “On with the motors”.  We considered going all night and had pretty much decided we would but then at dusk the winds completely died and to my surprise and much to my delight (I don’t like all nighters) he pointed SYL towards the St. Lucie inlet.  It is my job to look at “Skipper Bob” and charts and give Rusty the information he needs to decide where to anchor etc.  Since we had gone outside I had not looked at “Skipper Bob” that far down the ICW.  We just thought we would enter and find a place to pull over.  Wrong!  We accidently picked the absolute worse stretch of ICW I have ever been on.  It is very narrow and constantly changing so even Sea Clear which is usually very accurate could not be totally trusted as we found out. 

By the time we were well inside the inlet it was approaching dark.  We were following Sea Clear and the markers when we ran aground.  We were stuck and stuck good and it didn’t make any sense why we were stuck.  We were right in front of a red marker and according to Sea Clear we should be in 13 ft of water.  After about 45 minutes Rusty gets us off by backing out completely and going around.  Apparently we were trying to go over a shelf.  Sounds simple when writing it but it was not so simple when experiencing it.  Of course, there was a considerable amount of traffic that was coming in and most of the time their wave action was helpful but once it really grounded us in big time.  The only time I got a little concerned was when we found out we were just coming off HIGH TIDE.  I wasn’t worried about our safetly or the safetly of  SYL,  I was just concerned whether we could get ourselves off without help.  I thought it interesting no one stopped to inquire if they could help. 

We did get off but by now it was pitch black and then I started looking at the chart and “Skipper Bob” and discovered that there was no place to pull off for over 10 miles.  At a little over 5 knts at best that would be over 2 hours.  It was very, very dark and we found out our Q Bean was not onboard.  I had forgotten it had broken last trip.  Grannie, you saved the day.  The flashlight you gave Rusty for Christmas worked great!!!   We were very glad to have it. 

We spent the next hour navigating the dark, narrow ICW.  We read on the charts that the buoy’s are not charted because the channel is constantly changing.  The charts indicated that the water depth right outside the narrow channel was 1 to2 ft most of the way.  We found one 4ft spot and tried it but it was not large enough.  Finally, about 8:00pm I look over and see mast lights off to our left.  I look at the charts and it says the water depth is 1 to 2 feet.  I think outloud, ” I wonder what they know we don’t know”.  Rusty immediately responds with, “Hey” and does a hard left, slowly.  I am thinking, “Sheeish, I don’t want to do this”.  But as usual, Rusty made a good decision.  He sounds our way in and finds a good spot.  Shortly, we are hailed by one of the other boats, “Rum Time” who we had met in Georgetown, Great Exuma’s at the Cruiser Regatta last year.  They cautioned us about a sandbar, (which we saw on the chart) and told us of another way to navigate into what is called Pecks Lake.  With our draft we were fine so we were in for the night.  We had so much adrenaline pumping that we both had trouble sleeping.  About 1:00am we had a rainshower and I got up and took the rugs up and brought our seats in. 

That brings us to this morning which has been uneventful.  We have 72 miles to make today.  We have 7 bridges in the next 15 miles.  The first 4 are on request so they will not slow us down but the next 3 only open on the hour and 1/2 hour and they will slow us down a bit.  Ah well, we will get there when we get there.  Karen does not arrive until 2:00pm tomorrow so all is good. 

I have learned two important lessons from this experience.  One, I need to make a checklist just like you have on a personal aircraft that I check off  “BEFORE” any voyage other than a day trip.  If I had that checklist I would have remembered we did not have a Q-Beam on board and retified that situation.  Second,  “ALWAYS, ALWAYS check your guides and charts BEFORE changing coarse.  Another important tip is to ALWAYS check weather, which I did.  Funny, the forecast called for a 10% chance of rain tonight.  We had rain last night and fairly high winds this morning….I am glad we were not outside.  God continues to protect us…..

I have some pictures from this mornings sunrise but I can only post pictures with the computer that is running Sea Clear at the moment so I will have to post those later. 
Sea Yawl Later!

Linda

These Photo’s are of our anchorage at Rockhouse Creek and of us leaving that anchorage and going under Coronado Bridge.  We have to pass through numerous bridges and when looking at that number it might dissuade you from taking the ICW but we have not found it a problem in all the years we have traversed the ICW.  Get a Skipper Bob’s guide (realize it is not always current) and time your trip accounting for the bridges scheduled openings or more importantly that you do not arrive at one of their restricted times which is usually for morning and evening work traffic.  It is not hard to do and we rarely have to wait on a bridge.  It is really kind of fun to keep track of the schedules.  We also use Sea Clear which I highly reccomend.  It is a free software that with a UBS plug in device lets you know Exactly where you are on the charts.  We have found it very accurate and it takes a lot of worry out of traveling in areas with shoals or shallows.   If anyone has questions about either of these items or anything else for that matter, just contact us here, facebook or our email and we are happy to answer any questions.  Happy sailing (or motoring..lol)

We have been cruising long enough and far enough that for the Florida coast and the Exuma’s I thought I had seen it all. Correction!  This was so unusual that at first I was not sure WHAT I was seeing.  The Florida ICW is really beautiful.  It has untouched land but it mostly has very beautiful homes all along the ICW.  Frequently you will see some of these homes for sale.  The above pictured house had a “For Sale” sign posted which of course is not unusual…What was unusual is that on the roof of the otherwise well kept house was a Flock of BUZZARDS.  By the time I realize what I was seeing and grabbed the camera the best shot had passed me by but you can still see a few of the two plus dozen buzzards perched on the house as though they were waiting for the next tenant.   I am not superstitious at all but I don’t think I would enter a house to even look at it if as I approached the house I saw the roof littered with awaiting buzzards.   LOL!!

We passed Cape Canaveral and Cocoa Beach today on our way South.   In spite of adverse current for much of the day we made over 60 miles today.  When we struck out I noticed a helping current for the first time in 3 days….. that lasted a full 600 yards until we rejoined the ICW.  Between Jacksonville and Titusville… apparently the ICW flows North all the time…..  This morning I was motorsailing to beat the band… and a butterfly passed me……   that’s right!  Now he was smart, he drafted me on the low side to pass… but he did it!  That was disheartening.

After lunch we entered Indian River, where the ICW is wide, the current didn’t effect us as much and the winds that were there could be better used.  More on the day’s trip later, I’m about to go stretch out my back… but we motorsailed sun up to sun down for our longest day yet.  The second half of the day we held close to 7 knots and stacked up the miles.

More later…. Rusty

You can not visit St Augustine without hearing the name Henry Flager. His influence and love of the city is pervasive so I thought for those fellow history enthusist such as myself, I would share a little of what I learned about Henry Flager.

Henry Flager was born in New York in 1830, made and lost his fortune the first time in the grain industry. Mr. Flager made his fortune the second time by being a founding partner, along with John D Rockefeller, and “the brains” behind Standard Oil (now known as Exxon and Mobil).  Standard Oil was the largest and most profitable corporation in the world for more than a century.

As successful as Mr Flager’s professional life was, his personal life was fraught with great personal sorrow.  He married Mary Harkness in 1852 and their first child, Jennie Louise, was born in 1855.  Jennie died during childbirth at the age of 34.  The child did not survive. Grief stricken, Flager engaged over a thousand workers who worked around the clock to construct the Presbyterian church in St Augustine as a memorial to Jennie.  The church was completed in a little over 300 days as planned so a memorial serve could be conducted on the 1st anniversary of his daughters death.  Mary and Henry’s second child, Carrie, was born in 1858 but died at three years of age.  Henry had one surviving child, a son born in 1870.

Mary had health issues for many years and in an effort to improve her health the Flager’s spent the summer of 1878 in Jacksonville Fla. They loved the town but found transportation and hotel accommodations inadequate. Mary’s health did not improve and she died in May of 1878.  Two years later he married Ida Shourds and spent their honeymooned in St Augustine and again loved the city but found accommodations lacking.  Ida suffered from a mental illness and eventually had to enter an asylum in 1895.  He married Mary Kenan in 1901 and moved to Palm Beach where he continued his projects….but that story is for another day.

Henry saw great potential in Florida with it’s temperate climate as a huge tourist state.  Flager left his active role in Standard Oil and his love affair and development of Florida began and continued until his death in at the age of 83.

Flager’s first project was the 540 room luxury hotel the Ponce de Leon.  It was built in the Spanish Renaissance Style which would influence the future architecture in St Augustine.  He hired Louis C Tiffany to decorate the interior of the hotel.  Tiffany’s work can be seen in several of Flager’s projects.  The Flager estate houses the largest “still installed” tiffany windows in existence today.   The appraised value of the windows is 38 million dollars.  In 1968 this famously successful hotel became the centerpiece of the newly formed Flager College, nestled in the middle of the historic district of St Augustine. Flager recognized the need for transportation to his hotels so he purchased the Jacksonville – St Augustine and Hailfax Railroad that would eventually become Florida East Coast Railway.  You could board in New York and 36 hours later be out of the snow and in Florida.

Flager was also known for being responsible for building two other churches in the historic district of St Augustine.  Flager wanted the property that the Methodist Church was sitting on for a hotel so he approached the church and said he would build them another church on another site, which he did.  The Baptist apparently thought “well he helped the Methodist, maybe he will help us”.  He did but with stipulations.  He gave them $10,000 which they had to match and had to complete the building project in one year.  One last stipulation was they could build a bell tower if they wanted, but they could never put a bell in it.   All three churches, the Presbyterian, the Methodist and the Baptist, were all within blocks of each other and Flager did want the Baptist bell to conflict with the massive tube organ in his monument to his daughter Jennie, the Presbyterian Church.

We have been here in St Augustine now for two days and will be leaving with a strong desire to return.  I was totally unprepared for the enchanting qualities of this historical city.  We took a slip, which for us is a rarity, but it proved to be such a good decision.  The St Augustine Municipal Marina is clean, well-ran, well-equipted and extraordinarily friendly, a quality we found greeted us at every corner.  The eagerness to be helpful and engaging seemed almost contagious.  For example, today on the train tour, in less than two hours we had lunch with a lady who invited us to dock at her home on the water in Annapolis and enjoyed a wine tasting with the owners of Flats Fishing Co  from Talleshasse Florida who invited us to be their guest on a fishing trip.  We exchanged emails and have every intention of reconnecting with these new “friends”.  I will be back!  The next post will include photos and a short history lesson.

Sea Yawl Later!

Linda