Real Time Update and St. Mary's to Fernandina Beach

 We have been extremely busy for the past week getting ready to go to the Bahamas. Tomorrow is the big day. We are currently in West Palm Beach and we are ready to head out the inlet in the very early hours of the morning and sail the 60 or so miles to West End on Grand Bahama. The weather forecast looks very good and those days don't come often this time of year, so we are going to go for it. I will try to update this blog in the next few days to let you know if we made it.

So, now back to the regular blog. In my last entry, I wrote about our first two days in St. Mary's, Georgia. We ended up staying 4 days there. The last two days were more of the same, walking around town and checking out the beautiful old Oak trees. They actually have a brochure for a walking tour of the largest trees in town. Did we do that? Yes we did.

This neighborhood was built around these beautiful live oak trees.

Another historic house. This was one of a sea captain. 

The tree on the left that has fallen over is still living and has been for more than 50 years.

I just think this is a beautiful shot. The experts estimate that the oldest trees are around 400 years old. 

 On December 14th, we left St. Mary's and motored all of 8.9 nm to Fernandina Beach. There is a large marina there that also has a mooring field. As we came in, we called the marina to come to the fuel dock to get fuel, water and a pump out. I noticed then, that there was a very stiff current. The wind was also blowing about 15 knots. 

We have picked up mooring balls many times and most of the time it is not a problem. Kim does a great job. This time, things did not go well. Kim had a very difficult time getting our boat hook on the pendant because it was wrapped in tape. She was finally able to get it and then the wind and current caused me to lose the bow of the boat and it ripped the boat hook out of her hands. Now what do we do? That is the only boat hook we have. Kim was thinking quickly and asked me to maneuver the boat next to the floating boat hook. I was able to do that, and she snagged it with a dock line. That all happened right before I almost hit the boat moored next to us. The good news is I avoided them, and then we went back at it for another try. This time Kim got it done with some serious straining. Wow, that was stressful. 

The marina has a very nice dinghy dock and showers for the boats in the mooring field. We really enjoyed our time there. The first objective was to find a hardware store and buy some things I needed to get my Starlink dish permanently mounted on the boat. I was directed to a very cool old hardware store, but they were closed on the first day we were there, but we got the dish mounted on the radar arch and it is working great. 

We also met up with our friends Nancy and John on another Island Packet called Orion. We went out to dinner with them and two other cruising couples the second night we were in Fernandina Beach. 

Lots of very historic building is Fernandina Beach. It was first settled by the Spanish in the 1500's

This is a very cool county courthouse.

This is one of the oldest homes in town

Here is a shot of the marina.

We were treated to some beautiful sunsets while we were there. That is the boat that I almost hit. 

This guy was just begging to have his picture taken. 

This guy took an old Chris Craft and mounted it on a car chassis

Another nice sunset over the marina

Kim wanted a selfie in front of the Christmas tree.

Downtown Fernandina all dressed up for Christmas

This is St. Michaels Church where we went to church.

The one downside of Fernandina Beach is that there are some large factories there that make a lot of noise and smell bad when the wind is right. All in all we liked Fernandina and will probably go back when we can actually visit the beach. 

This is kind of a quick post, so that I can keep the blog going. I have a number of entries to get current and I will try to work on that when I can. In the next entry, I will write about our very good Christmas in St. Augustine. I will write when I can, hopefully from the Bahamas.