Moving north…

April 28 – 30

Spent a day in St. Augustine doing the tourist stuff. Really neat town with lots to see in the oldest city in America. The ship below is a replica of the Santa Maria which Christopher Columbus sailed to the New World. Replica’s of the Nina and the Pinta have been in Louisville before but never this vessel. This ship was sailed from Spain, duplicating Columbus’ journey to these shores. Quite small when you think about it’s journey.

We visited the Castillo Del San Marcos, a Spanish fort built in the 1500’s. It took 23 years to build this fort.

This is a Spanish mortar, meant to lob cannonballs at nearby enemy.

This is a Spanish cannon that could hurl a 32 lb canonball 3 miles. Look closely at the bottom right of the image. This cannon was built is 1755

A reenactment of the firing of a cannon. Obviously no cannonball was used and only 8 ounces of gunpowder. This particular type of cannon would have been loaded with 3 pounds of powder and a 6 pound iron ball. The reenactment was completely done in Spanish except the part where the guy yells COVER YOUR EARS! Much more impressive when standing 20 feet away.

The Flagler Presbyterian Church, founded by Henry Flagler, founder of Standard Oil and the Florida East Coast Railway. As the story goes, his infant daughter passed away at or near birth so he built this church in her honor. The child is buried within the church.

This terribly handsome fellow (not the statue) stands before the statue of Juan Ponce de Leon, founder of Florida.

Interesting photo’s. At the time I had a reason for taking them. My advanced case of “Anheusers” acting up…

Building a dock

FINALLY met up with a Looper. Tom and Suzy Q on Tom’s boat ALONS ‘Y. Don’t know what it means. Interesting folks and Suzy has an affinity for bourbon

Debbie has informed me she wants a house at a lake. Wonder if she would settle for this one on the ICW outside of St. Augustine?

Adorable. Dad paddleboarding with his daughter. Slowed to a crawl. Did not want to rock that paddleboard.

If you are in the market for a sailboat cheap. I can hook you up.

We are now in Georgia having left Florida behind. In some areas of the ICW there is realy skinny water. In one particular area a fellow looper gave me the coordinates to navigate through this tricky area. The coordinates worked beautifully but as you can see they took me WAY out of the normal navigation channel. White is deep. Blue, not so much. But in this case 24 feet deep.

Navy ship in dry dock

Don’t know what type of naval vessel this is.

Some beautiful homes along the ICW, but check out how long the docks are. Must be a quarter of a mile! Really small boats at the end of the dock. Must have spent all of their money on the docks!

Paper mill on the way to our anchorage Monday night.

Which one is Jennie???

Pretty cool Civil War era fort on Georgian coast.

Our anchorage on Monday night.

For dinner we had meatloaf that Betty Netherton prepared. She did this for me cuz my beloved will NOT make meatloaf. BILL LOVED IT!!!

THANKS BETTY!!!

Passed a Naval shipyard on our way to Jekyll Island on Tuesday. That’s a small gun on the bow of that guard boat.

Coupla Coasties on station.

Tide was out when we got to Jekyll Island. At least a 5 foot tidal swing. We pulled in here to wait for the tide to come back in. I really like having a lot of water under WB.

Big time shrimper.

Take a look at the forward section of this dredging barge. that device chews up the bottom and then sucks away the muck to maintain the channel depth.

Passed through a nature preserve in Georgia today on our way to our anchorage off Sapelo Island. It seemed to go on forever. Probably 30 miles. At 9MPH I guess that is forever!

Saw this helicopter today. 2 guys were supended at least 50 feet beneath it working on a really high power line.

Our anchorage Tuesday night.

This short 5 second video shows the current we are anchored in. The tide is on its way out. Tomorrow we will get underway at 7 AM with the current and the boat in the opposite direction.

Series of photo’s of the sunset.