St Augustine

We arrived in the oldest city in America – St Augustine, on the 4^th of December. As we were coming up to the city we noticed some flashing lights of police cars and as we got closer we realized that a parade was going on. It was their Christmas Parade. By the time we got secured to the mooring ball and ashore, it unfortunately was over. We walked around the city though and it was bustling. Horses and buggies were giving tourists tours of the city and there were also sight-seeing trolleys going around the city and stopping at various locations. We walked down some old brick streets and looked in a few of the many shops around. It was warm and we had to take off a few layers. We stopped at one of the shops for some delicious Italian pizza. Mmmm was it good! We booked tickets for a ghost walk in the evening. They have a fort in the city called Castillo de San Marcos which they have lots of re-enactors in the streets and at the fort. We saw a ‘British encampment’ and then went across the street and toured the fort. It was neat to look around and the view from the top of the fort was great. We even got to see them shoot off a canon.

So we were told about this torch parade that goes on each year. We knew to be somewhere at 7:30. We figured we would see the crowd and find out what it exactly is later on. The town was lit up with millions of lights on the buildings and trees. It was very festive. So at about 7:20 we found the crowd of people in the park down town. We tried to figure out what was going on and where we should stand. Everyone seemed to have a different idea of what was going on. It was just entertaining to hear people say their version of the events. Nothing happened until almost 8pm when the army marched by with torches followed by the women with lanterns. They story being that they were going to march down to the edge of town and shut the gates out to keep the rift-raft out, as they did many years ago. All in all we waited in anticipation and suspense with a lot of people, and we were a little let down but it was still fun. Afterwards we went on our ghost walk…. We walked around the town finding out about ghost sightings and historical places. Our tour guide was really into it and we both got a little freaked out at points. At the end of the day we were exhausted as we returned to our boat.

We left the next day, putting St Augustine on our list as a place we would like to spend some more time at on the way back. We stopped a little ways out of the city in a narrow creek in hopes to get a few groceries. We anchored and then dad dinghyed us to shore so we could cross the street and go to the grocery store. There was no place to land the dinghy and we didn’t want to go too far away, so he pulled up to an old dock and we had to climb up with an old wooden ladder. The dinghy got a little too close to the oyster shells that were on the wood and we heard the dreaded ‘whoosh’ as the dinghy got punctured and all the air was coming out. Sal had to go back with him to keep his hand on the hole to prevent all the air from coming out. Good thing we had a good stock of patches for the dinghy! We moved on and anchored in front of Fort Matanzas. The wind had started to pick up and the current was very strong here. We had a windy rocky cold night!

On December 6^th we got up early and left in the freezing cold! We had all the clothing on that we could fit. We took turns coming below to warm our fingers and toes. The weather is starting to depress us. I truly thought that we would be in bathing suits, shorts and t-shirts all the way down, on the bright side, this is almost record lows for Florida… so that makes us feel a little better knowing that this is not normal. We anchored in Daytona beach, but were too cold even to venture to shore. With the wind chill it was 3 ‘ C! Dad warmed us up in the evening with a hot turkey dinner and mom made an apple crumble.