St. Augustine to Vero Beach

I'm home in Toronto. This is daughter Sarah, on the far left, daughter-in-law Lou, son-in-law Rich and daughter Kate at Kate and Rich's house in Longbranch. It's great to be home. It took us 2 months to get to the Bahamas and 3 hours to get back home. Isn't that wild???

We're about 48 days into our trip on our way to Vero Beach in my Sailingblog. There were swing bridges, lift bridges and fixed bridges. One day we went through 21 bridges but that was the most.

The Bridge Master is up in that little room with the windows. I always said thanks for opening the bridge and have a good day and tried to see what the bridge master looked like...sometimes it was a woman and sometimes a man.

This s a very big yacht being built in a very big boat house.

This is our chartfinder and we are the black triangle just under the glare on the Intracoastal water way. The ocean is the big piece of blue on the left of the monitor and we're motoring in the blue strip of water in the middle of the monitor.

The rivers and other waterways are pretty narrow as you can see here.

Spanish moss on the trees and someone's little house or cottage.

See the bird in that tree? It's an Osprey. There were lots of Ospreys along the way.

And then you have these....timeshares? condos? resorts?

Here they are digging out those canals that look like streets of water and then they put a house on the canal and sell all the homes as having water frontage. They can have their sail boat right in their front yard. It's actually an awesome idea.

What a pretty little bridge. The scenery along the way was absolutely beautiful.

This might be the City of .... I can't remember, I think it is Daytona Beach and we're on the ocean here.

Look at the beautiful tiled pictures on the pillars of the fixed bridge. The pictures were of dolphins, whales and manatees.

Here I am listening to my tunes, steering the boat and drinking Special Coffee. My binoculars are close at hand in case I see a bird that I might need to identify and my journal is at hand in case I need to write something in it along the way.

And here's Captain Anthony at the helm. Places we motored by were Daytona Beach, Indian River, Tolomato River. Birds I saw were: Golden Eagles, Kingfishers, Ospreys, Great Blue Herons and Ibis'. Heard on the Cruisers Check-in today on the Single Side Band that Polar Pacer was in the St. John River. Mom, I was thinking a lot of you today...put baby powder on the bed before I made it and opened all the ports and hatch to air out the aft cabin. Sometimes the apple doesn't fall too far from the tree.

Proud to be Canadian.

Doesn't this look like a spaceship coming up behind us?

Wow, somebody has money or had money!!!!

What a beautiful sunset at Vero Beach. We stayed there two nights. Anthony's back was bothering him so I went grocery shopping alone in the kayak. It worked great. Still haven't used the dinghy, only the kayak. Met lots of neat people in Vero Beach all of us watching the weather for THE WEATHER WINDOW to cross.

St. Augustine

Well as you can see we're still in Port Lucaya at Ocean Reef Yacht Club. Anth is in the hot tub relaxing after a hard day of sanding rust spots on the boat and putting primer on them. It wasn't all that rough but it's Happy Hour at Groupers in the Hot tub so we take our drinks up with us in our insulated coffee cups and visit and float for an hour. This is still a tease, my blog is only in St. Augustine on the ICW.

St. Augustine was so beautiful and so old. The streets were very narrow. We didn't get all of it walked but we tried.

The tiling on the outside walls reminded me of Horta in The Azores. They had a lot of that kind of tiling there.

Isn't it quaint and gorgeous? We dropped the hook in a little bay with lots of other boats and kayaked in. We took a taxi to the grocery store and there was a great pawn shop there with a Technic Keyboard but it was 300, too much for me but it did sound a lot like a piano. It was a bit too big too.

Isn't this a beautiful painting. There was lots of art here, very classy place.

They made the old buildings into the little shopping area and used things like the old Hospital as a small boutique.

They had lots of Pirate paraphenelia all around town, like this wooden statue.

I loved the old homes, a lot of Spanish archetecture.

We met a fellow from Port Dover who goes down there every year, single-handed, and stays there for the winter and then heads back up for the Canadian summer. It would be a great place to stay.

You can really see the Spanish influence.

This big building was made into a museum. The yards were all lit up at night. So beautiful.

I couldn't take enough pictures of all the buildings.

Bridges, Boats and Birds Along the ICW

Right now Dec. 11, we are in Port Lucaya on The Grand Bahama Island and this is a picture of Anthony at Bimini when we first arrived in The Bahamas. My sailingblog is still on the ICW so this picture is just a tease. More of the Bahamas to come.....right now ICW....heading for The Bahamas.

Sunset along the way on ICW in Virginia. There were miles and miles of grassy marsh. It was just amazing and so peaceful.

These are Great Egrets in the Marsh. There was phosphoressence in the water, it sparkles like the air at Sunshine Mountain in the winter. Birdwatching was still great. Birds I saw were Whopping Cranes, Cormorants, Pelicans, Gulls, Terns, Shore birds, Great Blue Herons and more. Places we passed by had names like Cattle Pen Creek, Johnson Creek, South Beach, the Atlantic Ocean, Bear River, etc.

This is my coffee mug for Special Coffee. It holds a lot of coffee and I love that fact. I love Hazelnut Coffeemate in the coffee and a coffee liquor, any kind is great.

Look at that marsh, it goes on and on and on....forever.

Here's part of a bridge. They don't use it anymore but they didn't pull it down so we could see the ruins.

Isn't this a cute little tug boat. There were a lot of different looking tugboats along the ICW.

I'm at the helm again, listening to my tunes and taking self portraits.

There is one of the swing bridges.

Same swing bridge, we were coming from the North and passed through the bridge on the right. Places we passed were: Dog Hammock Spit, Little Mud River, Buttermilk Sound. Boats we met were: Lady Di a powerboat, Cassiopea, a schooner with a gaff rig, and others.

There were a lot of big beautiful homes along the ICW. Places we passed....St. Andrews Sound, St. Simon's Sound, MacKay River, Jekyll Canal, Long Point, Cumberland Island.

Look at the size of this yacht. Man!!!!!

This must be first thing in the morning....look at those slits for eyes.

At some places along the ICW you can see the Atlantic Ocean. There are places where you can go out and sail on the ocean or stay in and continue on the ICW. It's exciting to get a glimpse of the ocean. This is a sunrise.

We're on the road/water again. Averaging 9 hours of motoring a day and about 50 nautical miles.

This is Cassiopia the Schooner with Gaff Rig. The masts are the same height so it's a schooner. We called the Captain on our VHF and told them what a beautiful boat he had and asked him where he was going. He was on his way to the ocean.

What is this?????? It looks like trailers.... on a barge....with a boat tied to the side....what are they doing right in the middle of the river????? Men are working on it, they are pulling up old rusted pipe, huge pipe maybe for water. How are we going to get by? After about 15 minutes a tug boat pushed the barge over to the side of the river enough for us to get by.

9 hours has passed and we are now at our anchorage for the night. Reading, supper, Scrabble and an episode of Heroes.

Pelicans, pelicans, and more pelicans. The solid grey ones are immatures and the white neck and headed ones are mature. There are also two species of pelicans. We are passing under a fixed bridge here.

Some mornings were misty and had very, very heavy dew on the windshield that we had to sqweegy off. That is a bridge in front of us so it's time to call them on the VHF to see when they will open. It might be swinging or it might lift.

Great clouds. Saw Turkey Vultures, today, and gulls, pelicans, Monarch Butterflies. It's Saturday and there are lots of recreational fishing boats out on the rivers and canals. It fun to see the other people having fun.

Another rainy day. At the anchorage we saw Thiati Wata, a sail boat that I have heard many times on the Cruisers Network on our Single Side Band. We passed Fort St. George, Salamander Lodge, Whooping Cranes and it was Manatee Zone so we were told to slow down. I didn't see any in the water but I saw one dead on the shore, very sad.

What are these things? There's a whole bunch of them...oh man...their a seado party. There were Mom's and Dad's and children on Sea Dos everywhere. They came up past us then stopped ahead of us and regrouped and took off again. It's the weekend.

And another new day on the marshes in the Intra Coastal Waterway on our way to Miami.