Day 92 - Picking up the Crew

We left Daytona Beach at 7:47 am on a warm and sunny Florida day, heading 50 miles north to St. Augustine.  As long as the boat was ship shape, we decided to move it a little closer to Jacksonville before picking up our “crew” at 2:40 pm that afternoon.  We went south on the ICW to the Ponce Inlet, arriving there at 9:23 am.  Captain Randy had talked to the marina and Tow  BoatUS to get local knowledge regarding shoals or other hazards around the Inlet and we were very cautious, especially passing marker “G7.”  Safely out on the Atlantic, we stayed further off shore as we were in protected waters.  The Northern Right Whales come close to shore in the northern part of Florida to calve and there are tight regulations in this area.

The shoreline at the Daytona Beach area is filled with high-rise buildings, changing to low-rise and private homes north of the town all the way to St. Augustine.  We had visited St. Augustine by car on our last leg and found it to be a quite charming and interesting town.  There were tall ships in the harbor, near where we would dock.  By noon we were filling up with diesel at the municipal marina and in the slip shortly thereafter.  We settled in quickly and made our way to the street to wait for the car rental company to pick us up at 1:00 pm.  When they had not arrived by 1:15 pm, we called and were told that the driver was 45 minutes behind schedule.  Great!  This meant we would be late picking up Laurie and Greg at the Jacksonville Airport.  We told them the problem when they landed and they waited patiently for us to get there.  We all had to be patient on the way back as there was an accident ahead of us and it delayed us even more. 

 



After stocking up at Publix (the local grocery store), we finally got back to the marina and unloaded and stowed our groceries.  Everyone was hungry and we walked into town for dinner.  Although St. Augustine has many restaurants close to the marina, it was not an easy task to choose one.  The captain and I had a wonderful meal at Collages on our earlier visit, however they did not have rum and that part did not go over well with him.  Laurie and I did not want fried food.  So these were our deal breakers: lack of rum and lack of food other than fried.  Greg was flexible and (thank God) had no deal breaker.  The first restaurant we came to, A1A Ale Works had a nice menu, but it was only the first place – surely there would be others that could be better.  Famous last words……….we walked for half an hour and ended up back at A1A .  We had not checked to see if they had a full bar and I crossed my fingers as we went in and asked.  Luckily they had rum and we enjoyed a fine welcome dinner of grouper, lobster mac and cheese, paella, and shrimp and grits.
 

 

One last task before retiring – we prepared the bed from the couch and table in the cabin, even supplying a memory foam “mattress” for our guests.  At the time, I was not sure if they were truly happy with it or if they were simply so tired from travelling all day, but they smiled and said it was very comfortable.  At last: crew assembled boat stocked, and ready to go!