We’ll soon need a third binder for boat cards

Thursday the sun reappeared and the wind went from gale force to something less, so we walked down to the beach, which mostly was covered with high tide.

But nobody else was around so it was pretty cool.  The sidewalks around Palm Coast also are pretty cool.

Miles of smooth and flat concrete winding through the trees.  Perfect for Doug’s SoloWheel Glide 3.   Except Santa mistakenly failed to deliver one.  Maybe next year.

Because we have no SoloWheel Glide 3, the highlight of the day was dinner back at the pizza joint in the fake European Village.  The Lower Place, Red Pearl, Sunset Delight, and Gammel Dansk made a party of ten.  Mary and Dan (and Tori the seeing eye dog) drove us over from the marina.  The horrors of Vietnam left Dan legally blind but they don’t seem like the kind of folks who’ll let that get in the way of adventure.  Hell, they’ve already done the rivers.  Clark took the group photo.

Anyway, we pulled out yesterday at about 8:15 under puffy clouds.  A tad chilly but beautiful overall.

The three-hour cruise up to St. Augustine was uneventful.  This part of the ICW is the Matanzas River.  Where the river meets the Matanzas Inlet at Fort Matanzas was supposed to be a scary swirly currenty mess with confusing markers and dangerous shoals.

Under the guise of being courteous, we let Sunset Delight pass us just before the drama.  Our working theory was that if Clark and Evelyn were swept away to the hereafter, we’d see the carnage in time to turn around quickly.

Meh.  Much ado about nothing.

Dana’s timing projections were spot on and we hit the San Sebastián River right about the time the tides turned.

They put us way out on the face dock along the river anyway, of course, so we probably could’ve parked successfully even in the current.

Hey hey, welcome to St. Augustine.  For us this is another milestone.  It’s the northernmost place we want to stay for a few days in Florida.

We took a quick walk down to St. George Street to see the sights, but probably will go back without boys.  We love them like our own sons but they tend to be limiting in such situations.  So far, historic St. Augustine feels a bit like the French Quarter, but without the raw sewage and the transvestite hookers.  (Actually that makes it nothing at all like the French Quarter.)  Lots of tourists.

Three slips down A dock we found Allure.  More Loopers.  Rich and Connie sat out on the dock with us last night to look at the sailboat reflections and watch the shrimp boats go by until the sun went down and the cold chased us inside.

A great orange sunrise greeted us this morning.

Right now we’re all sitting on the bow enjoying a sunny afternoon.

Dinner with Red Pearl in a couple of hours.  Here until Wednesday.  Hopefully more Loopers will show up soon.  We love making boat friends.

More rain on the way.

Booooo rain.