St. Augustine - Part 1

--Blogpost written by Bob

Saturday, November 25

Today can be summarized in a few simple photographs:

s/v Rainy Days on Mooring Buoy #1 in St. Augustine.  
Today was a warm and sunny day!

Spindly legs and yellow feet allow this egret to
stand effortlessly on an inflatable dinghy.

A little mermaid in a shop window in St. Augustine.

Some of the damage to the marina's docks
from Hurricane Irma.  About 1/2 of 
the slips were destroyed.

We got two propane tanks (one 10-lb tank and the 6-lb tank for the grill) filled today at Ace Hardware, about 1.4 miles away from the marina.  This simple task took a couple hours of our day.

Lately, it seems like our composting toilet was not composting properly. It seemed to me that there was insufficient air circulation. So, I pulled apart the discharge air hose to check if the fan was operating properly—it was. (Some time ago I installed two identical fans in series but I don’t think it increased the flow very much, if at all—so, I removed one of them.)  While we are here in St. Augustine we won’t use our composting toilet very much—hopefully, the composting will improve as result of the lack of use and removing one of the fans. (We are also using a different brand of coconut noir— this might be part of the problem too.)  We’ll see.

It really has been restful here in St. Augustine—this is why we stopped here for five days. We’re now planning the remainder of our trip south on the ICW.

Sunday, November 26

We slept in this morning, not getting up until after sunrise. For us, at least on this trip, that’s sleeping in. We went out for breakfast at La Harencia, a nearby Cuban restaurant. (La Herencia means “the inheritance”.)

We had breakfast at La Herencia Cafe
on Aviles Street in St. Augustine.
(This is a painted photo.)

We went grocery shopping this afternoon, getting food supplies for the next 5 to 7 days of cruising--this will last us to Vero Beach for sure.  Grocery shopping while cruising is complicated.  First, we take the dinghy into the marina’s dinghy dock, walk up to the street and call Uber for a ride to the nearest Publix (about 1-1/2 miles away).  The Uber driver arrives and takes us to Publix and we do our grocery shopping. It’s interesting to note how many times our groceries are transferred from this point.

(1) Like everyone else, we put our groceries from their store shelves into the shopping cart as we shopped. (Transfer #1)

(2) At checkout, we loaded our groceries onto the conveyor belt. (Transfer #2)

(3) After checkout, our groceries were put back into our cart in plastic bags. (Transfer #3)

(4) We then moved the shopping cart outside and waited for another Uber driver to arrive.

(5) We loaded our groceries into the trunk of the Uber car. (Transfer #4)

(6) The Uber driver took us to the marina and we took our groceries out of the Uber trunk and onto a landing at the marina. (Transfer #5)

(7) We load our groceries from the landing at the marina into a marina cart. (Transfer #6)

(8) We push the marina cart full of groceries to the dinghy dock.

(9) We unloaded the groceries from the marina cart and loaded our groceries into our dinghy. (Transfer #7)

(10) We drove the dinghy to our boat (about 1/4-mile) and transferred each bag into our boat’s cockpit. (Transfer #8)

(11) We then used a “bucket brigade” type operation to get the groceries from our boat’s cockpit into the main salon. (Transfer #9)

(12) Their last transfer was into their respective onboard storage places. (Transfer #10)

It's no wonder that grocery shopping is an all-day job while cruising!

Monday, November 27

We woke up to fog in the harbor this morning.  It was eerie as the sun tried to burn through the fog.  By 9:30 AM is was a beautiful sunny day.

The sun (upper left hand corner of this image) tried to burn
through the heavy fog this morning.  Eventually, the
fog cleared and it became a beautiful day.

It seems like every season has a specialty for us.  Last year, it was cucumber-infused vodka.  This year, it's quiche.  Maggie has made low-carb quiches by using almond flour for the crust.  It has become our favorite breakfast.

Besides eggs and Swiss cheese, this quiche contained
chopped ham, green peppers, and shallots.
It was delicious!

We spent a lot of time this afternoon going to a local ophthalmologist about an eye infection I developed in the last couple of days.  (The ophthalmologist was born and raised in Baltimore and was trained at Johns Hopkins.)  Then we had to go to a pharmacy to pick up the prescribed eye drops and then got a Uber driver to bring us back to the marina.  By the time we got back to the boat it was getting dark.  Even though our lives are slow-paced now, everything we do takes an enormous amount of time.

Opting to stay in St. Augustine two additional days and soak up some of the sunshine, we will close out this blogpost and make a second publication before we leave. Our current plan is to leave St. Augustine on the morning of December 1, anchoring in Daytona Beach, Titusville, and Palm Bay before arriving in Vero Beach on December 4. We expect to stay in Vero Beach about a week.  Until our next blogpost...

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