11 Apr Ponce to Sisters Creek

Leaving Ponce heading north the Thunder storms weren’t done with us yet. The morning sail through Daytona Beach was quiet and uneventful. You don’t see much Spring Break action on the AICW. 

Approaching our destination for the night, Palm Coast Marina, the skies darkened up again.  We were only about a half of a mile short when the heavens open up. There was considerable lightning. We just slowed to a crawl and stayed in the channel. When a bolt hit and we heard the crack at the same time as the flash, I decided to wait out the storm by going slowly back and forth under a bridge.  We made it in after it passed and had a pleasant evening going to dinner with the Crew of Fire Escape in the European village.

I guess Poseidon must have smiled on us as we passed.

The next morning it was supposed to be a short 3 hour hop to St. Augustine. But in the morning the forecast for sever thunder storms delayed our departure. After the VHF radio came on with multiple severe weather alerts we decided to head to the boaters lounge for cover. At one point there were about 10 or so people in the lounge and all of our cell phones went off with a tornado warning. No tornado thankfully.

When the skies cleared just before noon we decided to make a run for it. We almost made it too. Another squall caught up to us about 2 miles out of St. Augustine.

Again we just slowed up and let it pass before we had to find a mooring in the rain.

When we did arrive we had trouble finding our assigned mooring. Once we realized there was a North mooring field, we found it easier.

Our mooring was out in front of Castillo de San Marcos. 

The cannons were all trained on the inlet instead of the mooring field. Good thing because they even had a BBQ to heat the cannon balls red hot before firing them. Talk about a warm welcome!

We stayed in St Augustine for 3 days. The “Oldest City in America” was a mixture of History and Hokey tourist attractions. We thought it was worth a shot so we paid the price and drank form the “Fountain of Youth”

I feel younger already!

We enjoyed our time in St. Augustine. It was a busy harbour, we had fun people watching both on and off shore.

Leaving St Augustine on a low tide, that allowed these guys to drive their trucks right out to the beach. We wondered how many have gotten stuck when the tide comes in.

Heading North we got a taste of the Georgia Low Country that was to come.

Getting closer to the St. John’s the traffic picked up, both commercial and fishing boats.

Crossing the St John’s river we passed a naval drydock.

We were lucky to arrive at our destination of Sister’s Creek at almost slack tide making it easy to get tied to the Free Dock.

That night after a few more Loopers arrived we had an interesting Docktales.

All I can say about that is, that is when the “Cherry Vodka gang” was born!