Sunday 3/29/09 Pirating around town...

Dee, (the infamous) Olin, Chip, Charlie, Linda &
Kim

Charlie & Chip solving the problems of the world!

Steve, Kim, Dee, Chip, Cyndi & Charlie

On Sunday Kim came by around 11:00 to pick us up. We met Cyndi & Steve for brunch. While at the restaurant Chip happen to mention a guy he knew who lived in Florida, and that he hadn't seen in years. We thought he lived in or around Fernandina but weren't sure. When Chip mentioned his name (Charlie Key) Kim immediately knew who we were talking about, he is one of the local pirates (small world)! Kim got her phone out and called to see if he was home, and told Charlie she had a surprise for him. We went by the house and visited with Charlie and Dee, who I think were really surprised to see us. We had a great visit with them, and just think, it all started with, "Dammit Olin" (long story).

After we left there we went by the grocery store and headed back to the boat to unload the groceries before heading over to Wicked Davey's to hear a local band and have a few libations. We got the chance to meet a few more of Kim's friends (more pirates...). Charlie and Dee joined us so we moved our group out to the patio so we could talk (and hear ourselves). The band was very good, but a bit loud by my standards (old fogey syndrome is setting in!). Their name of the band is "Blistur" and they play everything from AC/DC to Allman Brothers, Metallica, and newer stuff like Nickelback. It was sort of like a senior rock concert, only the band was 1/2 our age (more like a 1/3.....im being polite). Great time though.

After the concert we headed over to Pablo's for Mexican food then over to Lawrence & Judy's for a nightcap. Want to give a shout out to Lawrence & Judy for being such gracious hosts and for welcoming us into their home. Sorry you all didn't get a chance to come down to the boat, but we will be back again....and hopefully soon! Judy is the web master for Amelia Island, her site is called, http://www.searchamelia.com/ and its full of helpful info, events and local knowledge! For instance, if you need to know where the hot night spots are, check out her 1st annual Pub Crawl video (search 'pub crawl'on the site), its a great video that highlights some of the area's best pubs and pirate hang outs!

We highly recommend making Fernandina Beach a scheduled stop on your next cruise! Great fun, even greater people.

Saturday 3/28/09 The Great Tern Rescue!

getting close enough to grab the bird....

steve is trying to work the hook out of its mouth

Steve holds the bird while the other guy gets the hook

Steve puffs out his chest in pride!

Here is the bird moments later, I suppose gathering his composure!

Kim, Cyndi, Steve, Chip and I were sitting on the back of the boat this afternoon solving the problems of the world when I noticed an odd movement over by the seawall. It was under the dock and it seemed to be a bird flapping his wings but not getting anywhere. Looked like he was snagged or hung up on something, but whatever it was he was just dangling by what seemed to be his neck. Steve hopped off the boat and walked up to the marina office to see if he could borrow a dinghy to investigate. The next thing we saw was a Carolina Skiff go by with the dock master and Steve in it, headed over to the dock. Once there Steve held the bird and the dock master cut the line the bird was hung on and they brought him down to the boat so they could remove the rest of his entanglement. Seems this bird had a hook caught through his jaw and beak and the line from the hook was wound around part of the dock. The guys saved the bird and he flew away at first, but kept circling around the boat for a while, like he was saying thank you!

Friday 3/27/09 - Saturday 3/28/09 Arrrrggghhhh!

kim, myself, Steve and Chip waiting on our dinner!

picture of the main street in the historic district, right across the street from the marina

One of the many B&B's in town

Pirate Jack

Kim, Linda & Cyndi

We've been captured by pirates!

r Captain Jack Sparrow on the left....

We met our friends Kim, Cyndi and Steve at the Palace for a cocktail after dinner at a chinese place in town. The place was packed, with fellow pirates! Kim, Cyndi and Steve (as well as Kim's hubby and 80% of their friends) are all pirates. Pretty soon we were surrounded by people hugging and raising a glass in fellowship. I was waiting for them to all say,"Arrrgghhh" in unison...too funny! Great bunch of folks. We stayed their until the wee hours of the morning, and after too many Pirate Punch's (remember those?) we staggered back to the boat. This time however I had food first, punch second.....works out better that way.

We all went to dinner at one of the Barbara Jeans restaurants. Great southern style food. Kim and I got the veggie plate which included creamy rich cheese grits, stewed tomatoes, fresh green beans, creamed spinach, and squash casserole...yummo! They bring you a basket of fresh baked bread that included pumpkin, jalapeno cornbread and rolls. For dessert we all shared a serving of freshly baked bread pudding with rum sauce and a bowl of "chocolate stuff" (that's what it is called), it's is a cross between a brownie, fudge and pudding, and topped off with homemade whipped cream. Is your mouth watering yet?? Barbara Jean has put out two cookbooks that have all of her recipes in it....Im ordering both of them!

I am posting a few pics of the pirates as well as some shots I took today of the town itself.

I'll post more tomorrow, we are going to Wicked Dave's (this was originally the town's only bordello, very old building, bar is still located upstairs just like it was in the day) to hear a band from 4 to 8.

Friday 3/27/09 Palm Coast to Fernandina Beach

We fueled up and headed out of Palm Coast around 8:00. The storm front we anticipated to pass through sometime overnight was still around the Panhandle, heading this way at a snails pace. We hope to make Fernandina Beach before the storm does. It has been a pretty uneventful cruise today, well other than an interesting exchange we had with the bridge tender at Sister's Creek Bascule Bridge in Jacksonville, which BTW is only 25 ft at high steel, in low tide. Today this bridge had a barge/crane sitting just outside of it, and blocking from the middle of the bridge across the East side of the passage way. We hailed the tender on the radio and asked what the clearance was at low steel (we always ask even though the ICW books tell you, cause sometimes they are wrong..) The tender said he was 20 ft at low steel, and if we would take our outriggers off and remove all of our antenna's we could get under the bridge. Chip politely told him that was not going to happen, and even if it could happen, 20 feet would cut off the top of our fly bridge if we tried to go under! The bridge tender told us he would give us an opening, but before he would he needed some information. OK. He wanted to know the vessel name, owners name, captains name, hailing port, our destination, where we came from today, and our home address! What was next? Blood type, and for us to offer our first born male child? (some days that would not be a difficult thing to do...ha ha). We provided him with information, maybe not the right information, but information nonetheless. We have been through hundreds of bridges in our time and never been grilled like that. All I can say is that 99% of the bridge tenders we have encountered have been courteous and friendly, but that other 1%, well lets just say they are luckily few and far between and probably had issues as a child.

We pulled into Fernandina Harbor Marina about 20 minutes ahead of the storm. Having dinner with our friend here, Kim and maybe stop in the Palace for a well deserved nightcap (if you recall, I wrote about the Palace in the beginning of this trip....

***Update 4/1/09*** Chip received a call from the earlier mentioned bridge tenders supervisor. He wanted to hear Chip's version of what had transpired that day. Seems the tender asked all of those questions because he had intended on filing a report to the Coast Guard for an "Unecessary Bridge Lift", but then changed his mind when he realized the captain of the vessel (Chip) was right in that the height of the low steel was indeed too short for us to make it under. The supervisor also told us that had the tender filed that report, the Coast Guard may have tracked us down and would measure your boat to see if in fact you could have made it under, and if you could have and didnt pass through without asking the tender for the opening, you would have been fined $500! And, he told us that the contractor who hired the barge that was blocked over 50% of the passage under the bridge was going to be fined! Wow.

Thursday 3/26/09 Melbourne to Palm Coast

The winds seemed to have died down a bit this morning, but as usual about an hour into our day they picked right back up, though still not a bad day on the inside. The first five bridges we encountered were fixed at 65 feet, but the sixth one was a bascule at 27 feet. We had lowered the outriggers in Stuart so we were sure we had at least a 27 foot clearance, but we took it slow just the same. There were several bridge workers on the second span of this bridge and they all gathered to watch us go under. As we made our way under you could see them all bend over in unison to see if our outriggers make it. Well we did make it with only inches to spare, and received a standing ovation from the workers, as well as a “Well done Captain” from the bridge tender. This would have been a great photo opportunity but I was too busy watching our clearance to grab the camera.

Oh, just saw two pink flamingos’ fly right over the boat! First ones we’ve seen. Beautiful creatures.

We are trying to make St Augustine today, and in order to do that we need to travel on the outside, so we stuck our nose out at the Ponce Inlet to test the waters. Well, we didn’t even make it out of the inlet when we turned around. All you could see out on the ocean was white. I bet it was at least 20-25 knot SE winds and wave heights of 6-8 feet. No thanks. You could hardly see the beach outside the inlet from the wind kicking up sea mist and sand. Guess we will have to see how far we get on the inside. The channel getting us from here back to the ICW was a bit treacherous too. We only came across one green channel marker and it was in the middle of a “beach” (low tide shoal) so we tried moving over to the left of the channel. The depths varied from 5 feet to 12 feet, and constantly changing. We must have looked like we had a few too many if you watched us come up the channel! We did this for the next ½ mile until we were back on the ICW and in 18 ft of water. The rest of the trip was uneventful.

We pulled into Palm Coast Marina at 5:00. Nice facilities, very helpful and friendly people. After we got the boat washed down and secured we cleaned up and headed out in search of dinner. The marina office had provided us with a map of the area and told us that just a 10 minute walk away was a nice outdoor European Square with shops and lots of restaurants. So we took her advice and walked up there. What a great place! It was a huge courtyard surrounded by café style restaurants (mostly Italian) and quaint little shops (most of them were closed for the day), and the air was filled with the sounds of live Jazz, there was a saxophone player and a drummer in the middle of the Square playing that slow bluesy jazz. Over top of the businesses were villa's and European style apartments with flower filled balconies overlooking the Square.These were actually resort hotel rooms, but gave it a very Italian village feel. We decided on Mezzaluna’s for dinner and sat outside so we could listen to the music and watch all of the people strolling by. Busy place. Our food was wonderful and the Chianti was molto bene!

We were going to anchor out tonight but with an approaching thunderstorm we opted to tied up to a dock for the night. Tomorrow – on to Fernandina!

Wednesday 3/25/09 Ft Pierce to Melbourne

It is a sunny day (finally) with SE winds 15 - 20 knots, so it will be an inside day! Our pump arrived, after installing it we headed over to the Buckshot Bays Rockin' Cafe to have lunch and say good bye (yeah I know we hardly know these folks, but its like we are family now). Barbara knew we were leaving and loaded us up with goodies for the trip. Besides the burgers we ordered (which were very yummy by the way) she gave us fries, two chocolate chip coconut blondie cookie bars and drinks. When we were about to pull away from the dock......I mean we literally had only one line still tied to the dock and I was about to let that one go.....here comes Barbara running down the seawall to give us a large styrofoam container. She handed it to Chip (I was on the bow), he ran up to the flybridge, I let go of the line and we were off! We waved at Barbara, thanked her over and over and headed out. The styrofam container had fresh strawberries piled on top of some kind of sweet cake 'cubes' then covered with whipped cream....which we enjoyed tonight after dinner. She is so nice.

As we were coming out of the fairway, almost to the ICW channel, we heard a familiar voice on the radio hailing the Ft Pierce bridge, which was less than a 1/4 mile from us. It was our friends Jonathan & Evonne on the s/v Speranza. They have recently returned from wintering in the islands and it turns out they are headed to Daytona to spend time with some friends. We hung around the channel until Speranza made it through the bridge lift so we could say hi and get some photos of each other (its a boat thing.....actually more like a blog thing I think). Unfortunately Jon & Evonne are only going as far as Vero Beach today, Chip and I will end up a few miles further down the water. Hopefully we will see them again and catch up over dinner.

We stopped in Sebastian Marina at Sebastian Inlet to get fuel then headed North. We were going to stay the night there but the only slip they had available would have been tricky at best to get into with the SE winds now picking up and my having to "lasso" the pilings that stood a good 4 or 5 feet over my head, and doing this while keeping my balance and our boat from blowing over and hitting another boat.....and no dockhand to help.....No Thanks! We would seek dockage somewhere else.

We pulled into Melbourne Harbor Marina at 5:45. Nice place. The channel was a bit tricky coming in, you had to stay directly in the middle of the markers, and even there it was only 5-6 ft.. The dock master came out to show us our slip, helped us tie up and gave us a little information about the area. We got the boat rinsed off, and ourselves and headed up to Ichabod's for dinner.

Nice day out...early start tomorrow!

Monday 3/23/09 Places to dine & enjoy in Ft Pierce

We are leaving tomorrow, but we plan on returning to Ft Pierce when we can spend more time here. Would love to see the historic district and experience more of the culinary teasures here. We did get to stop in Mother Tuckers Sand Bar & Grill today for lunch....a wonderful outdoor bar/cafe, cant miss it.....its behind Al's bait & tackle shop! The food was good and very reasonably priced, but the real draw in my opinion was the decor. And we had heard about Buckshot Bays Rockin' Cafe, a floating diner that docks here at Riverside boatyard, and travels around the harbor in Ft Pierce. It claims to have the best (and largest) fish taco around, but it was closed today...sign says they went fishing, however I did get a couple photos of it.

**Update 3/24/09** Since we are sort of stuck in Ft Pierce another day (waiting on a pump to be overnighted) we took a walk this morning, and Buckshot Bays Rockin' Cafe was open, so we stopped in for lunch. Great place! The owners, Barbara & Pete, are the best! We had today's lunch special....Cuban Sandwich w/fries, pickle & a drink, and I have to agree with Barbara, it was probably the best cuban sandwich Ive had. She said they make their own tzatziki sauce for their Gyros and insisted we try it with our fries. Good sauce, but im not sure about it being a dip for fries. They have a deal where if you eat breakfast there and bring your receipt back at lunch, they will deduct the price of your breakfast from your lunch! Interesing marketing.

Thanks go to Rob for letting us know about these great places to eat!

Sunday 3/22/09 Ft Pierce Nightlife.....

Rob and Chip worked on Rob's boat until around 6:00, afterwards we headed out to dinner. Rob took us to Harbortown Cove, where he as supposed to meet some ol' dive buddies. This place was great! It was an open air bar with a restaurant attached to it, is the best way to describe it. Good music, good food and great people. We met Rob's friends, had a couple cocktails and ordered dinner. There was a small band (acoustic guitar, saxophone, electric guitar) that were apparently taping a live jam session for their next CD. I don't recall the name of the band, sorry, but they were great. We met a few folks, cruisers, who are on their way to the Bahama's as soon as they can make the crossing. To make a long story short (which is actually a funny story, but I'm too tired to type it all out right now...) Rob, Chip exchanged a bit of banter with "The Lady in Red" and let me tell you, she can give it back just as good as she gets it! She is a hoot! I wish we were going to be here longer so we could get to know them better, but I'm sure we will meet again, perhaps at Green Turtle Cay, or at Harbor Inn & Marina (Hi Brooke!), or in Marathon! Anyway, it was a great evening!

Sunday 3/22/09 Stuart to Ft Pierce

This morning, over coffee, we made the decision to leave Stuart a day early. Our friend Rob came down from Virginia yesterday, to Ft Pierce, to check on a boat he had recently purchased, so he drove to Stuart to spend some time with us and stay on the boat for a night. He was up early and gone by the time we got up. His plans are to fly back to Norfolk tomorrow, so this was our motivation for leaving Stuart today....we would make the short trip to Ft Pierce, see the boat, spend some more time with Rob and stay there for the night. So that's just what we did. We untied the lines about 12:30 and headed out. Our friend Susan, who lives in Stuart, came by this morning for breakfast and to now say goodbye. She has been a godsend to us while in Stuart (both times). On Friday, after 4 long days without Internet service and numerous long phone conversations with the powers-that-be at Verizon it was decided that we needed a new PC card for our laptop and the only place locally to get one was four miles away. So Chip and I packed up our laptop, the dysfunctional PC card, put on our walking shoes and headed out. Besides this was great exercise for both of us...and we love to walk!?

We completed our business with Verizon, packed up everything and began the trek back to the boat. It was past 6pm so we decided to stop for dinner (not a great idea when you have three more miles to walk...). Susan called just after we ordered dinner and joined us a few minutes later. After dinner Susan offered to drive us back to the boat. (this is where it gets comical, Ken , you and Linda know what kind of car Susan has....) Susan drives a Nissan 350Z, which is a beautiful TWO seater sports car. The plan was that she would drive and I would sit in Chip's lap. Well I tried to get in that car feet first, head first and butt first, it just wasn't going to happen. It was like trying to stuff 5 lbs of sausage in a 2 lb casing! (go ahead laugh, Susan laughed so hard she cried!) She ended up driving us back to the boat one at a time! I think a sunroof might have made the difference myself...... oh and sorry, no photos.

Okay, now that everyone should have their composure, back to Ft Pierce! It was a great day on the water, but only on the ICW, the outside wasn't pretty. It was blowing 20-25 knots out of the NE with 6-9 footers out there. We made it to Ft Pierce in just under two hours. Rob helped us tie up then we headed over to see the boat. Its a beautiful boat. Its roomy, lots and lots of storage, nicely laid out and will be a great boat for cruising (it was built with that in mind). I am posting a few photos, keep in mind these are "before" photos, and I'm sure Rob & Emily will post lots of "after" photos once Emerald Sunset is ready to set sail! To me she looks gorgeous right now...

I'm sure some of you are still laughing...............the visual is great isn't it? Ha! (Ive posted a photo of a 350Z to give you an even better visual..)