Almost Home

Daybreak in St Augustine, Florida.
We are off, headed south once again.
 There is an easy inlet with a short run offshore until
you can turn south down the beach.
We have a long day ahead of us,
 we plan on going to Ft. Pierce to get fuel
and then go down a good stretch of the ICW to Stuart. 

The St. Augustine lighthouse.
Ginny and I have really enjoyed seeing all the different designs
on the different lighthouses as we have headed down the coast.

The next building we saw from our vantage point offshore
was the Vehicle Assembly Building in Cape Canaveral.
This place is huge, while Ginny used a lens on her camera
 to get this picture we were at least five miles away, very, very big.

We made it to Stuart and here we go the next morning at daybreak again,
 us and a bunch of fishing boats. what a start to the day.

Today we are going across the state of Florida
on the Okeechobee Waterway.
 The shortcut across the state is a part of the ICW
and contains five locks, two rivers , two canals and one large lake.
For those, like Ginny and I that are admirers of
  Patricks Smith's "A Land Remembered"
we are entering a very different Florida.

The first of the five locks,
the St Lucie Lock is just past the Interstate and the Florida Turnpike
but it could be a million miles away.

A herd of horses bathing and frolicking in the waterway,
not something you see everyday from a fifty foot boat.

Lake Okeechobee.
This lake has been likened to a saucer of water
because it is so wide yet so shallow.
 It takes very little to disrupt the calm surface
 and can be downright ugly but today it is a mirror as we cross.

In the hurricane recounted in the book "A land Remembered"
over three thousand people died when the waters of Lake Okeechobee
 spilled it's banks and flooded all the lands to the south of the lake.
Today there are gates and a system of water controls and
dikes to protect the communities surrounding the lake.
Behind this gate is the town of Clewiston,
home to US Sugar and a lot of sugar cane!

I would feel pretty secure hiding behind these dikes.
This is the ICW running alongside the structure.

Looking the other way you see miles and miles of freshwater grasses
 and then hammocks of trees when you pass a spot of high ground.

We actually made it to our home grounds,
 here we are tied up to our favorite dock.
Useppa Island.
A great dinner and visit with friends and
we head north for a change to get home to Palmetto the next day.

As much fun as its been all the way from the Connecticut River
 to the West Coast of Florida it is always nice to get home.
(Cheek out connectingpieces.blogspot.com
for more nature pics of our trip.)
It has been fun sharing this journey with our friends,
we loved the trip, the boat and all the great places we got to see.
I'm sure we have a lot of adventures ahead of us in the new boat!
Thanks for visiting with us here,
we hope you have enjoyed half as much as we have!

St. Augustine, Florida

PIRATES!

We have landed in the City of Lions,
St Augustine, Florida.

The old tourist trap is still pumping it out
but there seems to be some efforts to beautify beyond the
t-shirts and the tour trains, it really does look good.

Castillo De San Marcos, the spanish fort
guarding the harbor and inlet.
oh, by the way, the inlet is not charted,
a little scary coming in, but fine.

In 1821 the United States assumed control of Florida
 and Federal troops occupied the fort.
It was renamed Ft. Marion,
 for the Revolutionary war hero Francis Marion,the "Swamp Fox".
Ft. Marion remained an active military post until 1900.

This structure is a hot shot furnace for heating cannon balls
 to be shot at wooden vessels hopefully to set them on fire.
It is part of the water battery built by the U.S. (1842-44)

This was when this side of the moat was filled and guns
 and guns were mounted in an arc on the seaward side of the fort.

Even today these walls are pretty imposing.

This seawall is built of tabby and is probably three feet thick.

Tabby is a concrete like substance 

made from lime, shells, sand, charcoal and water.

Ginny and I are actually using tabby in building our new home.

Not something you see everyday,
 it is wonderful how well preserved this structure is.
Osceola, the Seminole chief and warrior was imprisoned here.

This gate opened in 1739, it provided the only access through the
defense line on the north side of Spanish St. Augustine.

This is looking at the north side of the gate.
Royal Engineer Manuel De Hita built these coquina pillars in 1808.

Isn't it great that Ginny will get up, walk to dog
 and get these wonderful pictures without the teeming masses of tourists?
It is really very pretty without a lot of people buying t-shirts.

This is the oldest wooden school house in the U.S..

Casa Rodriquez

And of course a mainstay of Ybor City in Tampa
 and St. Augustine, the Columbia Restaurant.
Yes, we had lunch there
 and took Cuban sandwiches back to the boat for dinner.
Lost the use of the generator and having a problem with the power steering
so delayed here an extra day or two.
We are worried about the level of Lake Okeechobee,
it is near the water level where they impose restrictions on lock openings
 and depth gets a little shaky.
We hope we can get there before the water level drops too low.

Beaufort S.C. to Amelia Island Fl.

 This is Parris Island, on the Beaufort River
 as we leave that wonderful small town headed south for Florida.
Parris Island is where Marine recruits go for basic training.
 The heat index has been in triple digits for the last three days here,
those poor young men and women!
Wow,,,

This is a whole new type of boat to share
 a channel with after five hundred miles of twisty, turning, shallow channels.
Ginny and I decided to go offshore between Beaufort and Fernandina Beach, Florida.
Good decision? No,, a great decision!
This ship is waiting to enter the Savannah River
and you can see how rough it is out in the Atlantic.
The boat is on autopilot, I have my feet up and Ginny is relaxing.
The only unhappy crew member is the puppy,, very, very seasick.
 Ginny put him in his kennel/guest stateroom
and he is in his bed until he can disembark. 

We are in Florida! (but just barely)
This is Fort Clinch on Amelia Island.
The opposite shore of the inlet is Cumberland Island, Ga. 

Amelia Island is a contradiction, home to industry, shipping,
 Amelia Island Plantation, trashy beachfront dives
 as well as the quaint and picturesque small town of Fernandina Beach.

Just to show you how the view changes from the dock,

to the landing.

This town is Beaufort all over again but different.
This is not the low country anymore, it is Florida,
 but it is an older genteel Florida that we wish there was more of.

This community has gone to great efforts to preserve the character of the town
and not trample over that which makes it special just to make a buck.

Meanwhile, these pictures were taken at about six in the morning.
 This is anything but a ghost town,
what the civic leaders have done here works.

In a few hours these streets will be packed with people walking about,
shopping, dining and just enjoying being here.

The entire town is walkable
 and the trees provide some much needed shade.
Really, there will be crowds here later.

The boat is tied up on the Amelia River
right at the foot of the main street.
It is prophetic that the bow is headed south,
a couple of days here and then off we go.
We think the next stop will be Cape Canaveral
for an overnight and then down to Fort Pierce
and after that a hard right in Stuart
for the channel to Lake Okeechobee!

Beaufort S.C.

"The Low Country
" home of "The Great Santini",
"The Big Chill" and lots of shallow water.

This is the entrance to the Asshpoo/ Coosawaw River cut
 on the intracoastal.
Do you notice anything odd?

Years ago I made this trip in a boat that drew six feet.
I couldn't even think about attempting to do that today.
 The ICW has been forgotten in tough economic times
and has been allowed to degrade
to the point that it has lost it's character and charm.

But as you approach the next town
 you start to think ahead about what is special
 and what you get to see and experience that afternoon or the next day.
The Beaufort, South Carolina area is very important
to the US Marine Corps, with a Marine air station and Parris Island both in the area.
You get some pretty amazing flybys.
What shallow water?

As we pulled into Beaufort
 we saw we were going to share a dock with a Coast Guard cutter.
The USS Diamondback was our dock mate
 for a couple of days.
Ginny and I even got to go on a tour aboard!
 Pretty cool. I want to drive!

The Beaufort waterfront is beautifully done
with mooring fields,
 a riverfront park and promenade and restaurants galore. 

Ginny and I were taken with the town itself,
 slow, easy and local, no big box stores here.
Farm to table dining never left, much less become trendy.
We even went to Sunday breakfast at a very local spot
and while we were telling our waitress that we had come by boat
 and how much we enjoyed their town
 the folks at the next table asked if we were the Taylor's.
Stunned, we turned and said that we were
 and we were greeted by my sister Susan's great nephew and his family!
My sister had alerted them that we were here but really? Really?
Small town, smaller world.
Last night we ran into an old friend and his wife
 from the tomato business and joined them for dinner.
How weird!

Since we are building a low country house in Palmetto,
we took every advantage to look at the architectural details
 in the antebellum homes that abound in this town.

Ginny and have decided that when we return to the world of Netflix
 the first movie on our queue is going to be "The Big Chill"
everywhere you looked there was a scene from that
or "Forrest Gump" or the "Prince of Tides".
Oh, by the way,
the locals did not care much for Miss Barbra Streisand
while she was here filming,
 I knew I liked this place.

Offshore tomorrow to Florida!
 Fernandina Beach here we come!