St. Augustine — Cupcake Afloat

Beautiful building at Flagler College in the heart of St. Augustine (which claims to be the oldest city in the country).

Here we are in St. Augustine, hanging off a mooring ball in the city’s municipal mooring field. The mooring fee (a fairly reasonable $25/night) gets us access to the laundry, the showers, the dinghy dock, the fresh water, and wifi. Staying here has also put us in the orbit of several kid boats, so Moss is in heaven. She hung out with the kids from Orion yesterday, then we met them (and parents) at a coffee shop this morning.

We had planned to move south this morning, then we remembered we are in no hurry whatsoever. Then we heard about a marine salvage store, then we found a canvas repair store, then we heard about wings and half price drinks night tonight and free dinner tomorrow night. So we are staying a couple more days here.

Big tour boats docked at the municipal marina.

There is a cruisers’ net on the VHF at 8am each morning when people who have recently arrived get to say hello to the other people in the mooring field, people who are moving on get to say goodbye, and everyone else gets to talk about what events are going on that day. We said hello and mentioned we were a kid boat searching for other kid boats. Got an invitation to visit Tiger, three kids aboard. So we spend a good chunk of the afternoon chatting with them on their beautiful catamaran. They moved onto the boat just five days ago. Very exciting to see people at the beginning of their sailing adventure.

After breakfast at the coffee shop we learned about the marine salvage shop and walked the mile or two to check it out. I walked in and had to take a few deep breaths to calm myself. The place was fantastic. It had nautical bits and pieces of every description. We didn’t need anything but walked out with a spinnaker block and two cupholders anyway. (When the binoculars are in the binocular/cupholder there is insufficient space for the sunscreen and any cold fluids required for health and sanity. That significant design flaw will be rectified as soon as I get back into maintenance mode.) The spinnaker block is for the extra spinnaker halyard I’ve been scheming about for several months.

We stopped in a canvas shop to see if they would have time to repair our companionway screen where it has a rip. The owner is headed out on a cruise to the Panama Canal in three days, but says she will have the repair done tomorrow. Perfect. And she has two parrots in her shop, perfectly Florida.

Cruising tip of the day: be your own captain. What I mean is, don’t let other sailors tell you where or how to anchor, don’t let them tell you when the weather will be good or bad, don’t let them scare you out of your wits or lull you into complacency. We have learned to take the information we get from other sailors with a big grain of salt. We say everyone is following their own mission profile, and their mission might not match ours.

This afternoon we were in the lounge (Moss and I were working on math in air-conditioned comfort) when we overheard some catamaran owners panicking about a bridge closure further south, deciding they had to make multi-day offshore passages to get around the bridge. They said it would only open every three hours, that there was no safe anchorage north of the bridge where sailboats could wait, that boats had to radio an hour in advance to request an opening, that the only nearby anchorage was unusable because it was filled with dredging barges.

Ellen called the bridge and was told by the bridge operator that the bridge opens every half hour as needed from 7am to 7pm. The maintenance is taking place at night. There is no need to call ahead. There is no need to panic.

When I was a teacher at an orthodox yeshiva, I used to ask the rabbis there all sorts of theological questions. (That place had as many rabbis as the ICW has dolphins.) One day one of the rabbis found out I was asking different kinds of questions of different rabbis. He explained that tradition says you are supposed to choose one rabbi for all your questions, that way you don’t get to shop around until you get the answer you want.

Ellen and I have taken that concept and turned it into the mantra: pick your rabbi. What we mean is, don’t get your advice from just anyone, choose your sources carefully.