We bid St. Augustine Adieu and head south

Our departure wasn't an early one, what with all the hoop-la surrounding Jay's 70th birthday and all the grunge work necessary to get the boat back in shape after letting it go to the birds for a month. It is AMAZING how much guano can be deposited on one 40' boat. Dan even planned ahead and bought a power washer before leaving home! The power washer was no match for the mess, but with lots of help and lots of elbow grease, we don't look half bad. Unfortunately Nathan, who went up the mast on Sunday to repair the bird damaged wind vane said we should be watching out below as the spreaders are still caked with poop! It was great fun having all of Jay's kids here for the birthday and we were able to keep Darcy, his daughter that lives in Colorado a surprise until the very end.

December was lousy for just about everyone on the East Coast, so we were glad to see a string of very warm days when we arrived back in Florida last week. We did need warmer clothes today as we headed off as the North wind blew chilly and cold. The sun was bright tho, and Dan continued his battle with guano as we motored on toward Palm Coast. An early departure would have allowed us to get to Daytona, but we hadn't done any provisioning and needed to make an early morning run to Publix to fill the fridge. We left Conch House at 10:30 and made the 11:00 opening of the Bridge of Lions.

The trip was easy and uneventful, except when we arrived at the Palm Coast Marina, we had to plow our way through mud to get into the slip as the water was lower than usual (and it wasn't low tide yet!) Our departure tomorrow will be dependent on our ability to get out of the slip. We had dinner aboard Andiamo and then back to Brunelle to work on retrieving photos that I inadvertently erased from my SD card. Of course Sam knew just what to do and talked me through retrieving them! Thanks, Sam!

~~~_/)~~~M&D

We thought we had won the battle after two days of continuous cleaning the deck, cabin top, cockpit, dinghy etc of BIRD POOP until we took Jay's family for a sail on Saturday and discovered the wind vane for the electronic wind instrument had been broken off (probably by one of our pelican buddies.) Luckily we were able to get a replacement vane while nephew Nathan was still available to head aloft.


Andiamo (left) and Brunelle (right) are ready to head out of The Conch House Marina in Salt Run (the Vilano Bridge is in the background) on their way south to meet up with Sevilla and Pekabu III on Monday morning.

Grandma Peddie watches us as we head past the Castillo San Marco on our way to the Bridge of Lions. (photo courtesy of Jay)

We watched these kites for a few miles as we wound our way down the Matanzas River, ....longest tail I've ever seen on a kite! The remains of Fort Matanzas is on the right.