We made it to Fernandina Beach yesterday afternoon and picked up a mooring for the night -- I needed a shower, and Zoe needed to get off the boat. The trip only took about 30 hours, but without much wind, I had to motor and hand steer almost the entire way.
It wasn't very cold, but I did have to put on my jacket early in the morning. However, cold wasn't the problem, fatigue was the problem -- I tried to take a nap in the evening when we had some wind, but it didn't last long and I couldn't sleep anyway. However the wind vane worked great when there was wind.
I sure was glad when the sun came up. I was also very happy with my engine, she worked flawlessly. I poured in one of the 5 gallon jugs I keep on deck just in case, but after filling up this morning, I found that I'd only used around 24 gallons since leaving Charleston. That's after motoring for over 34 hours. It's not quite as good as I'd expected, but most of it was at cruising speeds, close to 3,000 rpms, so it's not too bad. Normally, I like to keep it around 2,700, but I needed to make sure I made it in before dark.
Blog watch:
I just heard from Kieran who reminded me that yesterday was the one year anniversary of my GTT post. Well, I guess I have made it pretty far, but Texas is still a long ways away. I think we've traveled a little over a thousand miles, but I'm not sure exactly. I'll sit down an calculate it all out when I get a chance.
Trip watch:
We motored about 25 miles south of Fernandina Beach today so we can go out the St John's River and sail down to St Augustine tomorrow. It should be easy to make it during daylight from here, but would have been close from Fernandina. I'd thought about leaving late and sailing overnight, but it's going to get down to the low 40's for the next couple of nights, so I figured this was a better idea.
Once we get to St Augustine, we'll stay inside and visit Bill, KI4MMZ, in Flagler Beach. He's a fellow net controller on the Maritime Net, and the first one who suggested I become one. After that, we'll probably continue down to Titusville and visit Paul, KM4MA, another net controller, then go back outside at Cape Canaveral.
However, since I'm unfamiliar with the area, I'll need to take a look at the charts first. At this point, I just want to continue going south, avoiding the ICW as much as possible -- you can't sail in it, and fuel is getting expensive.
Radio watch:
The new wire I ran next to the backstay seems to be working pretty well. She'll tune and work well on both 20 and 40 meters, so I no longer have to switch back and forth and raise and lower the dipole. In fact, I took it down completely so it wouldn't clutter the deck.
Dinghy watch:
Since we were on a mooring, we had to use the dinghy to get in to the dock. I didn't want to go to all the trouble of digging out and blowing up my inflatable, so I used a wooden plug to stop up the drain hole in the hard dinghy and used it instead.
It worked pretty well, but I haven't quite got the hang of rowing yet. The oars kept coming out of the locks. I'm going to see if I can get a sail for her too. That should be a lot of fun. I can order one from the manufacturer, but want to check a few local sail makers first. I also need to find a good place to hang out for a while and wait for it -- perhaps Titusville.
Zoe watch:
Zoe loved Fernandina. I took her ashore with me when I checked in, and after a quick shower, we took a walk around town. It's a nice little place, but very touristy. It's also very dog friendly -- Zoe was welcome everywhere.
I was looking for an inexpensive place to eat outside with Zoe, but inexpensive and touristy don't seem to go together well. We heard live music coming from a bar with a porch, so I went to the door to see if I could take Zoe onto the porch.
I stood at the door for a minute and several people at the bar waved me in and said dogs were welcome inside. We didn't stay long, but it was nice to relax after the long overnight trip -- she made a lot of friends.. We made it back to the boat before cruiser's midnight, about 2100.
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