St. Augustine

It's always great to see St. Augustine's distinctive lighthouse, especially after an overnight passage.

We left Ragtime & Sevilla relaxing on Hilton Head and headed out the Calibogue Sound a little before noon.  Our original thought was to come in at Jacksonville at first light and continue straight to St. Augustine on the inside.  When we had threaded our way out through the shoals of the inlet we put up the main and found we could make 7 knots pretty steadily (we did have help from some current in the beginning.  Pretty soon we decided to put St. Augustine inlet as our waypoint to see what that looked like.  The chartplotter said we'd get there at 9 am.  That sounded great to us (and we hoped Dory too) as we would be heading in right at high tide. 

The wind helped on and off, but we kept the main up the whole time, sometimes as a steadying sail only.  The skies were clear and the seas only turned rolly the last couple of hours and the traffic was very light.  An occasional cargo or tanker ship headed to Savannah or Jacksonville loomed large in the distance.  Dan had his camera ready for sunset... about the only picture worthy subject.

The next picture worthy subject.. reverse the scene in the east!

The seas weren't quite as calm, but we had had a very pleasant night in our cozy enclosure!

As always, dawn was a welcome sight and we were still on schedule to arrive at 9 am!  Dan did have to slow down to make sure he stayed well clear of one container ship, but my watches were nowhere near as exciting!  We reached to St. A seabuoy right on schedule.  Dan had talked to Jay about the inlet and Jay had given him the name of someone to call.  He did and was told that all the buoys were right where they belonged, so we kept the main up as we sailed in.

Jay had ridden his bike to the beach and took pictures as we came in.  He then raced to the
Vilano Beach Pier to wave as we came by and passed under the Vilano Bridge on our way
to Camachee Cove Yacht Harbor.

We were in and tied up before 10 am and Dory was glad to see grass, although she seemed relaxed and showed no signs of being nervous throughout the entire trip. We'd traveled 144 nm in less than 24 hours...not bad.  We had dinner with Jay and Pegg and are back aboard for a good night's sleep.  Not sure when our next report will show up...

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