Our trip from Cumberland Island to St. Augustine was much more civilized this year than last – it started out rainy and raw, but St. Mary’s Inlet was relatively calm (still bouncy, but short-period 2-3′ waves rather than short period breaking 10’s!) and it was so calm on open water that we didn’t even bother to raise the sails.
The big challenge came in finding a spot for the couple of days before our mooring reservation started at the Municipal Marina. We couldn’t get onto a mooring early, the anchorage by the fort was full, the anchorage south of the mooring field was full, and the Vilano Bridge anchorage was also full… and I don’t like that anchorage anyway. We were able to set the anchor there on Silent Sky, but we tried last year on Windara and couldn’t get it to bite.
There’s a couple shoals over in that area, and Aqua Maps shows deep water in between. There were a few other boats anchored there so we decided to give it a shot, and it turned out to be a great spot. It would be sucky in an east wind, but otherwise it’s pretty well protected, the current isn’t quite as bad as other places, and the holding is good.
We couldn’t get a mooring or a slip for two consecutive weeks, so we split our time between a mooring for the first week and and a slip at Marker 8 Hotel & Marina for the second. We lucked out and ended up in the north mooring field with a fantastic view of the Nights of Lights display and a relatively short dinghy ride into the marina dock – which turned out to be good, since our engine was still giving us problems. We finally realized that there’s a slight kink in the hose, so if we don’t have the gas can positioned forward so that the hose is stretched out, the kink limits the fuel supply to the engine and eventually starves it. Since we figured that out, the engine’s been running just fine.
Most of the week was rainy and/or chilly but it was a good chance to see how our new solar is working, and it turns out the answer is, really well. Even with overcast skies, we were able to put in a modest amount of power. Friday night was nice enough that we could sit out in the cockpit and enjoy the mayhem – there were a ton of tour boats, private boats, and lots of people walking the waterfront, and it was fun to watch it all from a distance with some hot chocolate. There was some kind of event at the fort where they were doing guided torchlight tours and cannon demonstrations (which kept startling the heck out of us!).
I pulled out our Christmas lights and our “tree” (a sad little thing I found at Target our first cruising season – it’s not really even a Christmas tree), and Windara is now dressed for the season. Once we got on the dock, I even set up Louie, who I found hiding in a drawer after I swore he’d gone missing over the summer.
We finally got to meet a couple I know from Instagram – another friend who I’d met through Instagram had introduced us and we’d hoped to meet up in Annapolis in last summer, but timing didn’t work out. They invited us over to their adorable Baba 30 and their friends who were on the next mooring over joined us – and they turned out to be Totem coaching clients (again, such a small world!).
Going to dinner at Llama has become a tradition for us when we’re here. With its 10 tables, it’s always a challenging reservation (we somehow managed to get in without a reservation the first time, but that was pure, dumb luck), but it got even harder recently since it was named one of the top 100 restaurants on Open Table. We started with the anticuchos, which is chargrilled beef heart skewers served over giant Andean corn and golden potatoes, served in a smoke-filled dome. When they remove the dome, they “fan out” the smoke as a nod to the street food roots of the dish, and it’s the most wonderful smell. I had the arroz con mariscos and Chris got the mar y tierra, which we paired with a bottle of the Owl and the Dust Devil, and we finished out with the dessert special, which was a mousse served in a terra cotta pot. The presentation is always top notch, and each course is as much a feast for the eyes as it is for the stomach.
Our friends Jess and Kevin from Huguenot have a house here, and we’ve been trying to meet up here since we started cruising. They both happened to be here this time, so we got together at Blue Hen Cafe, which is super cute and serves an awesome breakfast (the peach butter they serve with their biscuits is SO good!). It’s a bit off the beaten path, but there’s always a wait for a table. It was fun to catch up with friends from home since that’s something I really miss when we’re traveling.
After breakfast, we cast off the mooring lines and fueled up before moving over to our slip at Marker 8. We timed the tide well and it was uneventful. It turns out that we know several people here – the boat next to us belongs to the captain of the schooner Freedom who we met last year, there’s a couple we’d met in Hope Town, and one of the people I follow on Instagram arrived the day after us – we’d been just missing each other in various locations for a while now, so it was nice to finally get to meet in person. It’s also great to see a group of people around our age out doing this.
One of the fun things about being at Marker 8 is that they have a happy hour every day with appetizers, and it’s open to hotel guests and marina guests alike, and you never know who you’ll end up chatting with. I ran into a lovely couple from Chicago out at the fire pit and started chatting about boat life and ended up talking for a couple hours. I sometimes forget just how unusual this lifestyle is to most people, and I had fun answering their questions and sharing a bit of what it’s like to live out here.
We spent Saturday strolling the town – checking out some shops, going wine tasting, and making the trek down to Chop Shop, one of my favorite markets along our travels. They have a fantastic butcher counter, but they also stock wine and beer, cheese, spices, breads and some limited veggies. Sunday was mostly a boat work day, but we wandered into town for lunch and made it back just in time to avoid getting soaked by a downpour. Later in the day, Susan and Jim from Liberty stopped by on their way back to their boat after picking up their camper, and we had a fun evening catching up at Osprey Tacos and Old Coast Ales.
As is par for the course this season, we went to fire up the generator the other night and it stalled out after a few minutes under load – turns out the belt had snapped, so we had to order a new one. So glad that solar’s been working out for us! We (and by “we” I mean Chris) tried to fix the heads this weekend and both require rebuild kits that we don’t have in the million spares aboard – so in the meantime, there’s no functioning head on the boat (thankfully we’re in the marina this week!).
Chris had to head back to NY for work this week, so I’m starting our pre-Bahamas prep. We still have a while before we cross, but this is the last time we’ll be on a dock and it’s much easier to deal with getting packages and doing a bigger provisioning run. I’m also working through our laundry, which we hadn’t done since we left Huguenot. We’ve ordered a bunch of stuff – coffee, boat parts, cat food – and our new jib should be here on Friday! I just got confirmation that our pet permit has been processed, so pending his pre-departure appointment, he’s good to go. We’re getting there!
