Christmas/Hannukah Edition! Happy Holidays everyone!
But, we did it again... long one. Really long post. Saddle up.
St. Augustine
Pedro Menendez discovered, conquered and killed. A lot. He specialized in killing French Huguenots, but if they were all dead he wasn't opposed to offing local Indians and anyone else who wedged themselves between old Pedro and potential claims for 16th century Spain. But largely because of his persistent if not violent push to settle "La Florida" as a Spanish Colony there is a huge Spanish influence in this region today. Just think, if it weren't for Pedro, the southeast US could still be French...
Along our trip south we have had several encounters with Pedro's old haunts. Back in Beaufort, SC we toured the Santa Elena Center to learn about the locally discovered colony (that was lost like the original Jamestown Settlement) and is now an archeologic site on Parris Island! Evidently the Marine Base golf course covers part of the original settlement. But the bullseye for any real Pedrophile out there is Saint Augustine, Florida. Founded in 1565 by Menendez, this is the oldest continually inhabited city in the US. Surprisingly most of the original inhabitants are dead- but luckily they built durable stuff much of which is still visible today.
Eventually the city of St. Augustine was ceded to the US from Spain in 1822. It's wild to think that prior to this time it was still a Spanish territory, and in fact many slaves escaped to the island to be given refuge there upon pledging allegiance to the Spanish Crown.
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| As one approaches St. Augustine from the water, they are greeted with a formidable site: Castillo de San Marcos. It's the original fort protecting the city. Today this attenuated version serves as protection from invading forces such as the Muchachas Falk de Pennsylvania, pictured above ready to traverse the moat in full attack mode. This aggressive posturing is evidenced by Avery's sun-darkened glasses- always shaded just prior to her screaming the call to battle. |
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| Crossing through the original city gates |
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| The streets of St. Augustine really have a Spanish feel |
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| Some Spanish guy and his hija |
Lynn
We were set up on a blind date with the Cindy and Eric Chaconas - the children of Brad's parent's good friends ('Yassas' Pam and Jimmy Chaconas of Annapolis, MD!). We had hopes of meeting a cool family with young kids that Avery would enjoy playing with and perhaps gain some local knowledge from them. Eric and Cindy greeted us with incredible hospitality, many shared meals, playdates, day and nighttime sightseeing, a holiday cookie making party and most importantly...a trip to the grocery that Cindy will never forget! I have tried not to worry about provisioning (grocery shopping for weeks and months at a time) too much as we made our way down the ICW, but we arrived in St. Augustine with no milk, eggs, bread, fresh fruit or veggies and very little of nearly everything else, except an abundance of peanuts, dried beans and rice. Poor Cindy did not know what she was getting into when she offered me a ride to the grocery. In hindsight, I should have insisted that she leave me and return in about 3 hours. That is probably how long it took me to restock while carefully checking prices, expiration dates and searching for our favorite brands and new products to try (before buying in bulk) in the unfamiliar aisles of Publix. The least I could do, after thanking her profusely, was become Cindy's dish washer and make her an offering of some Norwex microfiber at our next meeting to show our appreciation. Thank you again Cindy! We owe you a trip to Hershey Park!
Our girls all loved meeting Kalia (4) and Dimitrios (5), but Avery in particular was in heaven. The kids were so sweet. Avery got her fill of playing baby dolls and learning how to do 360s on a funky new scooter. A fellow kindergartener, Dimitrios loved being a good host like his parents and he kept our water glasses full and took the seat at the head of the table. He reminded us of a younger Rhys Makai and Kalia of a younger Kate Fox.
Brad and Eric bonded over their mutual germiphobia and formative experiences getting haircuts at the Greek barbers - Georges on Riva. Though we only knew the Chaconas Family for one week, we feel like old friends and are excited to catch up with them on our return trip.
Cindy and Eric - both very fit people - Cindy ran a half marathon the morning after our grueling grocery trip - inspired me to get back into a regular exercise routine. Every other day, I workout by dancing around the main salon or the helm, and doing jumping jacks on the bow, steps on the companionway stairs and planks in the cockpit. I was feeling pumped after my morning workout in the private, but wide open shallow anchorage at Mosquito Lagoon, when a sailboat way off in the channel blew their airhorn. I had a feeling they were trying to communicate with us. Brad turned on the VHF and we heard SV Mikado 3 hailing SV Baila!! They asked if we were ok or in need of assistance because they saw a woman jumping around and waving her arms on the bow. Brad reassured them that I was just exercising and did not intentionally mean to use the international signal of distress!. We still laugh about it and I have been dancing down below... most of the time.
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| Kids all meet up at the Chaconas house |
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| Kids pile into the dinghy for a trip out to Baila |
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| Cindy and the kids joined us for lunch and a playdate on the boat! |
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| Incredible how quickly Avery's cabin devolved to this degree of chaos |
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| We enjoyed our trip up to the top of the St. Augustine Lighthouse at night. |
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| Making holiday cookies (kind of strange with palm trees outside) |
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| If you visit, we recommend this tour of the Whetstone Chocolate Factory. Unless you dig my double hair net getup, you might consider shaving prior to the tour. |
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Avery fully embraced the hair nets and walked the mile plus back to Baila like this! |
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| Anna and Izzy help "fold" the clean laundry. |
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| Working on the boat often involves getting into positions like this. What's most difficult is the extrication! |
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| Help! |
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| Beautiful mooring field in St. Augustine |
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| Dinner with the Christmas tree; the pine needles were everywhere. |
From there we continued south. Passing through Daytona Beach we stayed for a few days anchored at Mosquito Lagoon. It's a beautiful and wide-open expanse studded with tiny mangrove islands.
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This is a dance called "the Apology Dance." After a spat, the offending sister initiates an avian-mating-dance-like series of movements to which the recipient sister of said offense indicates her forgiveness by mirroring the movement
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This was the morning that Lynn hailed another boat with the distress signal otherwise more colloquially known as the standard "jumping jack". One of the funniest things that has ever happened to us.
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Mosquito Lagoon is a gorgeous place-- as long as it's calm! It's wide open, so if there is any significant wind (other than from the west) this place would be hopping with waves from the long fetch (distance along which wind waves build)
We then continued on to Titusville where we met up with some friends ( SV Sandflea and SV Wild Child) and took the chance to tour the Kennedy Space Center. I'll turn the mic over to Anna for that:
Anna
To say that the Kennedy Space Center was cool would be an understatement. As soon as you got within 10 miles of the place, you could see models of rockets in the horizon. We got to see many cool things such as the capsule from a Gemini rocket, the astronaut hall of fame, the I-Max theater, and the boots from an astronaut's space suit with the remnants of moon dust still on the soles. TBH i don't really blame the astronaut... Apparently that stuff gets everywhere! Avery seemed to really enjoy herself with the model of the ISS, the simulation of a rocket launch, and the super long slide meant to mimic the landing of the shuttle. I must say, the highlight of the trip was when Izzy came up to a retired NASA engineer and pointed to mylar, asking what the purpose of the "tin foil" was. Mr. Mac would be jealous!!!
Izzy's random post
Hi! Ever since we entered Florida life has been awesome!!! One of my favorite places was either St. Augustine or Titusville. The space center was way too cool for words, and all the fun stuff that we did in St. Augustine was soooo amazing! In St. Augustine we met a really nice family (the Chaconas's) who were so generous and nice! In Titusville we did a lot of cool stuff too. We went to the Kennedy Space Center which was so cool!!!! We saw a rocket launch! We also went to a really fun holiday party at the town marina. In Titusville we met up with our friends Sandflea and Wild Child (boat names). Avery, Molly, and Marleigh had soooo much fun together! When we were at the dock, a manatee came up to the dock and started drinking the fresh water that the dock people had spraying to distract the manatee from the diver that was working on a boat. The manatee (which I named Steve) was so big! He was about 8 feet long! When we had to leave I was really sad because I really liked Titusville and St. Augustine! I hope we stop there on our way back!😀🎷⛵💩😜🐷🐾🐶👍👌☺👏😎😏💪
Avery (transcription of what was dictated as essentially one long continued sentence- punctuation added)
"I met a girl named Kalia and a boy named Demetrios. They are very nice. It was fun to play in a house after such a long time. I saw a big sea turtle head pop up in Mosquito Lagoon. Mom can I have an Oreo please? And my elf moved during the day- first he was upside down in the morning and then he switched to sitting! Tomorrow is Christmas and tonight is Hannukah I wonder if everyone is so excited. I miss you to all my friends that follow this blog. Ok that's it for my blog post dad. Can you get me an Oreo please mom can't hear me, are you still writing this down?"
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After visiting the Space Center we arrived back at the marina late. Ominously for us anchored folks, the boats in the protected marina basin were rocking wildly around in their slips from the high winds. We had a WET ride out to Baila! We were safe, but very very wet. And salty, which is terrible because nothing every really dries once wet from saltwater.
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Visible in the background is the trail from the Atlas V (Echostar) rocket launch. It was amazing to watch it rise up into the sky and then watch the live feed online as it entered orbit!
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Now this was a good look as we made our freshly showered selves through the anchorage
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| Not something us Yanks typically encounter: alligator roadkill! |
This was really special-- the manatees are very curious and if one sprays a hose into the water these gentle creatures congregate at the chance to drink some freshwater (a bit of an osmotic break for them). There were some local divers working on a boat at the dock and they asked our girls to distract the manatees with a hose (the divers reported frequent curious and sometimes uncomfortably romantic contact by the manatees while they try to work on the boats!)
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| Lynn hijacked my tool cabinet for storage! Avery and Izzy labeled the cans. |
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| Reunion! This is Avery's crew. Marleigh, Avery and Molly. It was nice to see Marleigh and her folks again after last seeing them back on the Chesapeake Bay. And it had been almost a month since we last saw The Clardy family on Sandflea. |
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| Many thanks to the Clardys for giving us this boat chair after it didn't work so well on their boat. Izzy thinks about it all day and as soon as the anchor is set she's getting it set up! It really is so comfortable- you just float around the gently rocking bow. |
Brad's tech corner followup (a few friends like the technical stuff and requested some details, so 99.99% of readers should skip this part)
Watermaker I did some more trouble-shooting and tweaking while we were in St. Augustine. Because the saltwater entering the boat has to be pushed by a small feed-pump from the bilge level through a filter and then up and back to the main high pressure pump, there is a resultant large pressure head on that feed-pump. As a result, the high pressure pump wasn't getting enough water. I upsized it and added an additional boost pump closer to the main pump. The flow has much improved. Though the product-water quality is great, it's production rate is still low and after many measurements at each stage of the system it's most likely secondary to a bad membrane. The company is sending me a new membrane and hopefully we'll be good to go with water-making when we're in the Bahamas soon.
Windlass This is the device on the bow used to haul in the anchor (as opposed to me manually pulling the anchor up which would be rough with the very heavy all-chain rode). Water made its way into the gear oil which would eventually be bad. Easy enough, just change the oil. Not so easy with this unit. To change the oil, one must take the heavy motor off, lower/remove the gearbox from the deck fitting and get the entire unit over to a table for the work. All just to turn it on its side, drain and replace the oil! I changed some seals out as well since there had been water intrusion. One of the seals was absolutely impossible to access without damaging the unit so I made the call to not mess with it and change the oil again if need-be. I'm assuming a future entry will be how I had to change the oil again.
Holding tank No evident leaking after changing out a hose. KNOCK ON WOOD. I'm going to stop looking down there. What I don't see can't hurt me, right? It's actually not about seeing.. it's about smelling. Any holding tank issue has an olfactory presentation. It's like a summertime diabetic foot wound in the ER-- a true doorway diagnosis.
Tachometer Tachometer was original to the boat and acting goofy. Once we needed to consistently tap on it to get to settle out it was clear a replacement was in order. Now replaced and we have accurate RPM's once more. The world is good.
Many other smaller projects. And so many more to come!
Wrap-up
That's about it folks. We are excited to see Lynn's family for Christmas and her dad's early 80th birthday celebration here in West Palm Beach. Yesterday while getting down here we passed through the USCG security zone set up for Trump. He is here at his Florida house for the holidays and it was.. well.. interesting.. to be escorted through this area by a USCG patrol boat complete with a bow-mounted machine gun. Perhaps it would have been better had they just built a wall out into the water. You know, to make Florida great again.
After we say our goodbyes we'll do some final provisioning, re-organizing, and make our way to Miami from where we intend to cross over to the Bahamas once we get a decent weather window. We are hoping for sometime in first two weeks of January. There are so many folks gathering in Florida awaiting the same- like a big starting line!
We hope everyone is having a wonderful holiday season and looking forward to 2017. Until next time,
Falks, s/v Baila
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