It was blustery as we tied our boats to mooring balls. This is the stern of Short Vacation as she points toward Castillo de San Marcos the oldest masonry fort in the US.
The tall building in the middle is the ornate Flagler College.
In town we walked the streets and found a great place to have a late lunch. We passed "Al's Pizza" restarant which seemed so appropriate since that is one of Al's favorite food groups! But we chose a place called Columbia instead.
The wind kept the chop up in the Mantanzas River with Short Vacation positioned in front of InSpeyered 2. When we got to shore via water taxi, we learned that more looper magic was bestowed upon us because not only was St. Augustine dressed up in lots of lights and Christmas decor, it also just happened to be the day of a Spanish festival and later the Christmas boat parade.
We enjoyed listening to music as thes flamingo dancers entertained the crowd. We also enjoyed some free ice cream treats as we watched. And just as the sun was setting, we made it back to our boats and prepared to watch the parade that circled around us at least 3 times so we enjoyed the perfect place to view the spectacle.
You can see that St. Augustine spares no expense in lighting up its waterfront shops, hotels and restaurants. The view put us in the festive mood for Christmas!
Amazingly the wind died down in the night and we had a pleasant night of peaceful sleep! Sunday was a calm day of travel with little wind and much warmer temperatures so the shorts came back out of the drawer! We headed to Daytona and stayed at the Halifax Marina where Al and I had another treat given to us by Short Vacation. They had a certificate they bought in a silent auction at a boater function that covered all expenses for 2 nights at Halifax and they shared the second night with us. So we stayed for a much lower cost, splitting what they paid for the certificate. The looper magic goes on! But funny thing as we approached Daytona. I misjudged the timing and got into doing boat chores like cleaning toilets, and suddenly Al is calling me from the bridge on the intercom letting me know he had the boat lined up with our slip and I was not getting the lines and fenders ready! That is a first for me to not be prepared for a dockage and I promise it won't happen again!!
Monday we again traveled following our lead buddy boat and split off as we chose to anchor 10 miles sooner near Titusville.
We had this Titusville anchorage all to ourselves for a very calm and warm night.
The moon rise was as spectacular as the sunset. It doesn't get any better than this!
This was taken last night from the pier we tied to in Micco, Fl at Sabastian River Marina which takes me to the last part of the looper magic story. We have had a problem with the generator for the past several nights. It seemed to have a fresh water leak in the cooling system because it would run and then suddenly shut off. A BIG problem when planning a trip to the Bahamas to anchor in beautiful places. Last night we were close to an anchorage chosen because it seemed we could take the dingy to shore to get a walk in when I called the nearby marina, Sabastian River Marina to ask if we could bring our dingy in to tie up. Well, after having a jovial conversation with a very generous and friendly guy, it turns out, he has been a Grand Banks dealer and must have a special spot in his heart for Grand Banks owners. So rather than allowing us to bring in the dingy he offered a "gratuitous" slip in the marina!! And the marina is a full service boat yard so we not only got to stay in a marina for free but the generator was fixed this morning and we took our walk both last evening and again this morning without dropping the dingy into the water. For us that is a "hat trick" or 3 wishes met at once!! So now we have our boat working well again and are only 50 miles from our destination. Life is sooo good for us, hope all our readers are also finding happy times. Thanks for following our adventure!
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