Back from Hatteras

We are back on the boat at Salt Ponds Marina after spending a week in a beach house on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. The house is located at the south end of Hatteras Island right across from the Ocracoke Island ferry terminal and the U.S. Coast Guard station. Sandy's brother, two sisters and their spouses were all there. The ocean beach was beautiful with soft clean sand. The surf was up most of the days as the wind was blowing 15-20 every day. We mainly swam in the pool at the house but did long walks on the beach. We ate lots of seafood at Dinky's and Teach's restaurants. On the nights we didn't go out to dinner each couple cooked the meal for all the others. Needless to say we ate really good. The house has a karaoke machine so we had a karaoke night. It was pretty wild. We all agreed that what happens at Hatteras stays at Hatteras.

There are historical markers along the island drive. One of them at the south end of Hatteras is about the U.S.S Monitor, the Union Civil War iron clad boat. It sunk in a storm just 16 miles off the coast from where we were staying. We wanted to learn more about the Monitor so when we returned to Hampton we went to the Mariners Museum in Newport News where the remains of the Monitor are being saved. The Monitor's resting place was discovered in 1974, 112 years after it's sinking in 1862 on New Years Eve. It was not salvaged until 2002. The ship was upside down on the bottom in 250 feet of water. The gun turret was the largest piece salvaged and is resting in a bath of solution to keep it from rusting anymore than it is. Both of the guns were recovered, the anchor and some chain, 100's of other smaller items, the steam engine and the remains of two sailors. We spent almost 4 hours just touring the Monitor section of the museum. You walk thru a timeline from when the Monitor was first designed and constructed, the battle of Hampton Roads where she battles the Confederate iron clad the Virginia, thru the sinking, the discovery of her resting place and the recovery. There was much more to see but we didn't spend a lot of time on the other areas.

Here are some photos of the house on Hatteras.

Boat Chores

We have been in Hampton Virginia at the Salt Ponds Marina for about five weeks now. It seems like all we have done is boat chores. It is almost like we went back to work. So far this is what we have accomplished:

Refinished all the exterior wood. We had to take some down to bare wood and reapply the Cetol Natural Teak finish. Other parts we just cleaned and recoated. We now have four coats on all of the wood surfaces.

Oiled the interior wood. The interior of the boat is mostly teak wood. Over time it dries out so we had to apply teak oil. It looks much better now. Just like new.

Replaced six house batteries. Our Lifeline AGM batteries were almost nine years old. We got plenty of use out of them but it was time to change them because they were not holding the charge. We replaced with six new Lifeline AGM group 27 100 amp hour batteries. Those suckers are heavy so we used the spare main halyard and a winch to lift them out onto the dock. We took the old ones to a auto parts store and they will dispose of them.

The light bulbs in both cockpit lazerettes were burned out so they got replaced.

The lug cover on the alternator had melted during our overheating do to the corrosion on the lug. We replaced the rubber cover. While I was doing this I accidentally touch one of the battery leads to a ground and it blew a 150 amp fuse. It took me two hours to find where the fuse was, behind the house battery switch, which had to be unscrewed and removed to see it.

My SSB radio was not transmitting as well as I would have liked so I added additional ground plane.

My anchor roller, which is made of a hard rubber, was split open. I ordered a new one and installed it.

My main anchor chain has painted marks so I can gauge how much chain is put out. The paint was coming off so we repainted it.

The fan in the head gave up so it was replaced.

I replaced the topping lift on the whisker pole with a larger line. The previous line was too small for proper handling.

We made a support to mount to the port forward stanchions in order to strap fuel jugs to. When we go over to the Bahamas we will carry additional gasoline and diesel fuel.

My Garmin chart platter accepts SD cards that have additional chart information and photos. I had two of them, one for the Florida and Bahamas area and one for Georgia to New Jersey. The Florida/Bahamas SD card was not working properly. I sent them both back to Garmin and will receive free updates for both.

Our list of work items is slowly getting whittled down. Next week we are taking off from boat life and spending the week in a beachfront house on the Outer Banks of North Carolina. When we get back we will be taking the boat up to Zimmerman Marine in Cardinal Virginia, about 24 miles north to get help with a hydraulic leak on my W-H auto pilot. I know the service manager there and have a lot of confidence that they can find the leak.

We did take a few days off from work when the temperature outside was really hot. It has reached 100 degrees with the THI up around 108. We went to tour some of the historical sites in the area. We have been to Historic Jamestowne, where the first colonists landed in 1607 and to Yorktown and the Yorktown battlefield where George Washington and the American and French armies defeated the British which was the end of colonialism. In the weeks to come we will be returning to the retirement life and be doing more touring. Although living on a boat and cruising is just fixing boat things in exotic places.

Oriental to Hampton

Most of you knew that we were heading to Salt Ponds marina in Hampton to stay at least through July. We left Oriental on Sunday May 30th. There are two routes to get to the Chesapeake Bay. The Virginia Cut route or the Dismal Swamp Canal route. Everyone we talked to said that you have to do the Dismal Swamp at least once so we decided to go that way.

Our first leg from Oriental took us to Dowry Creek marina near Belhaven NC. We needed to get fuel and pump out our holding tank and this was a recommended marina from another Island Packet owner, thanks Hayden. This leg took us up the Neuse River towards Pamlico Sound. Rather than continuing up Pamlico Sound the ICW cuts off to the west and north up Bay River and into Goose Creek. That creek is mostly a small canal and it spills out into the Pamlicao River. The Pamlico River was about five miles wide. We crossed it and headed up the Pungo River to the marina. The passage was without incident and we had enough wind to sail part of the way. We stayed overnight at Dowry Creek.

On Monday, Memorial Day, we headed into the Alligator River-Pungo River canal. This canal is very narrow, about 150-200 feet wide, and has tree stumps lining the banks. We had to keep a close eye out because every once and a while there would be a tree stump right in the center of the canal. There were other boaters ahead of us and they were nice enough to call them out.

This canal exits into the Alligator River, we didn't see any, which is a pretty good size river. We continued north to a small marina which is right next to route 64. I remember from a 2005 car trip to the Outer Banks going right by this marina before we crossed the Route 64 bridge. The marina wasn't anything to brag about. However, we ended up staying there two nights do to bad weather. There were four other sail boats and eight motor trawlers waiting for good weather also.

We left the Alligator River marina on Wednesday and headed for Elizabeth City NC. This leg took us across the Albemarle Sound. We left the marina around 7:00 AM in order to cross the Sound early as the weather forecast was calling for afternoon winds around 25 knots. We were able to sail across the sound with beam winds around 12-15 knots. A perfect sailing set up. The waves in the sound were 1-2 feet and it would have been very rocky without the sails up. Having the sails up really steadies the boat. We spoke with some trawler people later that day that told us they were getting real tired to the rocky motion when they crossed the sound. After crossing Albemarle Sound we entered the Pasquotank River. There were crab pot buoys everywhere. I think we covered twice the distance we had too because of all the pot dodging we were doing.

Elizabeth City is supposed to be a nice little quaint historical town. To us it seemed pretty depressed and run down. They do have a free dock however and we tied up to the dock at the city park. This was an easy in and out for us as we were right on the end of the seawall.

We wanted to leave Elizabeth City around 6:30 AM on Thursday to make the bridge opening before 7:00. The bridge won't open on demand between 7:00 and 9:30. Right before we untied to leave the seawall two police cars pull onto the bridge and stop with there emergency lights on. I waited for a bit and they didn't leave so I called the bridge tender on the VHF to find out what was going on. He didn't even know they were on the bridge, I think I woke him up, so he went out to peruse the situation. He called me back to tell me there was an injured dog on the bridge and they were waiting for animal control. Just my luck as we needed to leave in order to make the 11:00 AM South Mills lock opening. Luckily everything cleared and we were able to get through the bridge right at 7:00.

The next 17 miles were the weirdest I have ever encountered. The upper Pasquotank River is like being in the African jungle. We felt like Kathern Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart in African Queen. There was a sailboat about a quarter mile ahead of us and one about a third of a mile behind us and we could not see them for most of the route because of all the twists and turns. We could not ever see the where the canal was going because all the trees and brush blended together. It wasn't until we made Turners Cut where the canal straightens out that we finally saw the boat in front of us.

We reached the South Mills lock around 10:30 and it hadn't opened yet. We had to drop an anchor and wait in the canal for the 11:00 opening. Anchor holding was terrible and we did more maneuvering around with the motor than sitting at anchor. Very narrow at that point and we had to keep from swinging into the trees. Once the lock opened there were five boats waiting to go in. We were second. We all tied to the west wall, port side, for the 10 foot lift up to the Dismal Swamp canal level. When the water was filling into the lock the first boat was getting rocked around by the incoming current. A lesson here, never be first into a lock. Once the lock was filled with water we all exited and headed for the Dismal Swamp visitors center where there is a free seawall with room for four boats. It is expected that rafting, where boats tie up side by side, will occur. We stayed there for the night and there were six boats total. Three on the seawall and three rafted to them, we were the center boat on the seawall. The boat in front of us had clipped an overhanging tree and had small branches and leaves on her deck.

The visitors center is very nice and is also a North Carolina welcome center for traffic on Route 17. There is a state park with18 miles of hiking trails. We read warnings about ticks and decided to stay out of the woods. One of the cruisers organized a pot luck dinner that night. We all brought a dish and ate outside at a covered picnic table. All of the cruisers from the other five boats were very nice and interesting people. We had a great time telling where we had been and where we were going.

The next morning we all left together and headed for the Deep Creek lock at the northern end of the canal. Again we had to wait for about 45 minutes for them to open. This lock lowered us 10 feet and we exited. It was much quicker going down than it was raising up. We spent the next four hours heading up the Elizabeth River and out into the James River around Point Comfort, into Chesapeake Bay before entering the inlet for Salt Ponds marina.

We will stay here and do some boat work and explore what this area has to offer by land for through the end of July. Then we will make plans to explore the Chesapeake Bay area.

Here are some photos of this leg of the trip.

Dismal Swamp Canal. The canal is only about 75-100 feet wide in some spots. You have to watch the depth and the height above. The depth never got less than 6.5 feet which was good for us. Had to swerve to avoid floating logs several times.





Here is a part of the upper Pasquotank River. The canal turns at this point but you cannot see the turn until you are right on it.







The bascule bridge just after the lock.








This is the Dismal Swamp visitors center dock with boats rafted together.







The water in the Dismal Swamp is very dark. It looks like dark tea. Because of this it giver off a great reflection. This photo is looking at the tree reflection in the water.






This is the Salt Ponds inlet, photo taken from the land side looking out.







The beach just east of the marina is very nice.








As is the swimming pool.

Some places we've been

Here are some photos of a couple of places we have been and things we have seen.

This is one of the red ICW day markers that indicate where the ICW is going. When going north in the ICW the red markers stay on the port(left) side of the boat. That is for the most part. There are some areas that are channels returning from sea where they are on the starboard (right) side. We need to stay on top of where we are all the time. Just outside the markers the depth can get very shallow. The red markers are triangles and the green markers are squares.


This particular red day marker is lighted and has an osprey nest on it.







Here are a couple of dolphins that were following the boat. We saw a lot of dolphins in the ocean. They also come up into the rivers and sounds.






This is the Whittaker Pointe Marina we are staying in at Oriental N.C. It is fairly new and the facilities are great.







Here is the Whittaker Pointe Marina club house. It has really nice bathrooms and showers. They also have a small laundry room, gas grills and a courtesy car.






This is the Charleston City Marina. It is on the Ashley River on the southwest side of Charleston. We stayed here a couple of nights. We were in a slip at the end near the bottom left of the photo.






This is the Bald Head Island Marina. It is located just inside the Cape Fear inlet. It is also a very nice marina. The island doesn't have a lot of services but it was very relaxing being there.

Passage to Pamlico

Well almost Pamlico. We are at Oriental North Carolina which is on the Neuse River at the south end of Pamlico Sound.

We left Bald Head Island on Friday morning after being there a week. We had a great time going to the beach, climbing the light house and just hanging around the marina. We met two couples that also own Island Packet yachts. Both were from Canada. They had been in the Bahamas and were heading home to Nova Scotia. We all got together for happy hour on Tuesday evening, had drinks and hors d'œuvres. We all told of our sailing tales and laughed at them all. It is amazing how many other couples have very similar experiences as we do. I had mentioned my taking evasive action from the moon rising. One of the ladies said she was trying to hail the planet Mars on the VHF radio. She though it was another sailboat that had come close by. As one other sailor we met says, "There is some weird S#@t that goes on our there at night".

From Bald Head Island we went north to Wrightsville Beach. It was only 28 miles so it was a short day. There were a couple of tricky areas on the ICW with lot's of current that made my adrenaline flow. We stayed at the Wrightsville Beach marina for the night. On Saturday we arose early in order to get through the Wrightsville Beach bascule bridge. The bridge only opens on the hour from 7AM to 7PM. We asked for an opening at 6:30 AM and were on our way to Swansboro N.C. This was a long day covering 54 miles. We had 3 other bridges to get through also. One of them only opens on the hour and we arrived just 10 minutes past so we had to hang out for 50 minutes before we could get through. We had quite a bit of current against us in the morning. Once we past Brown's inlet we had the current going with us and saw speeds up to 8.5 knots. This helped get us to Swansboro by 4:00PM. We were pretty tired so we ate leftover spaghetti and went to bed. On Sunday we knew that there was some bad weather moving into the area and had 48 miles to cover to get to Oriental. We again departed at 6:30 AM. There were no bridges to wait for on this leg. We had the current going with us the entire way from Swansboro to Morehead City. At one point just before the Beaufort inlet we saw 9 knots. Once past the inlet we slowed to 4.8 knots. What a let down but we knew it was coming. The rest of the trip up to Oriental was pretty boring. The route wound it's way through Adams Creek to the Neuse River. There were thunderstorms to our south that were building. We could here the thunder. I checked the weather radar and they were moving to the northeast away from us which was a relief. I could see additional rain moving our direction from New Bern to the west. I was hoping to get to the Whittaker Pointe Marina before the rain reached us. It was a close race. It started to rain just as we were pulling into a slip.

There is some really bad weather heading our way and should be here Tuesday thru Thursday. One forecast says there could be winds up to 65 knots. More likely 30-35 though. I think we will stayed tied to the dock until it passes by. We will leave sometime late in the week and continue north. Our destination is Hampton Virginia where we will take a slip for a couple of months. We plan to explore the Chesapeake Bay from there.

Once in Hampton I am going to fly to Mobile Alabama and pick up our Expedition and bring it up to Hampton so we will have ground transportation. There are lot's of nice land trips we can do in that area.

Resting at Bald Head

We made it to Bald Head Island after a 28 hour sail from Charleston. The winds were lighter than forecast which really hurt our speed. However the seas were very calm which made for a pleasant sail. We had every sail configuration you can imagine trying to get power from the wind. Once we were tied up to the dock we both fell sound asleep for about 3 hours. We slept another 11 hours that night. With only two of us on the boat it is difficult to get a long sleep while underway. I had only slept 3 hours in the previous 32 hour period.

When we left Charleston Harbor going out the inlet I saw a Valiant 42 coming in that looked awfully familiar. Sandy looked through the binoculars and sure enough it was Savage Son sailed by Bob and Bev. They were dock neighbors of ours at Lake Texoma. Their boat left Texoma on a truck the day before ours did. They trucked their boat to a marina near Jacksonville Florida and left for the Bahamas in December. With such a huge ocean the odds of meeting up like that are unfathomable.

We are staying at the Bald Head Island marina for a week. When I checked in with the harbormaster I took off my hat and said "I believe I qualify for a discount". His response was "Cute". I didn't get the discount. They call this island the Nantucket of North Carolina because the homes all look like New England style homes. About 95% of the homes are vacation rental homes. People have to come by either private boat or ferry. Also there are no private cars on the island. Everyone uses golf carts. There are miles of Sandy beaches and a beautiful golf course.

So far we have walked on the beach, which is very wide and about 17 miles long. We didn't walk the entire length. We went to the Old Baldy light house and climbed to the top and we rented a golf cart and drove around to see the island and pick up some groceries. And of course we are doing the one thing that all cruisers do when they go into a marina - laundry. Usually the laundry room is the center of socializing. Not here though. The marina is small and there are not very many cruising boats here. This marina is not on the ICW. If the boat didn't come in the Cape Fear inlet they probably would not stop here. However there is one boat here that we had seen at several stops in Florida and also at Beaufort South Carolina.

Our next move will be up the ICW. We will stop in Oriental which is claimed to be the sailing capital of North Carolina. It has 700 residents and 3000 boats. Oriental is about 125 miles from here so it will take us about 4 days or so.

Visiting Charleston

We departed Beaufort S.C. on Monday. We left a little after 9:00 AM and went to the fuel dock to refuel. We had to wait until 10:00 AM for the next swing bridge opening to head up the ICW. Prior to leaving I had talked to several local boaters from around the area and also the TowBoatUS operator about any shoaling we might encounter. They all said the ICW is passable at low tide the entire way. Well they were wrong. Yep, you guessed right how we found out. All was well until we got to our first cut. The ICW in South Carolina between Beaufort and Charleston goes up and down rivers. There are several cuts or canals between the rivers to pass between them. The first one we came to was the Ashepoo-Coosaw cut. This takes you from the Ashepoo river over into the Coosaw river. Except we were going the other way so we went from the Coosaw to the Ashepoo. We just happen to arrive at the cut entrance just after low tide. Several large motor trawlers had passed through before us. Well we hit bottom at a depth of about 4 and a half feet. We draw around 5 feet. There was a large sailing catamaran behind us and he passed us on our starboard side and went through. Obviously they draw less than us. Another sailboat behind us saw us stick in the mud and made a quick U-turn. Once the catamaran was out of the way we were able to back off the bank. The other sailboat, Calypso, and us talked on the radio and made a plan to wait about 30 minutes for the tide to come back in. We both just circled around together. When another large trawler came by, Life's 2 Short, they went through and radioed to us that they saw 7 feet on their depth sounder. We then continued on our way.

That evening we anchored in the South Edisto river around ICW mile marker 504. There wasn't much protection from the wind and there was about 1.5 knots of current. The current causes waves to slap the bow which makes for a noisy night. All together there were 4 boats anchored here. Three sailboats and a trawler.

On Tuesday morning all of the sail boats left about the same time. We were last leaving at 6:45 AM. The next challange we had was another cut called Elliot's cut which goes into the Wappoo Creek. The Wappoo creek is a short stretch between the Stono river and the Ashley river. The Ashley river is on the west side of Charleston. Elliot's cut is very narrow and the current can really flow fast. When we went through we had a current of 4 knots running with us. I barely had any RPM on the engine and we were doing over 8.5 knots. Once through the cut it was just a short distance to get into Charleston where we are staying at the City Marina.

Tomorrow we are leaving here and heading back out into the ocean. We have a good weather window for the next 3 days with winds forecast to be southwest 10-15 knots and seas 2-3 and 2-4 feet. We will head northeast and reenter the ICW at Cape Fear and the Cape Fear river. We have a reservation at the Bald Head Island Marina which is not even all the way up the Cape Fear inlet. Since I resemble the name of the marina I'm thinking about asking for a discount.

Movin' On

We stayed in St. Augustine for a week. This is a great city if you like history, which we do. The city is the oldest continuous settlement in the U.S. While we were there a friend of mine from High School visited. I hadn't seen her in 39 years and we had a great visit. We had communicated through email for a couple of years so when we finally met again it was very relaxed.

We departed a half hour late because of fog. The first thing we had to do was go through the Bridge of Lions and we could hardly see it even though we were in a slip 100 feet away. The bridge only opens on the hour and half hour so we waited. The fog lifted enough by 7:30 for us to get out of the slip and go through. We continued north up the ICW to Fernandina Beach Florida. This will be the last stop in Florida. Just a couple of miles north is the Georgia border. We decided not to do the ICW in Georgia because we had heard that they had not dredged the ICW for at least three years and it has lots of shoaling areas. One boater told us when he came south he went aground twice and bumped bottom many times. And this was with a shallower draft then ours.

We stayed on a mooring just one night in Fernandina Beach because we had a good weather window to go out the St. Mary's inlet for an overnight sail to Port Royal Sound. We left the mooring around 11:15 AM and went over to the fuel dock to refuel for the trip. We left the fuel dock right at noon and headed out. The inlet channel is about 8 mile long so when you finally get out you can hardly see the low lying Amelia and Cumberland Islands that make up the south and north land masses of the inlet. On the way out we saw lots of dolphins and leaping rays. That's right, leaping rays. There were sting rays leaping out of the water. That was a first for us. I had said to Sandy, "Now ya don't see that sitting at home in your living room".

The wind and seas were pretty calm when we finally got out and made our turn northeast. Wind was about 8-10 knots from the southeast and seas around 1 foot. A very comfortable ride. We were moving about 5-5.5 knots. We had planned for an arrival at the Port Royal Sound outer buoy around 7:30-8:00 the next morning. I wanted to enter during daylight. Sometimes they move the entrance buoys from what is on the chart depending on where the current shoaling is.

As the night progressed the wind was forcast to turn to the southwest and freshen to 10-15 knots. The forcasters were right on with this one. Around 8 PM the wind slowed some and by midnight had clocked around to southwest and picked up speed. Unfortunately so did the seas. The waves became 2-3 feet.

During the night we had heard several distress calls to the coast guard. One was a fire onboard a boat. The boat was in one of the sounds and they were able to get the fire out while another boater came to their aide. Another was an overturned boat about 100 mile southeast of Charleston. When you hear those you thank god it isn't yourself that is having an emergency.

We had to cross the entry channel to Tybee Roads which goes into the Savannah River. It was still dark but I could see several objects on radar right in our course path. There was no moon and it was really dark. I first picked up the objects on radar about 16 miles away. As we approached we could make out that they were anchored ships waiting to go into that channel. We slowed down some since it was getting close to 6 AM when there is a little daylight. Once we could clearly see a path through the anchored ships we continued.

We arrived at the Port Royal Sound buoy at 7:55 AM with winds around 20 knots and seas 2-4 feet. With lots of 4's. The current and wind was pushing us east and when entering the channel we had to have a 20 degree crab to the west of course to stay between the buoys. From the outer buoy it is about 28 miles to reach Beaufort S. C. We arrived right at noon and tied up at the Downtown Marina. It was exactly 24 hours and we were tired. We were not able to get much sleep with the seas so lumpy. 2-4 foot waves are not bad except the period between the waves was very short and the direction was confused, meaning they came from several different directions.

We are going to visit here for a couple of days and then head up the ICW to Charleston.

Well, it's Saturday night and you know what they say about sailors. A sailor likes his rum like a diesel likes its oil.

Never a dull moment!

I forgot to mention an incident that happened enroute between Vero Beach and Cocoa. Either I was to tired when we arrived at St. Augustine or just overjoyed to be at a dock.

About an hour from anchoring at Cocoa one of our monitor alarms went off. We have an alarm for high water, explosive fumes and fire in the engine room. I could hear the alarm from the cockpit and figured it was the fumes alarm which is very sensitive and sometimes goes off if there is a buildup of fumes from the diesel. If that happens I just vent the bilge and it goes off. When I came down below and looked at the monitor it was the engine room fire alarm sounding. Talk about something that will age you 10 years in a heartbeat. I immediately looked through the little access hole into the engine room, this is where you would blast the fire extinguisher into, to see if there were flames or smoke. There were neither. The alarm goes off based on heat. I opened the port engine room door and it was hot in there. I could see that one of the connections on the back of the alternator was sparking and the rubber cover had melted on the top. Also I checked the battery monitor and it showed that the alternator was charging at over 15 volts. It should have been under 14.3 and more like 13.25 since we had been motoring for awhile. I felt the batteries and they were still cool. We lowered the RPM on the engine and I vented the engine room to try to keep it cooler. Once we arrived at Cocoa and anchored I telephoned the Balmar company to get some assistance. I talked to Rick Jones who I had known to have assisted other Island Packet owners in the past. He walked me through how to do some tests to try to determine if the problem was with the alternator or the regulator. We determined it was the alternator so I started checking it out. I was checking the wiring and connections to it. I found one connection that was a little loose but not significantly. The connection that was sparking looked as though it had some corrosion on it so I disconnected the four wires from it and sure enough all of them had some corrosion. The corrosion makes for a very bad connection and the output electricity didn't have anyplace to go. I used sandpaper to clean them off with a little WD40 to break up the rust. Once cleaned I put it all back together and ran some tests checking for proper output to the batteries. Everything looked good, no sparking and the proper charging. The next day on the way to our next anchorage I checked it about every half hour to make sure all was well. So, lesson learned, keep your connections clean.

Each day when we start out I say to Sandy, "What challenges will we face today?" Her response, "If you don't say that maybe we won't have any". Yeah right, this is a boat. Bring On Another Thousand!!

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.