NOAA Did It Again!

SHIP'S LOG:

Got an early start this morning as I wanted to get a good start on getting south before the next cold front in Northern Florida which is supposed to arrive Sunday Night. If it is anything like the last one, I don 't want to be around for it.

I got a go push all the way along the ICW so much so that I got to the spot I had planned to anchor by 12:15 and decided to do another two hours and get into St. Augustine Thew only problem was that no one told NOAA of my plans and they made another major "whooppsie" in their forecast. This morning it was to 10-15knots of wind out of the north and partly cloudy. By the time I was waiting around for the Bridge of Lions to open, it was blowing 20+ and raining to beat the band. I snagged a municipal mooring($20/night) along with pretty close to 100 others who all curse the name of NOAA. We are all sitting here in the non-forecast rain and wind, doing the slide step from one end of the mooring field to the other. Not a lot of happy campers here tonight.

Tragically, I went aground again today! I was headed into St. Augustine when I saw several sailboats anchored just out of the channel . It looked like a good spot and the chart called for 16 feet. Wrong! I don't know if the other boats were aground or what, but I got stuck and had to call the people in the red boat. A tow off in Florida costs $720! That puts the total pretty close to $2,100 in towing charges that I did not get hit with. Thank God I bought that unlimited tow insurance.

The GPS in the cockpit started freezing today . . . why should it be any different. When it was loading the next map section, it suddenly stopped and I had to shut it off and reboot it. It would work for a while and then freeze again. It did that for a couple of hours, thankfully along the straightest and deepest stretch of the ICW I traveled today and then went back to working normally. I guess it just had a bad day. I've had 'em, you had 'em, why shouldn't it have 'em.