JACKSONVILLE BCH, ST. AUGUSTINE, DAYTONA BCH, TITUSVILLE, COCOA BCH

He Said:  Hello from pretty darn nice Florida.  As I mentioned at the end of our last blog, we were heading to Jacksonville Beach for the marina party on Sat. Dec. 14^th.  Our trip went very well and we had no issues docking at the marina. The dockhand fellow made certain that we were plenty aware of the party that evening.  The party was great with its cold drinks, 70’s band, terrific low country boil food (a combination of all kinds of good seafood) and location - maybe 100 yards from our boat. We enjoyed a fun evening.  We met a few nice boat folks and even did our best to lite up the dance floor (an A for effort). We spent the following day catching up on laundry and a run to the grocery store.  Jacksonville Beach was a pretty cool town but a couple of days worked out perfect and we headed to St. Augustine on Monday the 16^th.

We had about a 3 ½ hour trip to St. Augustine, and it went very well. After staying in the marina a fair amount lately we decided to stay on a mooring ball for the next several days.  Our ball was about an 8 minute dingy ride into the town but was well worth it.  We grabbed pizza in town on Monday and took it back to the boat for dinner.  It was terrific.

On Tuesday we did something that we have never done before.  I really hate the whole concept of these time share type things, but we signed up for one on Tuesday and even went thru with it.  They were selling you on a vacation savings program for flights, car rental, hotels and other savings, but we fought them off - it was not too terribly painful.  We received a few nice things for sitting in the 1 ½ hour pitch including a really cool tour of the city on a trolley-type bus along with some nice dinner coupons.  The pitch started at $8,995.00 and ended up at $1,000.00, but we held our distance.  We thought living on the boat was good ammunition to holding off the high pressure sales dudes.

One of Flagler's first hotels.  St Augustine owes a lot to Ponce de Leon and Mr. Flagler.

The following day was wonderful.  Our good friends from Phoenix now live in the Orlando area and they drove over to join Pat and me for the day.  Jim Hyland joined IP as a salesman and then became my boss prior to his retirement.  Jim and Greta have 2 daughters.  Amy is back in Phoenix and is also in the print world.  Their other daughter just brought them a beautiful grandson with a gr8 little name - of course, it is Jack.  We had a blast with the Hylands spending a few hours on the boat along with a few hours or so walking around St. Augustine.  Later in the PM we grabbed a burger and a cold one then they headed back to Orlando.  Thanks again for coming to visit. We really enjoyed the flavor of St. Augustine and the complete city was about a 2 minute walk from the marina -  we really love that.

St. Augustine lit up for the holidays as seen from the dinghy dock

On Friday we began our 5 hour journey to Daytona Beach. We arrived in the mid afternoon and the trip went very well. The area of DB that we were in was not the DB with tons of college drunks (I am sure most of you remember that).  It was cute and very peaceful - we think the crazy area was a few miles from the marina so our evenings were far from loud and crazy.  On Saturday the 21^st we decided to grab the shitty city bus and go to the ocean side to check out the beach.  After about a 75 minute wait we were told the bus broke down and a van was going to pick us up and then we have to transfer to eventually get to the beach.  We talked to a UPS dude and he told us how simple it was to cross the bridge and get to the beach.  It was about a 30 minute walk and we finally got there at about lunch time. We parked our towels on the beach and grabbed some food from one of those roach coach things - a dog and a burger, hard to mess that up.  The greatest thing about DB is that forever you have been able to drive your ride right down the damn beach, how cool is that??  From our towels to the cars must have been all of 20 feet or so.  It was a sunny and fun day.

Driving down Daytona's fames beach

We departed the following day and headed for Titusville for a 1 nite stay on Sunday nite. It was a short trip.  Titusville didn’t have a lot but we stopped there because we had a chance to meet up with Captain Doug, our buddy from Boston who moved our boat to Boston back in May.  It was terrific hanging with Doug (he was heading back to Boston from the Ft. Lauderdale area).  We met at a cool little tiki bar within a short walk of the marina.  The bad part was Doug only had an hour or 2 to spend with us, but it was fun.  

We left Titusville on Monday with only about a 3 hour day in front of us as we headed to Cocoa Beach. We went into town on Monday and had dinner at a cute little sandwich shop and headed in early.  The marina here in Cocoa is really cool and the location of the boat is perfect - directly in front of us.  This is probably the nicest marina we have seen for some time. The lobby area is beautiful and the staff is very friendly.  They informed us they were having a cook out on Christmas Eve during the day at about 1PM.  Johnny cooked the best jerk chicken I have ever had.  Pat prepared a pasta plate and other people either brought food or tossed a few bucks to Johnny.  We got back to the boat about 5 or so.  It is so cool to never have to worry about driving anywhere after throwing down a few cold ones.  I’m not saying that I don’t miss my fast black ride back in Az.  I haven’t driven for so long not sure if I remember how.

We can tell that we are in the central part of Florida just from the weatherman alone -  usually mid to high 70’s and lows of only about 60 or so. We like this a lot.  No AC.  No heat.  YES!!  We are excited that my nephew, Todd, who came out to Annapolis is coming to visit us in Marathon in about 4 weeks.  He is traveling down to the Keys with my younger brother Terry (one of the twins).  We are very excited to see both of them.

I think that is about a 10 day wrap up of what is happening with us.  Hope all is going well for everyone.  Happy Holidays, Jack

 

She Said:  MERRY CHRISTMAS!!!!!

 

It was a short, uneventful trip to Jacksonville Beach.  We planned on staying here mostly for provisioning, fuel, laundry, and just general marina conveniences.  We picked a good time to stay here – the marina was having their annual Christmas party the night we arrived.  It was a fun night with a “low country boil” which we hadn’t yet experienced.  Everything was decorated festively and we had a really nice holiday experience.  We picked up some toys because there were Marines collecting Toys For Tots.  For those of you who like COLD weather for Christmas, we had that covered, too.  Not only was it cold and rainy, but we had a tornado touch down about 30 miles from us.  That was our 2^nd tornado in a month – not something I expected.   

Is it cold enough?  Jack in front of a St Augustine Xmas tree

I put the final touches on the Christmas decorations inside MTB.  She looks really fun and festive.  It’s really been fun traveling during Christmas – we’ve seen and experienced so many different holiday sights. 

We traveled to St. Augustine and stayed on a mooring ball – it was an uneventful arrival.   It was fun to see that our neighbor was the boater who helped us with our mooring line in Fernadina Beach.  It was about ½ mile dinghy ride into town and with the cold temps the ride was not pleasant – especially at night.   

 

I have read so much about security in FL – always lock your boat, remove your ignition keys, chain your dinghy, and so on.  I take it all literally and put Jack on the chore of checking keys and locks.  Knowing we were secure, we hit the town. I was really looking forward to visiting St. Augustine.  I had such high hopes, and I wasn’t disappointed.  It was such a great town – lots of history, architecture, shops and restaurants.  There’s a pedestrian shopping street that ran through the center of town.  We signed up for a sightseeing tour the next day, picked up a pizza and headed back to MTB.  But when we got home, we couldn’t enter the boat.  Somehow when Jack was checking our locks he inadvertently locked us out with the keys inside.  We tried everything we could to get inside.  I finally decided to call a locksmith when suddenly Jack picked the lock.  Another bullet dodged.

Magnolia Lane in St Augustine - voted one of the nation's top 10 pretties streets

One of the best things about our time in St. Augustine was a visit from Jack’s former boss and his wife, Jim and Greta.  They drove from central Florida and spent the day with us.  We had lunch on MTB, walked around town and grabbed a quick bite before they headed back home.  I was such a nice day.  The next day we had our boat neighbors over for Happy Hour before heading into town for our final dinner in town.

Flagler College - formerly the Flagler Ponce de Leon Hotel

It was a long travel day to Daytona Beach.  As we get into more populated areas, there are more bridges.  We need 23 feet clearance, so when bridges are shorter than that we need to wait for the bridge to open.  With all bridges, we need to slow down to idle speed as we approach and transit the bridge.  All of this adds to the overall travel time.  Another issue is manatees.  Where manatees are likely to hangout, we have to reduce our speed to idle speed.  Manatees like warm water so they are more likely to be in shallow water.  As we continue to move south, they will be more common.   

After 4 nights on the ball, it was nice to be in a marina in Daytona Beach.  We took a short walk into town for a corned beef and cabbage dinner at an Irish pub.  The weather continues to improve.  We walked to the beach, had lunch and hung out for a few hours.  There are still sections of the beach where cars can drive.  It was a short, but fun visit to Daytona Beach!

Heading South toward warmer weather - YEAH!

 

We had another long travel day ahead of us, so we were up and at it early the next morning.  Our engines started right up, but the battery warning lights came on and wouldn’t go off.  When that’s happened in the past, Jack would rev the engine and the light would go out.  That didn’t help this time.  We hoped that once we got out into the waterway and underway the alarm would stop.  No such luck, so we headed back to the marina.  I don’t know what happened, but after about 20 minutes at the marina the problem fixed itself.  We were back on the water, one hour behind schedule.  We were in really wide bodies of water, but we had to stay in a very narrow dredged channel.  We ran into some really shallow water and that’s always nerve racking.  There were lots of dolphins and they always make the trip fun.  There were supposed to be lots of manatees too, but they’re hard to see.  They don’t come out of the water like a dolphin does – we can just see the top of their heads.  We finally got to Titusville and grabbed a mooring ball.  Captain Doug was in Florida on business and met us at Cracker Jack’s.  There was a great band playing and we had a short, but nice visit with Doug.  

 

It was a gorgeous day, and we had a short trip to Cocoa Beach, FL.  Temps were a record setting 84 – yeah!  We arrived at our marina and Jack had a challenging approach to our slip, but he did a great job.  We settled in for a nice week long stay.  There was a Christmas care package waiting for us from my mom and dad.  Now we were looking forward to the holidays.  The marina hosted a potluck on Christmas Eve (excellent jerk chicken).  Christmas day was low-key.  Eric, a neighbor boater, came over for happy hour and we walked into town.  The only place that was open was a small, smokey dive.  We didn’t stay long and headed back to MTB for Christmas dinner.  It was a quiet and pleasant Christmas.