Venturing up the Florida coast

On April 12th, we arrived in the high rent district of West Palm Beach and anchored near our friend Tom Saxe, a Salty Dawg that has been hanging out here on his boat, Aladdin, all season. We had lunch at the Safe Harbor Rybovich marina where there were dozens of 150 foot and larger yachts at the dock, a pool, workout room, bar & restaurant. It was quite a playground for the off duty yacht crews.

The next day we had a weather window to head north so we took off for Ft. Pierce, an all day motor sail in lumpy seas. We had the dinghy deflated and onboard so there wasn't much opportunity to do anything in Ft. Pierce other than wait for the thunderstorms to move on so we could continue our journey up the coast to St. Augustine. On 4/15, we waited for the tide to rise high enough for us to get into the 'skinny' water around Pelican Yacht Club to fill up with fuel. The following day, we took off for an overnight sail with the full moon low in the horizon off our starboard quarter.

We arrived in St. Augustine at 0900 and set anchor just before the Bridge of Lions drawbridge right off town, while waiting for our mooring assignment from the St. Augustine Municipal Marina. The mooring gave us access to the marina launch which ran every hour to and from the docks. Once we settled in, we hopped a ride to shore and found the very popular, Henry's, could accommodate us in their second floor bar on the waterfront, where we had a great view of Billy Ruff'n and savored some fabulous fish dishes for lunch, with enough leftover for us to swap at dinner.

Over the next few days, we enjoyed walks around town, shopping on Commerce Row (a touristy but cute street of shops, restaurants and historical buildings in the center of town), more excellent meals and the company of friends, Scott & Katherine on s/v Latitude, that we had met in George Town and showed up shortly after our arrival in St. Augustine. The town has many historic buildings including the Castillo de San Marcos fortress dating back to 1672, Flagler College built in 1888 and Casa Monica Resort, where we had a spectacular meal in their moroccan themed restaurant. My mother told me that her parents used to holiday in St. Augustine and I could just imagine them in this 1940's style building.

On 4/19, we moved to a slip at the Municipal Marina, in order to provision for our next leg to Brunswick, Ga. but mother nature had other plans for us and we were socked in for another couple days. Hoping to get to Annapolis in early May, we decided our next destination would have to get us further up the coast; next stop, Charleston, SC.