5-23, Tuesday-Motored to Malabar, FL. Anchored near Serenity Island, a spoils island built from dredging the ICW. We went to the island by dinghy and walked the sandbar. There were a lot of nesting birds in the trees. On our way back to the boat, one of my siblings accidentally started a FaceTime call. It just happened to work that all of us were available. My brother, Don, found out yesterday that he had cancer cells spread his liver. He started 3 rounds of chemo today. Bummer!
picnic table and grill on the island
5-24, Wednesday-we ran into rain showers/squalls. Decided to anchor early at the Space Center Causeway south.
5-25, Thursday-Looking at the weather, we decided to stay put until Saturday. The next stretch is exposed with few anchorages, so could be rough going. We decided life is too short, so I started researching a trip to Australia and New Zealand that has been on our bucket list.
5-26, Friday-We are close enough to Cape Canaveral to see rocket launches. I had been watching their schedule for the past few days. They had been postponing launches because of weather. I checked one site that didn't show a launch for tonight and went to bed. About 11:00pm, I heard a roar and sprang out of bed. Dave was up and headed to the cockpit. THERE WAS A LAUNCH!! He saw it, but it was out of site by the time I got outside. What a disappointment!
our boat is the blue dot
the rocket is in the center on shore
5-27, Saturday-We had nice weather, so we decide to keep moving north, against our better judgement. This is Memorial Day weekend. Lots of power boaters will have their boats out for the first time this summer. Most of them have no clue what damage they can do by passing us with a big wake and rocking our boat side to side. By the time we reached New Smyrna, the traffic was getting much heavier. We decided to anchor for the night north of the inlet. There were lots of party boats anchored in the area or on a beach. We saw a Hot Dog Boat going from boat to boat, so we called them over. They had great hot dogs, pulled pork and sides. They gave us their card and said to call when we come through again. They will come find us. Sounded great. We could hear noise from a bar and boats until about 11:00pm.
beautiful reflection from the sunset on these boats
power boats along the beach near our anchorage
5-28, Sunday. Decided to head to St Augustine. As we headed north, we met LOTS of power boats heading from Daytona to New Smyrna. That's their closest inlet to the ocean. It was crazy, as we expected. We were just ready to keep moving and get back to Brunswick. But we may rethink that in the future. At the municipal marina in St Augustine, we stopped at their fuel dock to get rid of our garbage, pump out our 2 heads and get fuel. We bought 32 gallons of diesel. A big boat bought 1140 gallons! That must have been a big bill. We caught the 4:00 opening of the Bridge of Lions and picked up a mooring ball.
5-29, Monday-We decided to stay 2 nights to avoid the holiday traffic on the water. We took our dinghy to the Vilano Beach public dock (free). We walked about 4 blocks to the Publix grocery store. There was a guy working in the produce department that looked a lot like our son, Pete. We finally had to tell him why we were staring and laughing. He let us take a picture of him. Of course Dave had to tell him he was a good looking guy. We back packed some basic groceries back to the dinghy and headed back to the boat. We usually go out to eat in St Augustine, but didn't even go to shore.
5-30, Tuesday-When we left St Augustine, we went off shore to head north. We were tired of the ICW. And we had good weather. North of Jacksonville, we passed under a strange bank of clouds. The wind picked up and the temperature dropped, but it didn't rain. Strange. We anchored at Cumberland Island and grilled ribeye steaks. We don't get much beef in the Bahamas.
5-31, Tuesday-we decided to spend one more peaceful night at anchor before returning to the marina. There is a sandbar that shows up at low tide. We took the dingy over and hiked around. Not as impressive as it is from a distance.
interesting to see the tracks of the starfish
oyster bed that is covered at high tide
I'm at the shore of the sandbar. Dave is at our dinghy. It was so shallow, we had to walk that far in water to get to the sandbar. Our boat is behind Dave
6-1, Wednesday-On the home stretch. The ICW past Jekyll Island is very shallow, so we prefer to pass it at high tide. When we reached the ICW bridge just south of the Jekyll Island marina, we anchored to wait for high tide. For future reference, the lowest we saw at anchor was 3 feet under our keel. We headed north 2 hours after low tide. The shallowest we saw was 8 feet, we have a 5 foot draft. That was 2.5 feet higher than low tide. There is an 8 foot tide in this area.
We made it to Brunswick Landing Marina about 5:00pm. Several friends met us to help us dock and tie up. We gathered at the top of the dock to visit. Pete came by after work. Great to see him.
June 2- 10. We did the usual marina chores. We both had Dr appointments. Pete was renting a room in a house on a month to month basis. They decided they wanted his room for their brother. He has to be out by the end of June. We are all going to South Dakota late June for a family reunion. So we told him to just move onto the sailboat with us. Then he can have some time to find the right place.
