Almost Out Of The Blue!

SHIP'S LOG:

I pulled out of St. Augustine Marina in about 20 knots of wind and head south on The ICW on Tuesday morning. It was so cold due to the wind that I had on two pairs of woolen socks, a pair of insulated jeans over which I wore sweat pants, a long sleeved woolen shirt on top of which I wore a woolen sweater and a jacket, I wore two pairs of gloves and a wool hat. It was cold! I was sure glad that I was only going 25 miles or so, the dash to Daytona Beach would really have been miserable.

Several place north of Crescent Beach were shoaling badly. I don't know when the last dredging of this section of the ICW was done but they need to do one again soon. It was dangerous to follow the ICW Magenta line on the charts and I really had to pick my way along in some places by depth sounder alone. A power boat shot by me once and about a mile ahead I think he went aground, but softly. He started moving very slow through a series of turns . When I go to the point I could see why. A shoal had crossed into the channel and I had to maneuver around it in an area the chart said not to go. At one point, it got down to 8 1/2 feet on the depth sounder, just the as it had read the first time I went aground but I never touch, or if I did, I never felt it.

I got to the Crescent Beach Bascule Bridge and asked for an opening. The bridge tender responded by saying, "Sure, but we are doing work on the bridge and only one side is working. Stay to the right." It is bad enough going through a bascule bridge when both sides are working as the Bimini blocks my vision of the bridge and I have to line up in the center before I try to go through, hoping that there is no current to move me to the side less I strike the raised portions with my mast. I got through just fine and as I was leaving, I asked the bridge tender where all the warm weather was as this, after all, was Florida. He responded by saying, "Florida is the Sunshine State. we make no claims about warmth!"

The people with houses on the ICW in Crescent Beach are luckier than many of the counterparts in other places. There is no chance that their views will be blocked by developments. ON one side they have the ocean and on the other, the western shore of the ICW is all National Wildlife Refuge.

When I got to Palm Coast, I pulled into the Marina at Ocean Hammock. It is part of a resort development that went bust when the economy tanked. It is not really a marina. There is no fuel dock, no facilities for transients, no store, no nothing really. I think that it was actually a marina for the boats of the people that owned condo there. I couldn't even hail them on the radio and had to get in contact by phone. It's beautiful spots with some beautiful boats and perhaps, in the future, they will really open it up to passing boaters.

My "inviters" whisked me to their home for dinner and it was wonderful. Rich and Martha really made me feel right at home. I knew them slightly from up north but really it was a very casual relationship. But they were warm and generous, almost embarrassingly so. They actually sprang for another night at the marina, "So the weather will get warmer" and even picked up the tab for my grocery shopping. I am still floored by their generosity. Martha said that I had to stop by again when I head north in the spring. I think I can arrange that!

This morning, I laid out the course to Daytona Beach and locked in three possible anchorages. The weather is supposed to be "high - mid 60's/ low - mid 40's" and even warmer the days after. Perhaps, just perhaps, I am getting out of the cold weather. I certainly hope so. I am really getting sick of it. Then again, the locals are going out of their minds!