Thursday 5th February
We’ve been at anchor in St Augustine since Saturday and it’s been really refreshing to stay in one place for a few days and be tourists again. Actually our arrival in St A brought with it the feeling of us being on the trip, contentment arrived over the weekend. St Augustine is one of the earliest settlements in the US, and we spent a couple of days walking round the historic town and catching up on some nice treats – Fish and Chips in the Prince of Wales pub among other things.
After one night in the marina to get our bearings, we headed out to anchor on Sunday afternoon. The inlet here has strong tidal currents and every six hours the boat swivelled 180 round our anchor. We attempted to put out two anchors, one in each direction, but after the first tide change we pulled up our secondary Bruce because we couldn’t get it set at a good enough angle to the current. Our primary anchor is a 44lb Manson with 300’ of chain and it was a good test of its holding strength. Neighbours of ours had to reset their anchor six times in two weeks because they were dragging towards other boats. We’re proud to say we’re happy with our ground tackle!
Unfortunately we needed another trip to customs and immigration this week because our cruising permit expired. Thirty-seven bucks and a $50 car rental to get to Jacksonville and we have a permit to proceed to West Palm Beach. It’s a bit of a hassle, but one more hop to West Palm and we’re off US land altogether.
Our boat projects took a back seat this week, but over the last few days I got our Xantrex battery monitor hooked up, and wired in our inverter so that we can charge our laptop and cameras. Power consumption is going to be a big issue on the boat, yesterday we ran the engine for over 6 hours and still only recovered 80 Amp hours. Our battery bank is 345 amp hours, but realistically it’s only effective to discharge this to 50%. Heading out to sea again today we should get the last of the batteries topped up, but we’re both glued to the Xantrex at the minute trying to work out how much energy our fridge, instruments and lights consume. We’ve put solar panels on hold for now because our budget is too tight, so the challenge is to consume less, rather than generate more.
I’ve been scheming for the last few days trying to connect to iPlayer so that we can catch the weekend’s six nations rugby. I tired a demo of Invisible Browser to route our IP address through the UK, but that didn’t seem to work. So back to Google for another option.
Anyhow, we’re showered and washed for today. We’re heading back out to the boat to bring it in for diesel, and then heading out to the ocean at about 3pm for another 36-hour hop to West Palm.
Thu 5th February, 2009
at 4:13 pm
Stu,
I’ve no idea how to send you a private message so forgive this abuse of your blog. Just to say how great it is to sit staring out at shitty slushy snow, not enough to ski, too much to cycle and to read of your travels. I might be making a qick trip to St. Kitts in a few months so depending on how far you get, you may be seeing an old face sooner than either of us thought.
Take care and huge love to Kell
Thu 5th February, 2009
at 4:16 pm
Hi Keli and Stu, good luck on your next leg. We are in Nairobi and tried to watch your earlier video, but won’t compute at these slower “hi-speed” rates. We are having a great time so far in Tanzania and leave tomorrow for 8 days at tent camps in Kenya. We will check in again after that if possible. Love Pat and Dennis.
Sun 8th February, 2009
at 8:50 am
Stu and Kel and Beannacht, Thank you Stu for your warm and excellent message to us the other day. There’s something to be said for a brief last passage in St. Augustine before you leave this shore for the seas, for a steeping in one of our lost and hidden pasts. I’m sure I’ve heard a Spaniard argue they were the sanest and least offending of our settlers, though the Russians weren’t too bad along our green, fogged, sort of Irish north California coast. Hope you’re at ease there and freshening after your work put in this far. Someone above has mentioned St. Kitts which has something coming back to me. That’s lovely there, as are the people of it. Turn left at the Dutch islands and you’ll make it,and if you hit Antigua you’ve gone too far. Suffering almost daily here now from Caribbean on the brain- you know the symptoms. Late inspiration coming from the news of soft English batsmen flailing in the breezy heat of west indies fast bowlers at Sabina Park in Kingston. I never knew feck all about cricket but I used to listen to the old men in Bridgetown talk about the days of Headley, Constantine, Sobers and Worrell and as a pup myself heard rumours of Lloyd, Haynes, and Richards the way one heard about Best or Cruyff or the old All Blacks or the atmosphere in Lansdowne Road or Wembley or the old Garden on Madison Square for a fight night or the Rangers in winter. Did not see it myself and hope and suppose you have heard or seen, but Ireland are off with a steady dismantling of the French and they were singing The Fields of Athenry by the ending at Croke Park. Stirringly no doubt. Heaslip man of the match with nods to Kidney’s trials and invention. Good on them, I had not known for how long the French have been handling Ireland. It must be a good one on the green island tonight. We’re quiet here, under the first good rains in ages. I’m still looking for an old issue of Slocum I’m sure I’ve kept hauling with me through the years to get me going for just such an occasion as we all hope to share with you before you leave the hemisphere. If not Josh, I’m down to Two Years Before the Mast. Old school Stu, I’m very old school. Only good for bailing, but then one hopes I won’t have to. Wish I’d known and been in that Kon-Tiki deal back when, but fellas named like Heyerdahl were rare in my parts. I hope to God nothing arrests you in West Palm Beach, although it is possibly a good place to run a Ponzi scheme to right your balances. Enjoy the passage and get thee to Bahamas where they have islands called things like “Cat” and “Watermelon” I think, and lovely cays. Think you deserve to idle out at some paradise awhile. Try the conch and the flying fish. Andrea sends love too to you and Kel. Mahlon’s on the brink of speech,but we can’t tell the accent. First words “Ah Hah!”
Sun 8th February, 2009
at 12:54 pm
good to hear all is well with u 2. We are covered in snow here and winter wonderland is all around. 4 weeks to go until zoe is married, Karl back home now & living in Sligo with Giovanna. We will watch with interest take care hope u got rugby result yahoo! cricket
Mon 9th February, 2009
at 7:30 am
Hi Stu!
I thought I was quite the international lad about town until I discovered this blog- Gothenburg in the winter can hardly match up to your exploits! I’m at work at the minute so I don’t have much time to read, but I’ll have a good look through later. As for 6 nations rugby, 9.99 will pay for a month of hosting at ukproxyserver.co.uk- the service has bee pretty reliable and it’s about the only one I’d recommend. You will find that the free ones are either too ropey (like the nautical touch there? Sorry.), or they don’t allow iPlayer as it sucks up all their bandwidth. Of course, if you know someone in the UK with a fast connection you could ask them to setup a proxy on their home machine, (and give me the details)
Nice to see how you’re doing anyway mate.
Culby.