Now in St. Augustine

We departed Vero Beach, some cruisers call it Velcro Beach because it is hard to leave, on Tuesday. We didn't have any problem getting out into the ICW channel. We were planning on stopping at Melbourne but had some good current with us so we went all the way to Cocoa. The anchorage there was large and there were plenty of boats that stayed there for the night. The wind was really blowing but our trusty SuperMax anchor held us in place.

On Wednesday we had planned to stop at Daytona Beach but we didn't like the anchorage and the decided to go on to New Smyrna Beach. When we passed by the area on the ICW where the Ponce inlet is there was a lot of shoaling and we scraped bottom in just 4 feet 9 inches of water. Our boat draws about 4 feet 10 inches. Cruisers just call that dense water and plow through. We were able to get through it and into deeper water OK. We stopped for the night in a small creek named Rockhouse Creek just to the north of New Smyrna Beach. There were already 5 boats in the small anchorage and 3 more came in after us. The anchorage was very quiet and we had a beautiful sunset. We also had about 5 dolphins frolicking around the boat. Two of them looked as if they were putting on a show for us, jumping out of the water together and slapping their tails.

We were up at 6AM preparing to leave for St. Augustine. We raised anchor at 7:15 and departed. We had several bascule bridges that we had to have open for us on this leg. One particular bridge was having work done on it and we had to wait for about 3o minutes. The area to loiter was very small and it got shallow real fast as you got near shore. Two other sailboats came up behind us and that made things even crazier with all three of us waiting. Just past this bridge we saw 3 manatees. The only other manatees we had seen was the previous day in a small cove off of Haulover canal.

We had thought about anchoring in the Matanzas River where there is an old fort to visit but that area was terribly shoaled in. There were several new green buoys set out to guide us around the shoaling. The markers took us to about 100 feet from the western shore. The depth got down to about 5 feet 6 inches in the area we went over. It may have been a little deeper closer to shore but it was difficult wanting to go that close. Once we passed the Matanzas inlet we had a 1.5 knot current pushing us north. We were doing about 8.5 knots. We covered the last 15 miles to St. Augustine in less than 2 hours. Earlier in the day we had a 1.2 knot current against us and were only able to go 5.8 knots.

We are in a slip at the St. Augustine Municipal Marina and will be staying for a few days. There is so much history here and things to do. St. Augustine is the oldest permanently inhabited city in the U. S.