Just a quick 1 night stop in Daytona Beach. We do not have a schedule but we have spent a lot of time sitting in March due to the winds and predicted weather. John and Deni are traveling with us (or us with them) and they want to be in Beaufort, SC by April 29th or so. That will give us some incentive to keep moving. We right now are about 12 days behind last year but hopefully the weather will cooperate and we can pick some of that up.
The weather this morning was cool, cloudy, with light winds out of the north so at least we are starting out fine. Some of the areas we passed thru it looked like it could rain at any time and we did pass thru some mist twice along the way.
There was a good amount of traffic on the ICW and we even had 4 sailboats with all their sails up about 25 miles North of Daytona Beach. Now we are in the ICW and it is not overly wide but to their credit all the sailboats got in a line and held it as we passed them.
One of the Bascule bridges was not working because they were doing maintenance on the bridge. There were sailboats waiting an each side but fortunately the clearance was 21′ so we were able to go right thru.
About 2 or 3 miles south of St Augustine we had the sun come out. It was mid-afternoon and it stayed out the rest of the day. The high temps for the day were in the low 70’s so the sun was appreciated.
After Getting docked, tied up, water connected and power on, we saw Beach Quest in 1 of the slips. We had met George and Mary in Alton Illinois and saw them intermittently until after Green Turtle Bay in Kentucky. It turns out they had their kids and grandkids on the boat so we did not have a lot of time to talk. They had spent the winter in Marathon.
Lenore came down with a bug so we stayed closed to the boat and I had dinner on board while she slept. Things were somewhat better in the morning and improved as the day went on. I went with John & Deni to Winn Dixie for grocery shopping and in the afternoon we did a trolley tour of St Augustine Old District. The tour was great and the driver narrates the tour as you move through town on their route. Narration is top notch. They have 24 stops on the tour and you can get off and back on as many times as you want during the day to see things that interest you. You can also stay on more than once.
We also walked thru the Shopping Mall which is one of the old streets that is closed off to traffic so it is a pedestrian mall with shops on both sides. Restaurants, ice cream stores, sports stores, gift shops, souvenirs, etc. The locals call it “credit card alley’.
It was a nice sunny day with warm temps and very enjoyable. We are back on the water tomorrow.