Happy Holidays from St Augustine

December 27^th – Happy Holidays from St Augustine Florida! 

Once again we have been behind keeping up on the blog, it seems either limitations on time, cell service, or wifi get in the way. Before we recap the past several weeks, for those of you who have been tracking us on Marine Traffic, there have been some technical issues with how Skylark shows up. If Skylark doesn’t currently appear in St Augustine and you have saved Skylark in “My Fleet”, you may need to use the Search function again to find the correct Skylark on the US East Coast shown south of the Bridge of Lions in St Augustine. 

So let's recap the past several weeks.....
From Hampton we headed across to Portsmouth/Norfolk VA and continued on through the Dismal Swamp into North Carolina.

At the free High Street Basin in downtown Portsmouth VA. Due to sea level rise the fixed dock is covered with water at every high tide. Boots required to get to dry land!

Diane is at the helm most of the time while Tim handles navigation, and tackles repairs, maintenance and upgrades to Skylark, a list that gets longer not shorter.

Entering NC on the Dismal Swamp

12/2/18 - Spent a lovely couple of days on the Outer Banks in the cute little town of Manteo on Roanoke Island. Arrival at the town dock with 20 knot winds blowing us onto the dock was interesting and were greeted by Carl, the longtime dockmaster. Unfortunately, with the winds and tight dock space we ended up disintegrating the starboard bow light on a piling, Carl no longer as quick with the docking lines as I am sure he was in his younger days. We are finding maneuvering a 41 foot  29,000 lb boat is a bit more tricky than the Ericson 38. Tim keeps reminding us to let the wind, current and the boat help maneuver us around in tight spaces, patience and ease along are the operative actions we are now taking. We met friendly locals and enjoyed a fun night of playing Trivia at the local brewery less than a block from the town dock. The Skylark team "Condensation Sucks" proved they aren't much good at trivia, but we enjoyed a lot of laughs, the food, and Tim especially enjoyed the beer!

The next day we motorsailed to East Bluff Bay, a beautiful remote, off the grid anchorage sheltered from the NW winds along the northern shore of Pamlico Sound. We anchored in 6 feet of water (Skylark draws 4.5 feet with the centerboard up and 10 with the board down) over the thick mud bottom typical of these waters. A wash down hose is a must in these parts as the anchor and chain come up loaded with tenacious mud.

Meals have been particularly delicious and working in the galley has been much more comfortable than previous boats. The boat storage compartment spreadsheet still needs much work but has been helpful finding most ingredients. I realize in our departure frenzy there was at least one day where nothing was accounted for in the spreadsheet, instead food was tucked into any open space available. We are working to organize so finding items on the boat will be a lot easier. We are constantly humored by how many items are hard to find on a 41 foot boat! That said, we do have over 40+ storage spaces.

We left East Bluff Bay knowing in 25+ knot west winds it was going to be a rough crossing of Pamlico Sound notorious for its short lumpy chop. However, we were still surprised by the nearly continuous white water on the deck and getting below. We can only imagine what it will be like in 40 or 50 knot winds which we know we might encounter on this adventure.

We arrived at the free town dock in Oriental late in the afternoon. The narrow harbor was lined with large shrimp boats and the free space was limited. Tim was able to sweet talk the "skipper" of an older Pearson 26 into moving to an adjacent bulkhead so Skylark could squeeze in for a couple of days. As it turned out we were greeted on the dock by some very colorful young cruisers. We are surprised by the number of young solo sailors on old boats, particularly this late in the season.

Wow, we're actually relaxing.

Gene and Hampton the pig at the Oriental free dock.

Gene, an Iraq War vet was solo sailing with his recently acquired pig Hampton, AKA, " Hammie". A very sweet man who introduced us to Elvis, a tattoo artist sailing on an old Tartan 27. We hosted a potluck dinner on Skylark with our new friends and were treated with fresh oysters, corn bread as well as many other delicacies. After dinner, of course a visit to the local microbrewery was in order. So far there has been a brewery in almost every town we have visited, quite different than five years ago. We are certain to run into these friends again as we all travel south.

Motor sailed from Oriental to Morehead City where we docked at the Sanitary Restaurant and Bar. Yes indeed the name is “Sanitary”. We enjoyed a delicious shrimp burrito and once we finally had a straight face we asked the waitress what was the origin of the name Sanitary. Apparently during the 1930's and 40's fish establishments had a bad rap for the odors and "unsanitary" conditions.  The Sanitary owners were determined to turn this reputation around and became known for better handling of seafood products. They decided they were to be known to all as the "Sanitary" place to eat. I can't help but wonder if the reference to the more popular "napkins" ever crossed their minds when choosing their name. We all know that was the only option for women as tampons didn't show up on the market until 1949. In any case, eating in the restaurant allows boaters to spend the night at the dock for only $25t.

Proof the restaurant is really called Sanitary! (Morehead City)

 We left the next morning for the remote bay at Cape Lookout, the very southeastern corner of the Outer Banks. We saw dolphins, wild horses but alas, no sea turtles as sometimes are reported. We did get to beach the dinghy for the first time and scrape the summer’s Piscataqua River growth of the bottom, and also roam the beach in bare feet!

Footprints and sand, Cape Lookout, NC

We headed back to Beaufort the next day for some supplies and a visit to another microbrewery (Fishtowne). From Beaufort we had a smooth overnight sail to Charleston and pulled into Shem Creek in Mount Pleasant on the north shore of Charleston Harbor. 

View from the helm. We're primarily using the iPad and iPhone with the navigation apps Navionics and AquaMap.

Once again, during off season having dinner at one of the local waterfront restaurants often allows you to spend the night at their dock, this time for free at the Waters Edge and we even stayed two nights to enjoy the Mount Pleasant Christmas Parade and fireworks. These folks enjoy their parade with big tailgating spreads and professionally prepared floats. 

Fresh seasoned shrimp right off the Shem Creek shrimp boats on our new Magma Grill, yummy. 

More signs of sea level rise and more extreme high tides in Shem Creek.

The pelicans don't seem to mind, they are everywhere.

For the most part downtown Charleston is not a very cruiser friendly place with very little public access, so we decided to jump offshore again for another overnight sail to St Mary’s inlet in southern Georgia just north of Florida. We spent a couple days at the gorgeous Cumberland Island, much of the which was formally the playground of the industrialist Carnegie family and now a national park. It’s worth a visit if you are ever in the area.  

The ruins of the Thomas and Lucy Carnegie Dungeness mansion on Cumberland Island

Armadillos on Cumberland Island!!!

Expansive oceanside beach 

Live oaks, palmetto palms, Spanish moss, Cumberland Island

This was Langs Marina where we stayed in St Mary's five years ago. Hurricanes destroyed the docks which can be viewed in Google Earth strewn in the marshes to the west. Locals say Hurricane Mathew softened up the area and then Hurricane Irma destroyed it.

December 15^th - We're in Florida!

Today we crossed into Fernandinho Beach Florida on a sunny day with temps in the high 60s. The day began searching for fossilized shark teeth on Cumberland Island and we may have found some fragments. Then we headed down the ICW to the King George River  and the Kingsley Plantation a few mile north of the Saint Johns River which leads up to Jacksonville. The Plantation is currently managed by the US National Park Service. This Plantation was interesting as the owner, Zephaniah Kingsley purchased his wife Anna as a 13 year old slave from West Africa. They fell in love and had numerous children together over many years. Anna helped to manage the plantation and their over 60 slaves. Zephaniah was publicly outspoken in his defense of the rights of free people of color and at the same time he was supportive of the right to own slaves. The story goes that when Florida was under the control of Spain, blacks and women had rights, but when the US took over those rights were lost. Kingsley was very outspoken above how blacks should have rights and was concerned about the welfare of his wife and children should he pass. Haiti, as it turns out, was the only country in North America where people of color were allowed to be free, so he moved his family to Haiti to ensure their freedom and safety. Anna moved back to the Kingsley Plantation after Zephaniah died to settle an inheritance dispute which was ruled in her favor. We both enjoyed this interesting twist on our country's history.

Remains of nearly 200 year old slave homes at the Kingsley Plantation. The walls are constructed with tabby, a mix of shells, ground shells and sand to create a cement-like mix. 

We arose early in the morning to depart the Plantation near high tide as there was shoaling reported at the entrance to the King George River which we had safely made it over the previous day at high tide. Unfortunately, we got off a bit late ended up getting running around a 3 1/2 foot shoal. Tim got in the dinghy and with the help of a nifty hand-held depth sounder (made by Nighthawk) was able to sleuth out a path for us to get back on the ICW to continue south and offshore to St. Augustine where we have settled in for the past week.

As the list of things on Skylark to work on, modify or repair grows, we are keeping busy while also seeing sights. It has been a bit of an adjustment for me as I am still working on slowing down here in retirement. I am realizing we don't necessarily need to accomplish anything in a given day. It takes time to adjust to this different pace on a 41 foot sailboat. 

We met up with friends from York, Maine, Sally and Dan who winter here in St Augustine. Dan is a retired commercial pilot who has been flying avidly for the past many years. They took us up for a flight to see St Augustine and the surrounding area in their 4-seater Cessna 182. What a blast and the views were magnificent as you can see from the photos included. We felt very grateful for their generosity in taking us on a flight. We also feel grateful to be able to meet up and spend time with friends. 

St Augustine Harbor. Skylark is the last boat  along the city waterfront just to the left of the cluster of boats.

Downtown St Augustine.

We are finding the pressure of keeping the blog is a little overwhelming. One of our sailing friends Molly put it succinctly by saying it feels like “the pressure of having to write a term paper!”, we agree. That said, moving forward you will probably see less words, fewer posts and more photographs on the blog. We hope you are not disappointed and would welcome the feedback.

Happy Holidays from the St Augustine Nights of Lights celebration.

Christmas Morning Sunrise, St Augustine lighthouse in the distance.

St Augustine Nights of Lights,, from our mooring.