Cruising the ICW

Today marked a significant day in our adventure, for me anyway.  Today we crossed the Florida Georgia border.  This is meaningful for me in a number of ways.  First, is that in all my travels in the US, I never was in Georgia.  Not even through Atlanta, where the old joke is that you have to go thru if you're going to Heaven. More importantly though, is that after traveling ~450 miles from Key West we leave a state that I have felt relatively familiar with.  The reality is that it is only the section from Miami to Fort Lauderdale, but still, it is Florida.  Today takes us into uncharted waters for us and an affirmation that our Grand Adventure is solidly underway. We delivered Wendy and Craig from our stop at Amelia Island to Jacksonville Airport yesterday, courtesy of a loaner car from the marina.  That is a nice perk of some of the marinas here that they provide courtesy cars.  Normally used for provisioning runs, but useful for other tasks ...

What a cool place! Certainly a unique part of Florida. St Augustine was the first European settlement in the US, dating from 1565.  Considering the attention that Plymouth gets, with the Pilgrims arriving in 1620, it is very surprising to us that St Aug doesn't get more recognition. As a Spanish settlement, it has a very strong Spanish theme of course, and with our love of Spain, we felt very at home here. We arrived Saint Augustine Monday, the day before Judy's sister Wendy and spouse Craig were due to arrive.  Allowed for a good clean up day and getting prepared for guests for a week.  Wendy and Craig arrived Tuesday late afternoon, with a cool front that had arrived in Northern Florida.  We awoke Wednesday morning to 34F (2C), which was very poor timing for the forward cabin AC/heating unit to give up.  Dealt with that over the next few days but required some extra blankets for a couple of nights. First visits were to scope out the Ponce de Leon hotel,...

Since leaving South Florida (Lighthouse Point Yacht Club), we have traveled approx 230 nautical miles over the past 6 days, with stops in North Palm Beach, Fort Pierce, Melbourne, Titusville, New Smyrna Beach, and Palm Coast, arriving St Augustine today, Monday.  We pushed on to here to meet Judy's sister Wendy and spouse Craig, to spend a week with us.  We have seen a lot, if from a distance, so this note will just be a brief summary.  Weather has been variable, with generally sunny skies, but some cloud, rain at night, and even a bit of fog one day.  And cooling enough that I have been wearing my light sweater for some parts of the day, but then longing for a pool at the end of the day due to the heat. From Lighthouse Point to North Palm Beach, we were still in the land of large ICW front homes for a number of hours.  Up to about Boynton Beach, the ICW is still a fairly narrow canal, but then transitions to Lake Worth.  The lake is as much as a mile w...

We spent a long weekend at Lighthouse Point Yacht Club, arriving Thursday and due to leave tomorrow, Tuesday, assuming the weather cooperates.  What a great place to stay.  Beautiful facility, great pool, tiki bar with a Happy Hour, and great staff to help with docking. Tristan arrived Friday night, for another 3 day weekend.  Since he is working in Augusta, it is just as easy for him to join us as it is to return to Toronto for the weekend.  Saturday morning, we took advantage of him having a car to do a provisioning run, which is always appreciated.  After lunch, we spent some time at the pool as it has been really hot here recently.  Even the locals are referring to it as "Summer temperatures".  We even have been running the air conditioning the last few nights to sleep well.  But seems to be cooling off a bit the next few days. We toured Palm Beach area Saturday afternoon, and did a walk around the Flagler museum.  "Whitehall" was o...

We departed Pennekamp State Park in Key Largo under what seems to be constant sunny skies, and breezy conditions.  We planned to stop at a recommended snorkeling spot on the out reef, but by the time we got there concluded it was too rough to hang on the mooring buoy, with 3 to 4 foot seas.  We continued north and inshore, headed for Biscayne Bay, and the water well inside the reef calmed significantly.  We were passing by a shoal area and that was marked with a wreck, and mooring buoys, so decided to stop there for a swim and lunch.  The snorkeling yielded lots of fish, but the wreck was on the south side and a fair swim from the boat.  I wasn't comfortable leaving the boat, on the windward side of the rocks for long, so we didn't see the wreck. We continued north up Hawk Channel and then crossed into the Bay-side at Adams Key.  Another narrow channel, with a shoaling entrance, but much calmer on the Biscayne Bay side. Anchored for the night with a numbe...

Since leaving Key West, we have had a couple of very interesting experiences, including our first big "weather event".  We stayed an extra day in Key West after Tristan left, partially because we enjoyed it there, and partially due to still windy conditions which made for a not great travelling day.  We could have departed and anchored, but it was so easy at the marina, and made use of the nearby pool for the afternoon. Also forgot to mention in our previous post that the America 2 is there, which is a re-creation of the original America that won what became known as the America's Cup, the legendary sailing trophy, Our departure from Key West was somewhat melancholic as this was our furthest south-west point, and this represented the turn north on our travels.  We decided to run all the way back to Bahia Honda, near Marathon, as it was a fine day, and the interim anchorages hadn't been highly spoken of by other boaters.  We arrived at BH late afternoon, and had ...

Moved over to Key West old town harbour last Thursday, and here thru Monday.  Tristan joined us Friday night, and left early Monday to get a flight back to his work location near Atlanta. Key West has many stories, but probably the most important to its development is the Florida East Coast Railway, which extended the railway 150 miles from Miami to Key West, in the early 1900's, over what they called the Overseas Railway.  Difficult building conditions and numerous bridges required almost 7 years of construction time. At first one's thoughts are how could the promoter have thought that could be economic.  But in the context of the time, with the planned opening of the Panama Canal, the connections to the closest US port, and the importance of a growing tourist class to bring to the related luxury hotels (a la CP and the grand hotels across Canada), the undertaking becomes comprehensible.   Key West was the largest city in Florida in the late 1800's,...