Daytona to St. Augustine (Days 19 & 20)

Saturday, May 2nd

Air temp 63, water temp 67, winds N @ 10

46 nautical miles today, 398 total from Marathon

I hate setting an alarm for the morning.  Not having worked a 9-5 job in 15 years, I've really gotten used to sleeping until I'm not tired anymore.  Plus, sometimes I wake up an hour before the alarm and can't get back to sleep because I'm waiting for the alarm.

Laura took this pretty sunset picture last night.  You can see the last crane working on the new bridge.

This morning we had the alarm set for 6am.  I woke up at 4:30 and never got back to sleep.  I know this puts me in a bad mood all day so I purposely tried to be nice and Laura looked the other way when I wasn't.  That's one of our secrets for spending 24 X 7 together.

Anchor up at 6:30am.  We passed through under the new Memorial bridge and the Main Street lift bridge opened for us as we arrived.  Then it was set cruise RPM on Gertrude (our Perkins diesel) and relax until the power-boaters and local boats come out to play.

Autumn Borne had their anchor up and fell in behind us just passed the Seabreeze Bridge.

When we are cruising everyday like this, we get passed by the same powerboats every morning.  They are faster but run shorter days - they leave their marinas later in the morning and stop earlier in the afternoon.  So, we end up ahead of them each morning and around 10-11am they all pass us again.  It's a familiar ICW dance that we are very used to.

As expected, it was a quiet morning on the waterway until around 10am.  Being a beautiful, calm Saturday, lots of pleasure boats were expected and they didn't disappoint.  It seemed like we would get passed by 6 or 7 zooming boats then, about an hour later, the same group would zoom back the other way.  Most of the bigger boats were nice to us - they slowed down so we wouldn't get a big wake - but one big (40+ foot) SeaRay in particular was a nut-job.  He beeped his horn for a warning then passed us at 20-25 knots throwing our 42,000 pound sailboat up, down and around the ICW.  A few hours later he came back the other way and did the same thing.  Did blowing his horn make him feel better about swamping us?

What a beautiful day!  Not enough wind off the bow so we couldn't get help from our sails, but no complaints about the weather.  Here is a picture of Autumn Borne following us with the georgeous blue water and sky.

I always try to include a couple picture of the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW) and what our day is like.  As we approached Mantanzas Inlet, we saw this power boat pulling another one off the beach with a long line.  I guess the tide had gone down unexpectedly.

A couple hours later, as we approached St. Augustine, we passed a very popular beach-boating spot on the ICW.  This picture is just a small section of the party.  Maybe a little social-distancing here...

We approached the St. Augustine City Marina around 3pm.  I called and received our reserved mooring assignment on the south side of the bridge and Dean called and got one on the north side of the bridge.  A few minutes later Laura had rigged both mooring lines even though the wind and current were making it very hard for me to hold the boat next to the morning.  Nice job Baby!

After configuring the boat for mooring life (turn off instruments, turn on wind generator and solar panels, bring binoculars, books, phones and iPad downstairs, etc.) we dropped the dinghy and motored over to pick up Dean and Sue.  Our dinghy is easier to deploy than theirs and we have plenty of room for 4.

Dean and I paid for our moorings and we decided to walk to Winn Dixie for groceries.  It was a pleasant 2 mile walk through town and down US1.

What a different town from all our other visits.  With the lock-down from COVID-19, it was like the town was deserted.  No college students, no red tour trolleys and almost no people walking around.  Usually it is wall-to-wall people here on the road and sidewalks.

No problems with groceries and I even picked up a few minor things from West Marine in the same mall.  I ordered an Uber XL (larger vehicle) and Dennis arrived 8 minutes later to bring us and our groceries back to the marina.

Too much stuff for all of us in the dinghy so I took Dean, Sue and their groceries back to Autumn Borne then went back to the marina for Laura and our chow.  Back at the boat we hauled everything from the dinghy to the walkway, then over the combing into the cockpit, down down the stairs to the galley, then Laura put everything away.  Groceries by dinghy takes a lot of work.

We had a rotisserie chicken we bought from Winn Dixie for dinner (it was juicy and flavorful) along with a few veggies.  After a couple Netflix shows (good Wi-Fi here) we hit the sack early.  I slept excellent for over 8 hours after a short sleep last night and long day.

Sunday, May 3rd

Air temp 61, water temp 74 (after Sun for a few hours), winds SE @ 5

Spent the day on the mooring in St. Augustine.

Another beautiful day on Second Wind with not much on our agenda.  I'm going to take a side-track a bit and write about our health and eating habit changes.  If you're only interested in the cruising / sailing part of our blogs, feel free to skip down to "Back to our cruising life -".

After all the work we do to keep the boat in shape, we also try to keep ourselves healthy - sometimes more successful than others to be honest.  In early December, I decided my big gut was getting in the way of things so started doing sit-ups, crunches and leg-lifts every morning.  I gradually worked my way to 100 reps and have only missed maybe 4 days since then.  It's a great way to start the morning and get the blood pumping.  I also stopped drinking coffee in the morning because it seems my heart is not happy with it since my ablation surgery in 2018.  Does 100 sit-ups = 1 cup of coffee?  It does for me.

Before we left on the boat 14 years ago, I recorded 11, 30 minute aerobic work-outs with Gilad called Total Body Sculpt and have since moved them to the computer for playing.  I rotate through them every once in a while when we have the time.  During the commercials (which we've memorized of course) I do push-ups and have added free weights for upper arm strength at the end.  These exercises are not every day or even every other day.  Sometimes I do 3 or 4 a week and sometimes none.  But, I do try to keep them going so I can keep going.  I did one this morning in our salon.

Laura and I have also changed our eating habits a lot.  We haven't totally given up the bad things (like carbs) but we do limit them to small portions and the good things (like veggies) to larger portions.  That way you don't feel like your being punished or loosing out on the "good" stuff.  For example, Laura makes these awesome chocolate, cherry cookies with a dark chocolate drizzle.  Am I making you hungry now?  They are my favorite and she makes several dozen at a wack then freezes them.  I eat ONE for dessert.  It satisfies my craving for chocolate and fills that last little crack in my tummy.   I've also been not eating snacks at night (thank you to my brother-in-law Steve for that great example).  Seems to be a lot of literature lately on intermittent fasting where you basically eat for 10 hours a day then don't eat anything for the other 14.  There is lots of health benefits from this and, once again, I can testify to feeling much better from it.  I've only been eating from 9am to 7pm.  Here was my lunch today (1/2 turkey sandwich) that is typical of the last several months.

I am bragging a little but also want to be a better example for my friends and family. I feel much better over-all and I'm doing many things I couldn't do in December like bend over and tie my sneakers with holding my breath.  As we get older, it seems like you can't do many of the physical things you used to.  I don't think that's completely true.  We just let ourselves get out of shape.

Back to our cruising life - Dean and I were texting in the morning and he was eventually able to stay on his mooring for tonight.  We decided to go back into town after lunch, take a walk and look for ice cream.  We've been wanting ice cream for a long time and haven't found an open shop for the last couple months.  Today was the day!

We picked up Dean and Sue with the dinghy and motored into the marina.  As we walked into town, I took this picture of Dean, Sue and Laura.  This is downtown St. Augustine and this park in the background is usually packed with people.  Very empty today....

We walked into Old Town and there were a few visitors around.  Most of the stores were closed but we did find ice cream!  Here is Laura outside of Tedi's Ice Cream.

After a nice tour of downtown, we walked back to the marina.  Dean and Sue invited us onboard for a cocktail which we accepted and had a nice afternoon on Autumn Borne.  Then back to our boat for the rest of the day.  Steaks on the grill tonight if the wind doesn't blow out the BBQ.

Tomorrow we plan on heading off-shore for a day of sailing up to St. Mary's inlet and maybe a couple days in Fernandina Beach.  The weather looks excellent for the run up the ocean tomorrow with west winds 10-15 and long seas less than 2 feet.  I'll let you know how it goes!