St. Augustine

 

Palm Coast Marina

We are up at 6:00 and leave by 8:00, planning on getting to St. Augustine around noontime, so we will have the afternoon to enjoy St. Augustine. After an hour or so Karen calls us to tell us that the boat that just passed them going south radioed them saying that the Crescent City draw bridge was having problems and they are the last boat through for the day. We call the bridge operator and she tells us the are doing bridge maintenance on a fail part and they will not open until 4:00 PM. I feel like telling her maintenance is something you do to avoid failures. After it fails its called a repair.

 

Fort Matanzas

With very few if any anchorages ahead I decide that we should anchor a Fort Matanzas. We have anchored there before over night, just in case the bridge does not open today. We hangout for 5 hours or so before the bridge opens at 4:30. We get to St. Augustine Municipal Marina at 7:00 PM. Mark and Karen get a mooring in the south field, our preference. A few minutes later we call and they put us in the north field. We also have to go through the "Bridge of Lions" to get to the north field. The bridge opens every half hour, so on top of having to wait 20 minutes or so, the bridge operator tells me only one side of the bridge is currently working, but we could wait and hour before both sides will be opening. We go through the bridge with just one side opened.

Bridge of Lions

The north field can be very rough in a northeast wind, but the winds are fairly light for the next few days. Our mooring is very close to the dinghy dock which is very nice since the south field moorings are a much longer dinghy ride.

After we have dinner on the boat we ride in and pay our mooring bill and pickup our packages that we had mailed to the marina.