Ho hum – until tomorrow

Sometimes on the Loop we have not-so-exciting days.  Still interesting—and still waaay better than working for The Man—but not necessarily blog-worthy.  That sort of was today.

At least the sun came up.  After the last couple of days we were getting worried.

The first bridge we passed was the Bridge of Lions.  Supposedly it’s one of the prettiest ones in Florida.  At a minimum it has the best name.  So that’s something.

We passed by the Castillo de San Marcos well within cannon range.  Fortunately there was no live shelling in our direction.

We did come close to seeing some awesome stuff though.  For example, just through the trees and houses and less than a mile away was arguably the most iconic hole in golf.

We’re the blue dot.  Inside the red circle is the 17th at TPC Sawgrass, aka “The Island Green.”  Rumor has it that they fish out a thousand golf balls a day.  Pete Dye’s wife supposedly designed the hole.  She died just a few weeks ago.  RIP.

Also, just off the coast on the other side of Sawgrass the USS Lassen—an Arleigh Burke-class guided missile destroyer out of Mayport—was running exercises.  We couldn’t see it, of course, but could hear it.  The captain kept announcing the drills and warning all boats to “stay at least five miles from my vessel.”  Dude must feel pretty powerful to be in charge of a destroyer, although in theory it belongs to all of us.  Anyway, we were well within guided missile range.  Fortunately there was no live shelling in our direction.

What should’ve been a four-hour trip to Palm Cove Marina took five hours, all because of a ten-mile no-wake zone.   It looked about like this the entire two hours we spent at five knots.

The highlight of the day was running into It’s Someday.

We technically passed Steve rather than actually run into him, of course, but hopefully we’ll see him in Brunswick this weekend.  We first met on a rainy day in Schenectady, back when his boat still had the previous name on it.  Nine months later Steve has added the current boat name on a small hand-made sign.  We call that progress.

Here are a couple of pelicans sunning themselves on a bridge fender.

Palm Cove isn’t really set up for fat boats so they stuck us off to the side, which is fine with us.

Robin (The Lower Place) texted us to describe the hazards we’ll face tomorrow at Sisters Creek.  One of us read between the lines and concluded that someplace between green 77 and red 66 we’re certain to run aground “unless you [meaning Doug] are on your A game.”  We haven’t even had dinner yet and already someone on the boat is pointing fingers.  That’s a dangerous game to play when we may need to jettison ballast.