We finally left Ft. Lauderdale with an almost brand new dinghy, a second leaking dinghy, and a full refrigerator after restocking our provisions. Our “old” Rendova dinghy got a brand new set of inflatable tubes in Ft. Lauderdale, so it looks and feels like new, while our “new” dinghy that John & Travis brought over in March (to substitute for the “old” dinghy that fell upside down in the water) sprung a significant water leak – presumably from a defective seal!! Honestly, we should call this cruise “The Curse of the Dinghies”!! We cruised on the outside to Ft. Pierce, which was a roughly 12.5 hour cruise. The weather was glorious, warm, sunny and perfect for an outside run.
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| The bridge at Las Olas near our mooring in Ft. Lauderdale |
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| One of our neighbors in the mooring field with his crew! |
We anchored in Ft. Pierce where we had stopped before on our way south back in early February. It was quite fun going through the inlet, knowing that “we had done this before”! We then decided to travel the next leg north on the ICW. This was due to the wind predictions being a bit strong, and from the East, such that a northerly cruise would become a bit uncomfortable.
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| Nesting ospreys on the ICW |
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| Pelican waiting for a handout from the fishermen... |
We traveled from Ft. Pierce to Titusville, then the following day from Titusville to St. Augustine. We hadn’t actually traveled on this stretch of the ICW on our way down, so it was all new to us. However, we had to go through the planning of bridge openings, and other ICW traffic. Because of the time of year, there was a lot less traffic on the ICW, and we generally had the place to ourselves. We did see many dolphins, Chris saw a large ray breach out of the water, and we actually saw several manatees, but we generally only saw their back-ends going down into the water! They never hung around long enough for us to get any photos!
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| Bridge of Lions in St. Augustine |
Upon leaving St. Augustine, we decided to cruise on the outside to Fernandina Beach. Fernandina Beach is actually the northernmost city in Florida, and is on Amelia Island. We are planning to spend a few days there. We will not only get to see Amelia Island, but will also go over the Cumberland Island, where there are some Indian ruins, and some wild horses that roam the island.
On our way we saw the Royal (that’s British) Navy Auxiliary ship the Wave Ruler. This is a ship that provisions other Royal Navy ships with fuel, food, and other essentials. We saw their AIS signal on our chart plotter, but each time we tried to get the info on the ship, it shut off our GPS and the entire chart plotter went dead! Obviously some serious radio jamming frequencies from that boat! In any case, I think they decided to put on a show for us, and did some amazing helicopter exercises. We got some great pictures.
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| Helicopter exercises!! |
Once we were settled down on our mooring at Fernandina, we saw, Orient Moon, one of the Selenes that was with us on the rendezvous with Leslie and Terry on board cruise into the anchorage! Unbelievable! Two Selenes in the harbor! We asked them over for drinks, and we had a great time catching up. We may see them again in Annapolis, which is their home base.
We will update the blog again on our way from Cumberland to Charleston, NC in a few days. We can definitely tell we are back in the States…the water temperature is about 80 (as opposed to the 85 degrees in the Bahamas) and the water is a murky greeny blue, instead of the crystal clear “I can see my toes in the water” of the Bahamas. But it’s good to be home…
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