22 November 2012 St Augustine, Florida
It was Thanksgiving Day today, so we had a quiet day in. We had beautiful blue skies, but there was a wicked cold north wind, so we cowered down below in the morning with the heater on.
Glenys cooked a fabulous roast chicken lunch with all the trimmings which was enhanced by a few glasses of vino tinto. Stuffed full of food and wine, we read and dozed in the sunshine until the sun started to go down, at which point we watched a couple of movies - a nice relaxing day.
23 November 2012 St Augustine, Florida
We had a tourist day today. It was another clear blue sky day with a cold north wind, but that didn't bother us once we were ashore and I wore shorts for the first time for a while.
We carried the two old hatches ashore which have been lurking in our front cabin since we replaced them back in July and caught a cab to the local consignment store. New hatches are over $650 each, but they only gave me $80 for both of them – I wasn’t too bothered about it because I’m sick of moving them around every time I want something from under the front berths.
The town of Saint Augustine is lovely. It was one of the first places that the Spaniards settled in Florida and was established in 1565 making it the oldest permanent settlement in the USA. It has a very Spanish feel and some of the large hotels look like Spanish monasteries.
After lunch we visited the Castillo de San Marcos, which was built in the late 1600s. It has been attached many times by the English and also the Americans in the War of Independence. Once again the English don’t come out well in history because Francis Drake torched the whole town of St Augustine in 1586 – not a nice man really… The best bit of the walk around the Castillo was a re-enactment of the very formal and pedantic way that the Spanish loaded and fired cannons.
Thierry and Claudia from “Vanupieds” came for a few beers and we caught up on each other’s travels since the last time that we saw them in Deltaville.
24 November 2012 St Augustine to New Smyrna Beach, Florida
We left at quarter to seven and motored remorselessly up the ICW. We did 60 miles during the day, so we didn’t hang about anywhere – just motoring, motoring and motoring. There are a few interesting parts, but it mostly looks the same as further up north. We saw sections where there were lots of houses which have huge frames with mosquito nets enclosing all of their back yards.
We had all sorts of problems with the VHF radios. I took down the antenna for the fixed VHF radio so that we can fit underneath the bridges, but now we can transmit on fixed VHF radio but not receive very well. Our portable VHF radio is giving out a very weak signal on transmit, but receives okay. We ended up having to call the bridges on the fixed radio and keeping the portable radio on the cockpit floor so that we could hear their reply - God knows what is going on.
We anchored just off the ICW in a very pleasant place at New Smyrna Beach.
25 November 2012 New Smyrna Beach to Cocoa, Florida
It was another day of motoring - not much to do. There were some very nice parts on this section with small islands in wild areas that would be good to go kayaking.
We anchored in Cocoa. This was the first place that we anchored when we arrived in the USA in June earlier this year. We’ve done 3,700 miles up to Maine and back. We average around 5 knots when we’re travelling, which is 40 miles per day. That means that for the last six months, we’ve been on the move for half of the 180 days that we've been in the USA – it’s time to stop and have a rest.
I tested our domestic batteries – I've suspected them for a while as they don’t seem to be holding their charge. Even when we've done a lot of motoring all day, the batteries are at a very low voltage the next morning. When I tested them, three are showing to have a failed dead cell and the other three are below 75 % capacity. I’ll need to replace at least three of them and maybe I should change all six to make sure that the old batteries don’t pull down the new ones.
I had a quick look in some marine catalogues and found that batteries range from $150 to $400 each so that’s quite an investment. More money flooding out of our savings…
26 November 2012 Cocoa, Florida
I spent morning on admin – I can’t get an internet connection here, but I needed to sort out my “To-Do” lists and try to get organised enough to buy things over the next few days to be delivered to our friend Mike who is renting a house near Vero Beach . We expect to be staying in Vero Beach for about a week, so I need to get the stuff ordered as soon as possible to make sure that it arrives in time.
Our 15hp outboard is still playing up. It’s now cutting out at low revs - I’m guessing that it’s a fuel problem, but I changed the spark plugs anyway, which made no difference. My Canon camera had been playing up and won’t read the memory card anymore, so I packaged it up to send off to get it repaired – I’m hoping that it will be delivered back to Mike’s house within a week.
After lunch, we went into Cocoa Village and walked to the tourist office to find out where the post office and library were. I don’t know where the tourist offices get their staff from, but they’re not the sharpest tools in the box. The lady gave us some incomprehensible directions which took us on an interesting meandering tour of the town. Once we’d discovered the library, I used the internet to order a few things and get an order number for the camera return.
We had a quiet night in.
27 November 2012 Cocoa, Florida
Mike and Rona picked us up from the dinghy dock and took us out to Merritt Island, which is a National Park created by NASA very close to the Kennedy Space Centre. We had a great day driving around the park, looking at a wide variety of wildlife and catching up on our various adventures since we last saw each other in Saint Lucia over fifteen months ago.
The Merritt Island Park is a very well managed wildlife refuge with a large number of different habitats, mostly aimed at attracting birds. We saw Bald Eagles, Roseate Spoonbills, various species of heron and countless sea birds herons. Topped off by a nice picnic brought by Rona, we had a pleasant day out.
Mike and Rona came back to Alba to stay for the night and we got very, very drunk - Mike and I were on the same skydiving team in the 1980’s and babbled into the small hours about the good old days…
28 November 2012 Cocoa to Vero Beach, Florida
We all felt a little dull in the morning, but I dragged everyone out of bed at seven o’clock and dropped Mike off ashore. Rona came with us down to Vero Beach, which wasn’t terribly exciting – just another long day of motoring.
We had a bit of a scare at the bridge just before Vero Beach because the tide gauge was only showing 63 feet – the lowest that we’d seen so far. We bottled out and Glenys motored around in a circle while I checked my records and recalculated the height to the top of the mast. I reckon that we’re 62.5 feet to the top of the Windex, so we slowly crept through. We didn’t rip anything off the top of the mast, so I must have been right.
We arrived in Vero Beach, which is a large mooring field run by the City Marina. No one is allowed to anchor in here, so the only option is to pick up a mooring. Fortunately, they only charge $100 per week, so it’s very reasonable. The place is very crowded being a favourite waiting place for the “Snow Birds” flocking to the Bahamas. All the moorings were taken, so we were told to raft up on a mooring with a US yacht called “Different Drummer”. It’s a bizarre thing to raft up on a mooring, but it’s accepted policy here at Vero Beach. They even put three boats on a single mooring sometimes – the moorings must be strong.
I dropped Rona off ashore and we had a quiet night in, letting our livers recover.
29 November 2012 Vero Beach, Florida
We have excellent internet access here, so I spent the morning investigating batteries and spares for all of the pumps that we have on board. There are nine pumps not including the ones on the engine - if a pump goes wrong in Cuba, we’ll have to repair it ourselves or do without it.
I read up on batteries and have eventually decided to bite the bullet and buy six new AGM deep cycle batteries. I’ve found a local battery supplier who can provide a good make of AGM battery for only $225 each and they’ll deliver them to the marina for me. It will probably be a nightmare to sort out the logistics to pick them up at the busy fuel dock, but I’m sure that we’ll manage.
I spent the afternoon, running wiring into the engine room from the solar panel regulator, so that I can fit a “dump resistor”. This will allow the regulator to control the charging voltage from the wind generator. I’ve had the resistor and a new processor chip for the regulator for nearly a year now and haven’t got around to fitting it. I need to get it sorted out before I install my new batteries – I don’t want to ruin another set of batteries.
In the evening there was a gathering of cruisers to which everyone brought a small starter. It was okay – we met a few new people, but most are elderly Americans who are waiting to go over to the Bahamas and not going our way. Thierry and Claudia from “Vanupieds” arrived today so we spent some time chatting to them. Thierry calls the old Americans “Q-Tips”.
30 November 2012 Vero Beach, Florida
Mike and Rona picked us up in the morning and took us to the cinema where we saw the new James Bond movie for only $4 – it’s a special deal if you go before noon. Afterwards, they took us to a couple of shopping malls where we went to the usual places – marine store for spares, etc
There’s a music shop next to the West Marine, so I went into stare at guitars and sheet music. I’ve been trying to grow my nails for finger picking on the guitar, but doing jobs on the boat is not conducive to beautiful long nails. I’ve been painting on some nail strengthening liquid, but that’s making my nails shiny and looks weird. So, while in the music shop, I bought some plastic picks that fit over the right hand fingers and thumb – we’ll see how that works.
Mike and Rona took us back to their rented house for the night. They must think that we’re mad – as soon as we got into their house, we shoved a whole load of washing into their washing machine. I then commandeered a wooden chair and Glenys cut my hair by their front door. Glenys then dyed her hair because she could use copious amounts of water.
We had a nice meal and got drunk again reminiscing about the good old days.
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