November 18, 2009.

On Tuesday we left Saint Augustine at first light in the company of about a dozen other boats. We spent the majority of the day with a favorable tide so a 60 couple mile day happened easily.

The ICW in Florida is pretty much a north-south affair. None of that meandering Georgia crap. So distance wise it’s pretty much the same as going on the outside. The bad part is that you have to remain vigilant but the bonus is that you can drop the hook whenever you’re ready.


There’s a lot of wildlife to be seen, there’s the challenge of timing the bridges and the opportunity to run across old friends plugging along down the ditch.

We stopped for the night in Rockhouse Creek. We were the third boat in and we watched as another 7 boats filled the anchorage during the late afternoon.

On Wednesday morning we were up and outta there before anyone else even had lights on. I’ve definitely worn Christy down on the whole “getting up early thing”.

At one point during the day the motor bogged and started to fade a bit. Crap. Its amazing the trouble shooting you can run through your mind while you’re dropping down the companionway into the boat. I quickly unscrewed the panel that hides the fuel selector switch, flipped it and the engine instantly resumed its happy tune. We can usually run for about 30 hours on a tank of fuel and I was planning to check the tank around noon. Somehow I screwed up the math, forgot a day or something, I dunno but it all worked out.

It was another day with a decent push and when the tidal flow turned against us the wind picked up so
we were able to maintain an SOG of over 7 knots for the entire day. We saw some new things today; snow white pelicans and cops on jet skis. We ended up doing over 70 miles and still had the hook down before 1600 hours.

Most public libraries have wifi now-a-days. As a cruiser it’s nice to be able to carry your laptop into the library and take care of internet business. But to find a library that backs up to water deep enough for you to anchor behind the building so you can connect from the boat, well, that’s just priceless.

On Thursday we left at 0730 and did a quick 30 mile day and made it to Vero Beach where we plan to stay through Thanksgiving before crossing to the Bahamas.