Trek On North Continues

We left Ponce de Leon Inlet at 8 am this morning after a relatively sleepless night courtesy of the restaurant music not shutting down until 11 pm, then the clean up crew carousing until midnight, then the shrimpers walking the docks all night and chatting, and then the tide changing and the current making the boat move around in strange ways and tugging at the floating dock and making weird noises. Oh yes, and then the shrimp clicking away picking bits off the bottom of the hull, sounding like someone walking on broken glass. I guess after the lightning strike, we had lost our confidence in the integrity of the boat and its systems, so every noise kept us awake.

We started north just as the tide turned, so we had a 1 to 2 knot current against us, which limited our progress. Once the wind started to fill in, we hoisted sail and motored sailed, adding about a knot. There were several bridges, but these sequenced nicely, and we passed through some very scenic waterfront communities around Palm Shores. Then the radio failed. Hmmm. Actually, the radio on the nav station in the cabin was working normally, but the command mike at the helm would transmit, but not receive. This became evident when hailing for a bridge opening but not receiving any reply. The annoying part was that the fault was intermittent.

By early afternoon, Rob was drooping badly so he headed below for a nap and Fisul took command for the next few hours. Not only did she live up to her title as "The Chosen One" by commanding the tides to change and pick us up from 5.5 to 7 kts SOG, she also dismantled the command mike connection, and put it back together, restoring our radio communications. Ain't it great to be both smart and pretty?

By 5pm we had made it to St Augustine with one last bridge opening to negotiate. This was the Bridge of Lions, which has been under repair since last fall, and has a reputation for closing down all together and stranding people on either side for indeterminate periods of time. We were assured that it was operating now, and listened as a fellow cruiser on a sailboat named Nightingale (who we had been travelling with for the past 2 days), missed the opening by a minute, forcing them to hold station for a half hour to await the next opening. In that period we caught up, and joined the circling awaiting the next opening.

The bridge keeper had a heavy accent which we picked as Chinese, or at least generic oriental. The big clue came when we radioed asking why the bridge was not opening on time, and received the reply, "sprans struck crosed". Oh boy. More circling. At this point, Great Escape and Nightingale had struck up some radio banter that increasingly involved planning a happy hour rendezvous. Finally, after about 45 minutes wait, the sprans miraculously became unstruck, we passed through, docked and proceeded to a very nice happy hour including meeting another boater from our home port of Solomons. Amazing how a few struck sprans can improve your rattitude.

Georgia tomorrow, and under 700 miles left to go to get to Norfolk!!!!!

Rob