We weren’t able to extend our slip at Marker 8, and the Municipal Marina couldn’t take us until Sunday, so we anchored out Saturday night. With the help of our friends, we left just before low slack. Our original thought was to anchor over by the Vilano Bridge, but the anchorage was pretty busy, and I like to leave more room around the boat than I would in most anchorages since dragging is a reality here. Instead, we ended up in the same spot we anchored when we first arrived – almost exactly.
It was a good thing we’d already decided to stay. Our new jib was supposed to arrive on Friday, but it was delayed and got rescheduled for Monday delivery. It showed up Saturday morning, saving us the trouble of having to get it by dinghy, but the part for our macerator rebuild didn’t arrive until Monday either.
After we anchored, we launched Squall and headed over to the back side of Anastasia State Park to walk the beach. It was a beautiful spot (aside from there being a TON of broken glass – we picked up as much as we could find), and we mostly had it to ourselves. Afterwards, we took Squall through the marshes in hopes of finding a spoonbill (no such luck, but I did see one the other morning!). We headed back to Windara to make hot chocolate then zipped over to the anchorage off the Castillo de San Marcos to find a good spot to watch the Regatta of Lights, St. Augustine’s lighted boat parade sponsored by the St. Augustine Yacht Club. The participants went all out, and several of the spectator boats got in the spirit too (we thought about decorating Squall, but I wasn’t up for taking all the lights off Windara, putting them on Squall, and then putting them back on Windara. Maybe next year, Squall will get her own set of Christmas lights.).
Sunday was supposed to be windy with afternoon storms, and it delivered. Throughout the morning, the breeze built from almost nothing at sunrise to well into the teens by the time we hauled anchor. We tackled the aft head as our morning project, and with the proper rebuild kit, it was a pretty quick and relatively painless project, although it did take both of us and some boat yoga to get at some of the screws. Fingers crossed, but so far it seems to be working.
When we radioed the marina to find out the time of slack, they said it was about an hour earlier than it really was. As we passed through the Bridge of Lions, the wind was starting to gust into the low 20s, and the bridge was singing. We puttered back and forth waiting for the current to slow, and by the time the current was settled enough for us to make a safe approach, we were seeing gusts of 25. Fortunately they put us in the north basin with a super wide fairway, and with wind and current mostly from the same direction, docking was pretty easy. We used our headsets for the first time docking, and it helped a lot as I was able to call adjustments and distances. (Seriously, these were one of the best investments we’ve made. I used to think they were silly, but being able to communicate from opposite ends of the boat makes a huge difference, especially in difficult conditions/situations where our hand signals fail.)
It started gusting up shortly after our morning walk on Tuesday, and the wind has mostly been up ever since. Saturday night into Sunday was the worst of it, as a storm that looked and behaved very much like a tropical storm passed through. Fortunately St. Augustine was in one of the least-impacted areas up and down the east coast, and we rode it out in relative comfort.
The one positive with all the bad weather was that we were able to stay at the marina through it all. Originally they were only able to take us through Friday (they’re always fully booked well in advance, but they’ll accommodate you as reservations are cancelled), but with hardly any boats moving on open water or the ICW, we were able to extend through Tuesday and then move to a mooring through Friday morning when we hope to depart. We were going to move to a mooring on Monday but we awoke to a cold, windy day so we decided to stay one more day (I consider another day of heat an early birthday present that I couldn’t have been happier to receive). Tuesday was even windier, but since they were closing the north basin for the final phase of repairs from Ian/Nicole damage, we had no choice but to head out to the mooring. we had a heck of a dock departure/mooring pick-up. With a strong east wind (gusting to 30kts) and the current starting to run in, our dock departure went sideways (literally), but Chris worked with the wind and current to crab us along the dock until we got to the fairway and could give it enough throttle to bring the bow around.
The mooring pick-up was also interesting. The pickup line was wrapped on the mooring, so I quickly freed the boat hook and called the marina to come fix it. Normally I’d have messed with it myself, but in strong wind and current it wasn’t worth the risk of losing the boat hook or injuring myself. Once it was untangled our second attempt went smoothly, and we settled in comfortably in spite of the whitecaps.
Boat Projects
We’ve been trying to trace the issue with our autopilot, and a few people suggested there may be ferrous metal near enough (within 1 meter) to be interfering. I was pretty sure that wasn’t the case, but it didn’t hurt to check. We dug through our closet and moved one mesh dive bag that had a metal handle, but that wasn’t the culprit. I took everything out of the drawer where we keep our cleaning rags, the locker where the compass itself lives (we keep paper goods, cereal and diesel pads in there, but it didn’t hurt to take it all out), and emptied the cabinet and bookshelf. We had the instruments on the whole time to see if there was any impact on the heading readout, and there wasn’t. It was a good excuse to clean everything, weed out a few old books that we don’t need, and deep clean all those spaces. As I put everything back together, the compass did its thing, so I tore it all back out. We still doubted it had to do with gear placement, and when it didn’t correct itself when we tore it all back out, we were sure. We also tried jiggling the wire both at the compass end and at the processor, and tightened up a loose screw – none of which helped. We ended up trying to take it apart, but there was really nothing in there that we could do anything with. While we didn’t solve the issue, we at least ruled out other possible causes and got a cleaner boat out of it.
In the process of tearing things apart for repairs, we took the opportunity to continue the Windara weight loss program. It wasn’t a ton of stuff, but it was enough that we were able to move all our manuals and sailing reference books to the bookshelf behind the TV, where they’re easily accessible. The miscellaneous storage cabinet and our cleaning rags are much better organized too.
Chris cleaned and rebuilt the macerator on our forward head, but it still didn’t work properly. Fortunately we were able to get a new one from West Marine, and now we’ve got two (seemingly, hopefully) fully functional heads.
We need to fix the bilge access panel in our cabin – one of the supports that holds it in place was poorly installed and came loose, so now we have a big triangular hole in the floor. It was already slightly problematic when we bought the boat, so we weren’t surprised, but it’s still annoying.
Since I’m on vacation until the new year, I took on a bunch of chores while we still had easy access to shore. I did all our laundry, filled the propane (Courtesy Gas on FL-16 is open Monday-Saturday and fills small tanks – filling our 10lb tank cost $8. The Rodriguez St. address isn’t open Saturdays), refilled our water tanks (as much as I hate taking on water in St. Augustine, it was a necessity with the watermaker still out of commission) and did a major provisioning. We found an electrician to look at the fridge, and it turns out there was a loose connection at the panel. Hoping beyond hope that it’s fixed once and for all – it seems to be behaving for the moment.
We took some time to have fun during our extended stay, too. We had a rare weekday lunch out at Gaufres and Goods, a cute little Polish/Greek place we stumbled on right near the marina. For our date night, we hit up Sarbez for grilled cheese and some arcade games followed by ice cream at Mayday, a new find and instant favorite. It’s been nice to slow it down and get Windara in better shape, and we’re excited to continue our journey.
