THE SLOG NORTH BEGINS...

Magic has been back in the states for just a bit more than a week and I feel like we’ve gotten on an Interstate highway! We’ve seen more miles under our keel in three days than we did for a month when we were in the Exumas! I’m writing this from a mooring in St. Augustine, FL, arriving just an hour ago. Let me retrace my steps…

            After what I’m convinced was the easiest arrival customs/immigration I’ve ever been through (and remember I did this for a living when I flew internationally for American Airlines!) we spent a quiet night at anchor in Ft. Pierce, had a wonderful celebratory dinner of our last stash of Stone Crabs (purchased cheap in Spanish Wells), and crashed by 8pm! We weren’t in any hurry the next day so even I slept till well past 7am the next day. I’d spent the last 4+ months waking up at 0600 just about every morning, making coffee then climbing (stumbling?) into a still dark cockpit to listen to weather guru Chris Parker’s forecast on short wave radio.

           

No, we didn't take on 150 gallons, but the price of
less than $4/gal floored us after paying over
$6/gal in the Bahamas!

Our second day back we did a short run north to Vero Beach, FL and  took a mooring ball at their very well laid out municipal marina. On the way in we purchased diesel fuel…for less than $4/gal! I know everyone in the states has watched fuel prices inch upward this year, but for a crew used to payng well over $6 per gallon for both diesel and gas, $4 is a real bargain! I didn’t even cringe when I saw the bill for my 30 gallons! I wanted to go use it and buy more!! Not to take anything away from this place, but as we’ve seen in many city-operated marinas along the ICW, the most of the dockhands there were less than helpful and in one case downright rude! When you work for a “non-profit” agency like a city, I guess you don’t feel your job hinges on how well you treat your customers. We had “issues” with the people here both on the way south and again now and I hope someone wakes up and realizes there are other options nearby with employees who actually want to serve their customers! Vero Beach is a wonderful stopover and I hate seeing such a nice place get a bad reputation from the boating public.

           

Sensory overload at a HUGE Publix
supermarket. We bought a LOT of
fresh veggies and fruit!

Magic wound up spending 3 days in Vero Beach while we did a few maintenance chores, visited the large Publix grocery store a short (and free!) bus ride away, hooked up with crews of boats we met in the Bahamas, and had time to spend time with friends from home who were berthed at a nearby marina.

            From Vero Beach we decided to make tracks northbound and did a couple really long days…70-80 miles is a LOT for a sailboat moving along the ICW! We left Vero just a bit before dawn and cruised up the ICW to Titusville, FL which is very close to Cape Canaveral. This leg of the trip was a run through some very pretty parts of mid-coast Florida and we saw tons of birds, dolphins and intriguing plant life. There were also a number of interesting homes along the channel but most were just that, interesting, not the monuments to their owner’s success further south. Still, it was a long day and we were both glad to pick up a mooring ball at the city marina and accept an offer for dinner from Dean and Nancy full-time cruisers we’d met in the Exumas and who were there for some boat maintenance. Nancy is a wonderful cook and although anything would have tasted good that night, her corned beef and cabbage was to die for! Kind of an odd dish for a devoted Cajun from Louisiana! On top of that, she made one of my “favorite of all time” deserts, Amaretto bread pudding. We left with full stomachs and even a CARE package of leftovers…including more bread pudding! You know what I had the next day for lunch!

           

This didn't come out as well as I wanted, but what we thought
were rocks or even large shells on an island we passed were
actually thousands of heron's...still sleeping! Quite a sight.

The next day we once again were up with the roosters and well before sunrise were off again on an 80+ mile run to a place we’d seen on our way south and wanted to visit this time; Marineland, Florida, about 15 miles south of St. Augustine. When I’d made our reservations a few days prior, the dockmaster indicated it would be best if we could get there no later than 5 pm since low tide would be approaching and our arrival much later might prevent us from getting into our slip. I pushed Magic pretty hard that day since we were bucking the current most of the time but we made it to the marina a bit before 5. YEA! OOPS! The dockmaster was wrong…there was less water than even he thought and Magic was on the bottom well before we were fully in our slip! Luckily for us a number of good-sized men ashore won the tug-of-war contest with the boat and, with a lot of help from Magic’s engine, were able to pull us into the slip with one of my bow lines. Good news was we weren’t in a hurry to run dock lines since we were pretty much stuck until the tide rose!

          

This place was known throughout the world in its
heyday. It is hoped an infusion of cash will
rejuvenate the world's first "Oceanarium." 

  We found this marina to be a charming if out-of-the-way place with basically one attraction; the Marineland “Oceanarium” across the street. No stores close by, no pool, no bars. Still we liked the place. It is extremely well run by friendly and helpful guys who not only work for the marina but operate an Eco-tour business. One big plus was the free laundromat right at the head of our slip so Diane was able to get rid of the backlog of dirty clothes that was piling up. We had been paying $4-5 per load (that’s $10 wash/dry!) in the Bahamas, so Diane figured we saved about $40 in laundry alone! Diane and I did visit the Marineland facility and they do have a first-rate dolphin exhibit. They even offer a “swim with the dolphins” opportunity, but at over $200/person, we decided we’d just wait until our next trip to the Exumas where we saw them on a daily basis! Still, it was interesting to visit the first “Oceanarium” ever built and precursor to the Sea World’s found around the US. Originally built as an underwater movie studio, parts of “The Creature From the Black Lagoon” and TV show “Sea Hunt” were filmed there.  

No, this isn't some beach in the Bahamas! Just south of
Marineland is the only rocky coastline in all of
Florida!

The place fell on hard times until a couple years ago when the world-renowned Georgia Aquarium purchased it and has since infused several million dollars into upgrades. It isn’t a “must stop” place on the ICW, but if you happen to be in the area…

            Now, a quick word on how we almost sunk our boat! HUH? The first night we were at this marina, I was reading in the aft cabin with Diane watching TV forward when she commented she heard water. I didn’t hear a thing but wisely decided to look around and soon found water near the top of our bilge! NOT GOOD! I did some quick checking and found a slow flow of water from a leaking water pump cover late on the engine. I quickly stopped the water flow by closing the thru-hull valve, but couldn’t immediately understand why our automatic bilge pump hadn’t kicked in to rid the boat of the inflow of water. Turns out that the float switch (which detects rising water in the bilge) took that exact time to fail! I was able to manually turn on the bilge pump and rid the boat of the water so the immediacy of our problem was over. 

The failure of the original (replacement shown) could
allowed a lot of water into Magic! I now have a
backup and a spare!

The next day I replaced the engine water pump cover and looked into my spare parts box for a new bilge pump switch. Of course, that was another item that I didn’t have a spare part for but an ever-helpful marina staff member volunteered to stop by a local West Marine and pick up a switch for me. I had him get two! Bottom line here; thank God Diane has better ears than me because in a few hours at the most the water level would have been over the cabin floor! Also, I was shown…once again…you can’t have enough spares on a cruising boat! Trust me, I have lots, just not the right ones!

            My next blog will take us from one of my favorite destinations, St. Augustine, north to…well, wherever. More adventures await including a loss which is guaranteed to cost us….stay tuned!