We spent 3 days in Lake Worth. After sleeping off the first day, we decided to treat ourselves in the face of an upcoming storm and move over to Old Port Cove Marina. Two days in the marina allowed us the chance to take long, hot showers (repeatedly), change the oil, refresh our diesel supply, and have a delightful dinner at the marina restaurant. A great stopover. And short enough, that Jim wasn't tempted to jump ship and take a bus the rest of the way!
Oh yes! My first Cosmo in 6+ months! Delicious enough to order two!
View from the restaurant
da boys ...
We had a really challenging time making the hard turn into our small (35ft) slip after entering the marina. We ended up tied up diagonally - weird but secure!
We were the only sailboat on the dock. Surrounded by huge yachts.
shopping for our next boat!
Tiger Wood's yacht on the right.
May 15
We headed offshore for the final stretch ... 250 miles to Green Cove Springs. The novelty of another double-overnight sail had worn thin, so we set our sights on St Augustine, where we hoped to enter the harbor by sunset and finish the trip on the ICW. However, the winds and swells did not cooperate, and our speed was too slow to make St Augustine before dark, so by 4pm, we decided to push on to Jacksonville, expecting to arrive by daybreak.
And then we faced another dilemma ... changing our tack to JAX also helped increase our speed. Dramatically. All of the sudden, we were flying under sail at 6 knots,with an ETA to Jacksonville of 2am! Shit! If we didn't want to enter St Augustine in the dark, we sure as hell aren't going to enter Jacksonville harbor with all its commercial and Navy traffic in the dark. There were several options on the table. We could do circles outside the harbor for several hours, we could drop all sails and kill the engine and just coast for 6 hrs into Jax ... none of which excited much enthusiasm in the crew! Thank goodness for paper charts because we could tell that there was a large designated anchorage area outside the breakwater, intended for large commercial ships. The shore was labeled as "sandy with shells" and the depth was such that we could easily anchor close to shore in 20ft of water.
Which is exactly what we did! As much as Captn Dan was dismayed that we dared to anchor on the Atlantic coast, it was a calm and settled place to spend the night, even with the swell.
May 17
Entering the St John's River at Jacksonville is a delicate balance of tides and currents. We heard enough horror stories to believe that it pays to time your passage. So we were underway by 9:30am, riding the tide into Jacksonville, and crossing the strong current of the ICW at slack tide. Nice and smooth, just the way we like it!
Ugh. Missing the aquamarine waters of the Bahamas.
Many parts of the river are wide and enticing.
That's us ... almost there!
Still friends after 750 miles with Jim.
2200 miles overall for s/v Maja this year.
We arrived at the Green Cove Springs Marina at 6pm. After tying up to the main pier, the final event of the day was to check on Jim's car which had been sitting at the marina for a month. It probably would have been a smooth end to the trip except that the marina staff set the parking brake before leaving it in the locked yard. Bad decision. A month in the humid salt air of Florida, combined with years on the salt- encrusted roads of Wisconsin, conspired to seize the Escape's brakes. The parking brake rusted in place which in turn froze up the entire brake system. Not to be deterred, Jim was able to get the car moving by going in Reverse as far as he could in the parking lot, and then with dust flying, putting the car in Drive. This proved to be a sure-fire method to loosenen up the brakes, at least enough to drive into St Augustine to meet Mikel for dinner at Schooners. If it wasn't for the unnatural noises the car was making, we probably could have convinced ourselves that the problem was solved..
You never sleep better on a boat than when you are tied securely to a dock! So after a well-deserved, uninterrupted sleep, it was time for us to get to work. The boat had to prepped for haul out in a few days, and Jim had to find a brake shop. Unfortunately, Jim faced the worse news -- the rust was pervasive and he needed an entire brake job before he could think about heading back to WI. After a full day in the brake shop, Jim returned to the marina with a complete brake job ... safe to drive home with new pads, new cylinders, rotors, lines, master cylinder....eeeekkkk!
May 21 - Haul Out
After stripping off the sails and moving the dinghy to the foredeck, we were ready for one of the scariest parts of boating ... haul out! It just seem so unnatural to watch the slings yank the boat from the water.
At least getting into the bay was easy because of the skilled marina staff.
here she comes.
high-pressure wash ... best part!
She looks pretty good since last hauled two years ago.
We expect to be in the work yard at the marina for 7-10 days prepping for long-term storage. Cleaning, packing, servicing the outboard motor and the diesel engine, blah blah blah. It's a long list, and we just hope that the fine weather we've been having holds out as that makes all the difference to life on a boat.
Friday. May 31 - Move to long term storage
The date is set, so we met out goal to be on the road by the end of the month. We'll head out towards Tarpon Springs FL to visit with Dan's mom for 3 days. Then it will be all north ... north to Louisville to see our favorite person, Sheila Yule, and then north to MN/WI to see all the family and friends we've been missing for 8 months.
1 comment:
I am waiting anxiously!!!!
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