5/8/16
St Augustine FL, ICW
Position 29 53.720N, 81 18.590W
Posted by Bill

We waited 2 extra days in Vero Beach due to a forecast of high winds and storms. We didn’t want to deal with the high winds in the open areas of the ICW in the Titusville area, and Vero is a hard place to leave. One day, we took several buses to Walmart. It is always fun to interact that closely with the general public and we saw some crazies. On the 5th, we finally took off and stopped in Cocoa FL, position 28 20.963N, 080 43.180W. I ran ashore real quick to mail some Mother’s Day cards, and then Mark and Jan came over to our boat for Cinco de Mayo. Jan brought a dip for tortilla chips, and they also brought stuff to make Mexican Hipsters, the new drink we discovered in Spanish Wells, Eleuthera, Bahamas. Mark had made the jalapeno infused tequila and it was really HOT! We used some of our un-infused stuff to tone it down. Tricia made pork enchiledas, and a good time was had by all. The Hipsters are the bomb!

The next day we took the ICW to Daytona Beach and anchored just south of the Memorial Bridge, position: 29 12.443N, 081 00.391W. On the way there we cruised right next to a pretty big wild fire south of New Smyrna Beach:

It was really getting bad as we went by. We anchored behind this house:

It was a nice, quiet place to stay for the night. The next day we made it to St Augustine, another one of our favorite places along the trip route. We grabbed a mooring in front of the fort and the downtown area:


We bummed around for a couple of days, hitting our favorite places, and finding a new one – The Tini Martini Bar, right in front of our boats. St Augustine is very picturesque and the weather was great for walking the city:


There sure are a lot of crazy people in St Augustine. I just kept thinking of the words to Jimmy Buffet’s Fruitcakes song, imagining that he got some inspiration for it here.
Today we were walking across the Bridge of Lyons and saw this yacht come in to dock.

The current runs very strong here and it was running from top to bottom of the photo. We watched this guy try to dock this thing in the slip across (towards the top of the photo) from where he ended up. The current grabbed him and slammed the swim platform against the dock he is now on, then slammed the boat sideways into the dock. Trying to leave that dock and get to where he was supposed to be, he raked the side of the boat across the dock and concrete pilings several times. He just kept trying to no avail. Why he didn’t just stop and wait for slack tide, we just don’t know. He messed that boat up bad. It was obvious that his skill level was below the requirement to handle that yacht. We could have voted an Ass Captain award to him, but we felt bad for him.

Tomorrow we move on to Fernandina Beach.