Our Voyage South

Nov. 1, 2012

This morning has been one of the coldest days we have had since leaving Port Elgin, when Hurricane Sandy moved north she sucked a lot of cold winds down from the northwest. Today was another short day traveling from Palm Cove Marina, Jacksonville to St. Augustine arriving at the St. Augustine Municipal Marina around 1 pm. There were 3 historic cities we had wanted to visit on our way south: Charleston, Savannah and St. Augustine. In both Charleston and Savannah the cities have maintained the historically significant areas and buildings. It was almost like stepping back into the past, when you toured these areas. Not so, in St. Augustine, the buildings in the old area have been restored and turned into t-shirt and souvenir shops. The historically significance that dates back to the Spanish ownership of Florida was totally lost. It was very disappointing after visiting the other two cities.

The high winds and cold temperatures continued into Tuesday. So we made it into another short day. We had planned on going to Marineland Marina near Palm Coast but when we arrived in the area described in the guide book, we found we had passed it by 4 miles. So rather than go back, we went south to Palm Coast Marina, where we met up with Lee and Randy on Silver Maple.

Wednesday morning the weather is starting to warm up a little bit. Although it is not t-shirt weather yet, it is no longer double sweat shirt and foul weather gear. Daytona Beach, our next destination is only 27 miles because of the last several short days. We arrived around 2 pm. and went for a walk in the old downtown area. They are trying to restore this area of Daytona Beach but right now there is not much there. One store that we did stop in was the Indian River Orange Growers. They had only opened in the last few days and we suspect that not many people had visited the store yet. We were there for an hour talking to the owner and learning the significance of the Indian River in producing fruit that is far superior to the rest of Florida. The longer we talked, the more free samples he put into a bag for us, so by the time we left the store, we had a large bag of delicious oranges, tangerines and grapefruits! We bumped into our friends, Lee and Randy and they invited us to go out for supper at the yacht club where they were staying. On the walk over there, from our marina, we saw our first manatee. We had a fun and enjoyable evening and a delicious meal.

Based on the way the weather had been the last few days, we planned on another short trip of 16 miles to New Smyrna Beach on Thursday morning. When we left Daytona Beach the weather had turned nice and the tide and currents were pushing us on at 7 plus knots. These conditions got us to New Smyrna Beach a lot earlier than we had thought and after some humming and hawing, we decided to carry on to our final destination before Christmas, Titusville. We travelled down through the Mosquito Lagoon and the Indian River, both are very wide bodies of water, but very shallow on either side of the marker buoys. We saw lots of dolphins in this area which broke up the monotony of staying between the red and green markers for miles and miles. We arrived in Titusville around 4 pm., ending the first part of our journey south from Port Elgin.

We plan on spending the next few weeks doing minor repairs and cleaning ‘Time 2 Go‘ in preparation for our trip to the Bahamas after Christmas. The sun has been a lot stronger than we had anticipated and we are arranging to have a canvas shade made for the cockpit prior to going on. We will also spend some time doing the tourist thing, visiting the Kennedy Space Center, a bird and wildlife refuge and just laying on the beach.