ON THE ICW

The Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway (for our non-boating friends) is a series of linked waterways along the East Coast that allows one to travel in mostly protected water from Florida as far north as New Jersey. We are currently on the ICW, backtracking our route down from the Chesapeake Bay a couple of years ago. We hope to take a little more time going up than we took coming down, since we were headed south in December and were in a hurry to get to a warmer climate. The ICW varies from man-made canals to natural bayous, to rivers to expansive sounds, but, in Florida, it often consists of fairly narrow channels that can be lined with anything from multi-million dollar mansions to rickety fishing shanties. Other than these narrow channels, there are many lagoons behind barrier islands, separating the calmer water from the Atlantic Ocean and providing many great anchorage sites.

Typical Florida ICW view

It was a beautiful anchorage last night — until a run-down sailboat dropped anchor nearby and, pretty much, ruined the neighborhood. Loud music, raunchy, overly loud conversation and a dog barking. I had been considering sleeping outside on the bridge where the breeze was nice and cool and the view of the stars was magnificent, but ended up in the cabin with the fan on “high” to drown out the noise.

Today started out with decent weather, but we had rain on & off starting around 10 AM. Some of the rain squalls were so heavy we had to slow down due to reduced visibility. In general, I like to stay up on the flybridge, even with the heavy rains, to dodge all the crab pot floats so that I don’t get the lines wrapped up around the propshaft. If that happens (and it has) it means diving down to cut the lines and, hopefully, be on your way. However, there is always the risk that the prop and/or propshaft will be damaged — big $$ repairs! Today I stayed up on the flybridge, in my trusty foul weather gear, until the lightning started. At that point it’s down to the lower helm and the relative safety of the cabin.

Rain squalls on the horizon

I think we have finally solved the issue of whether or not manatees exist, although we have no photographic proof! We did see a couple of them today as we were cruising through the Haulout Canal — man, are they huge!

It ended up being a fairly long day as we anchored just above New Smyrna at about 5PM. By then it was pretty warm, so I jumped into the water to wash my clothes. At 77 degrees, the water was refreshing, but my "rinse cycle" didn't last too long.

I commented to Elaine that if I had just completed a 9-5 day of driving I would have been tired, but a full day at the helm really wasn’t that bad. 

Lighthouse at Ponce de Leon Inlet as we left our anchorage early morning

Friday April 25

Had a very quiet and restful night at anchor and headed out this morning with St. Augustine as our destination. We had stopped at St. Augustine a couple of years ago on our way south, and enjoyed it so much we decided to lay over for a day. At The time (December), the holiday lights were up and even the rainy weather didn’t detract from the charm of the small city. Getting your boat settled in here, though can be a challenge. There is always a very strong tidal current at the municipal marina and today was no exception. We were late at requesting a slip for the night, so all we could get was a mooring (for our non-boating friends, essentially a permanent anchor connected to a buoy to which one ties up). We were assigned a mooring which was very near the ocean inlet and very exposed to the winds. The end result was rough water conditions which were not comfortable. We managed to get switched to another mooring which was more protected, although much further from the marina docks. This meant a longer dinghy ride to get to town, but the calmer conditions were worth it.

We met several friends here for dinner - all fellow boat owners heading north for the season. It did mean getting dressed up a bit on the boat, then climbing into the dinghy for the ride to the dock, but even in the moderately strong winds, we arrived dry and intact. Heading back to the boat, after a very sociable dinner, we “improvised” navigation lights with our $2.50 solar-powered garden light which Elaine held high on the dinghy trip back.

The relatively minor electrical issues we have had with the boat the past couple of days have, I think, been solved. There are two battery systems on board - the engine start batteries and the “house” batteries (which supply our daily power for lights, refrigerator, water pumps, etc.). We have had to combine these two systems manually to get the engines started the past few days, and the battery monitors have given confusing read-outs regarding the state-of-charge for the start batteries. Well, today I finally crawled into the engine room and measured the battery charge with a hand-held meter and found that the start batteries are dead. These batteries have been on the boat since we bought her, so it’s not really surprising that they are no longer taking a charge. However, that means the task for tomorrow is to find new start batteries here in St. Augustine tomorrow and get them on board. Oh well, I didn’t have much on my calendar for tomorrow anyway…