St. Augustine, FL

This morning we fueled up at Fernandina Beach for $3.64 per gallon.  This is the credit card price and would have been $.13 per gallon cheaper for cash.  We had also called Cape Canaveral fuel dock which is notoriously cheaper than most other Florida fuel docks and they wanted $3.91 per gallon.  When we arrived here in St. Augustine the price was $4.30.  We saved quite a bit by checking around. 
Today we went back out to sea.  It was a Power Boat kind of day because there were no winds but the swell was back.  It was pretty foggy when we left St. Mary’s GA this morning.  I thought this bunch of trees was a huge fog bank but as we closed in on them it was more obvious that the fog had landed in the trees.  Watching the shrimpers do their thing out at sea is spell binding.  We also got to hear and see some Navy War Ships practicing maneuvers. 

We came into the St. Augustine Inlet and made it to the Bridge of Lions for its 4:30 opening.  Otherwise it doesn’t open again until 5:30pm so that rush hour traffic doesn’t have to be stopped on the bridge.  We passed by St. Augustine Lighthouse and Castillo de San Marcos.  We are now docked at Rivers Edge Marina for the night.  St. Augustine is America’s oldest city, founded by the Spanish in 1565.


We decided to do a quick tour of St. Augustine so we walked into town.  The bridge was flooded due to extremely high tides recently and high North winds. 

Short on time we decided to tour Flagler College which offers tours at 10am and 2pm.  The building and grounds were once the Ponce De Leon Hotel built by Henry Flagler (New York millionaire and co-founder of Standard Oil) in a Spanish Renaissance architecture for the elite.  He had come to St. Augustine in 1878 per his wife’s doctors orders to help her tuberculosis.  However, once he arrived he loved the climate but found the accommodations were not up to par for his social status.  His wife soon died and he remarried her nurse.  They returned to St. Augustine to build an upscale winter retreat and create a town with many social activities available.  The Hotel only took 18 months to build and was finished by 1887.  This is a Hotel Postcard from 1909.  Many famous people stayed here including Mark Twain, Theodore Roosevelt, and Babe Ruth.  Thomas Edison personally assisted in making it the first building in Florida with wired electricity.

In 1968 the building and grounds were turned into Flagler College.  It has been renovated although they kept a lot of its originality.  Today it costs about $23,000 per year for tuition and room and board. 

Check out the dining hall.  It has the most Tiffany stained glass windows still in use of anywhere in the world.  I could just sit back and stare at the murals for hours.  My dining hall looked nothing like this

We also saw the Grand Parlor where the ladies hung out while their husbands conducted business.  Today it still has a magnificent art collection and the Austrian Crystal Tiffany Chandeliers.
What a great tour…recommended!
Got back to Jay Sea Dee by 1:30 and headed back to the ICW. 

Just another day on the ICW

Sometimes getting from the Atlantic ocean into a nice port takes way too long.  Such was our problem getting into Savannah.  It was beautiful scenery but we don’t like to backtrack and decided to stay in the ICW (the Intra coastal waterway that runs up and down the east coast) for a couple of days after leaving Savannah. 

Our day on the ICW is like this:

Keep all red channel markers on the starboard.  Keep all green channel markers on the port side and head somewhere between the two.  Watch the GPS to make sure you are heading the right direction.

Watch the dolphins glide in front of you and dive just as you are ready to take a picture.

Watch the pelicans dive beak first for their dinner.

Listen on the radio to the shrimpers complain about the swells or the lack of fish…basically just complaining about everything!

See the beautiful swamp grass sway on the shoreline and gleam as the sun hits it.

Take photos of optical illusions.  This boat really is in a channel of water on the other side of this sandbar .  We anchored right behind him for the night. 

Savannah, GA

In 1733, James Oglethorpe came 15 miles upriver from the Atlantic and chose this site for the 13th colony, known as Georgia (named in honor of King George II of England).  He arrived with 120 passengers on the ship “Anne”.   Savannah’s haunted history began shortly after. When residents died, they were buried in cemeteries around what is now the Downtown area. In later years as the city expanded, houses and businesses were built on top of the burial sites. Many believe these long-forgotten spirits, along with other dearly departed Savannahians, haunt the city’s streets, homes and historic sites. 

We arrived by bus and walked to the waterfront, also called River Street.  From the waterfront we had a great view of the Eugene Talmadge Memorial Bridge which was hit by two ships and had to be re-built.  It re-opened in 1991 and reminded John and I of the bridge in Charleston.  The City Hall building is domed with 24k gold.  The Cotton Exchange building was built in 1872 when export revenue from cotton was $40 million when Georgia was the leading cotton producer in the country, and Savannah was one of the major cotton seaports on the Atlantic. By the 1880s the area was known as the "Wall Street of the South." Ironically the current building was constructed when cotton was only selling for as little as ten cents a pound. But it was a little insect, the boll weevil, which finally rendered the building obsolete by 1920.

We bought tickets to board the “Old Savannah Tours” trolley on-off tour.  It cost $25 per person but is worth its weight in gold for the historical information you receive during the ride.  Historic re-enactors board the trolley every so often to tell you a story.  The lady in blue told us about the Underground Railroad at the Presbyterian Church and how the Red doors and/or the 9-block quilts hung over the railings marked a safe place for the slaves to approach.  The pirate told us about the Pirate House and the underground tunnel leading to the waterway which enabled pirates to smuggle in the rum and promoted the Haunted Tour there.

The city is built around many Squares and the tour takes you to many of them.  You also get to see many of the homes and the different types of architecture.  Below is the Sorrel-Weed House.

For lunch we hopped off at stop #4 and went to “700 Drayton” which we had chosen before we started the tour because it is housed next to the Forsyth Mansion.  The orange décor was interesting

After filling our bellies, we headed across the street to Forsyth Park.

Back on the trolley we passed the Cathedral of St. John.

Finally, we got off again at City Market which is “where it was happening”.  There were bands playing in the squares, an artist fair in the streets and Savannah’s Candy Kitchen (home of the famous pecan praline).

This is a statue of Johnny Mercer.  Born in 1909 in Savannah he wrote over 1700 song lyrics in his lifetime.  Some of the most famous are “You must have been a beautiful baby”, “Moon River”, and “Jeepers Creepers”.

What happened to South Carolina?

Continuing our adventure South towards Florida we spent one night anchored near Wrightsville, NC.

Moving on we decided to do an over-night as the wind was on our Starboard beam…perfect for heading South.  During the night the wind changed its mind and headed directly for us making us “Sail To Weather” which is rough on the boat and the crew but we made it through the night.  We made good time and ticked off many miles…totally missing South Carolina altogether.  We decided to stop in Savannah, GA, stretch our legs, and tour this city we have not seen before.  Heading in towards the Savannah River we passed Tybee Lighthouse.

On this route the Savannah River connects to the Wilmington River heading towards Thunderbolt where we decided to dock instead of Savannah which has limited and expensive dockage.  In Savannah the Hyatt Marina wanted $3.00 per foot and Thunderbolt Marina was only asking $1.75.  On the way into Thunderbolt you pass the Bonaventure Cemetery which is a 150 years old and lies on a bluff on the Western shore.  It is famous as part of the best-selling novel and movie “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil”.  It is also famous for being haunted (just about everything in Savannah is haunted) including packs of ghost-dogs???? 

We arrived safely at Thunderbolt Marina and quickly realized we were one of the smallest boats here.  What a great marina!  We woke up this morning to a box of warm Krispy Kreme donuts and a paper delivered to our cockpit sometime before we woke up…now that is service!!!!  Then we caught the bus to Savannah only a short walk down the road.