Florida's East Coast

  The time has come for us to make our way Northwest for the summer. We expect the first year will be the most congested, as we’re learning how to juggle two homes. Up to this point, however, we have very much enjoyed what we’ve seen so far of Florida's East coast.

Our first stop was TITUSVILLE: home of NASA. We very much liked it there. We could tell it wasn’t as booming as it once was and we only walked from the marina to the downtown area and back. Along the way, we passed a park with dozens upon dozens of astronaut monuments. It was very well put together. 

The Apollo monument designed by artist Sandy Storm of Merritt Island was built to honor the space workers and astronauts of the Apollo Program who made exploring the moon a reality. Twelve bronze panels will surround the base of the monument telling the Apollo story. On permanent display at Apollo are bronzed handprints of all the living Apollo Astronauts, where young and old alike can put their hands in the handprints of men who walked on the moon. Raised bronze profiles, by artist Sandy Storm, are there for those astronauts who have died. http://www.nbbd.com/godo/spaceviewpark/

We stayed a couple of days, which gave us time for showers, laundry, and a few groceries.

Our next on-shore stop and exploration was DAYTONA BEACH. We mainly stopped here to refill my prescription. The area was quite remote and there weren’t any grocery stores available within walking distance. We found ourselves buying cheese, hot dogs and a few dry goods from Walgreens. Desperate times, I guess. We spent the weekend walking a few touristy shops. Along with that, we found a Veterans museum to tour, cappuccinos and a cookie.

Boat races - I think it was a training class.

 This Osprey and Jimi were 'eye-balling' one another.

It lasted a while.

 "You lookin at me?"

 The Watermen are collecting the goodies from their crab pots and the Pelicans are hoping to score a snack.

Our third on-shore stop was beautiful ST AUGUSTINE. The question is how much can you pack into a few evenings and a weekend? After being stuck on the boat for a couple of weeks we decided to make full use of our stay and go to shore every evening and all day on Saturday and Sunday. A mooring ball at the marina was quite pricey for us, but we decided to stay a week and enjoy every minute of it.

This bird is watching these guys fish. 

The first thing we did was walk across the bridge and find a burger.

Tugboat coming through the bridge.

Stain glass windows at the St Augustine Cathedral.

Looking off the bridge over the marina. What do we see? A boat from Finland.

These guys guard the bridge. St Augustine is the oldest city in the United States. Ponce de leon landed here is 1513 and established as a town in 1565,

Look! Wookworth's had airconditioning.

The public well.

Outside a local church/

We usually see the bridges open from the underside. Here it is from the top side.

Disturbing.

We found this coffee shop and fell in love. The Kookaburra and then the song was stuck in my head for days. I sang it to Jimi at least a dozen times a day.

 We do like the old spanish architecture.

On Saturday we enjoyed live music in the park.

Then we went over to the Lightner Museum. The grounds held five weddings the day we were there.

How's this for a doll house. I'm guessing it was about four feet tall and 5 1/2 feet wide.

The museum was once a hotel.

A nice rocker, but it didn't look so comfortable.

The ballroom at one time.

After the museum, we stopped for a coffee and pastry.

On Sunday we toured the local Fort that once protected the town from invaders.

Quarters.

Original carvings in the concrete walls.

That's the Atlantic Ocean through the inlet. This is where the invading ships would try to enter.

Here comes Peter Cottontail
Hoppin' down the bunny trail

They snatched me up!

Firing the cannons.

Marching.

After the Fort, we watch the Easter Parade.

And there was a masqurade in the park.

No shortage of Easter Bunnys.

A dinghy ride in with my selfie stick. 

Between all of our on-shore stops, we spent time simply hanging out in the middle of no-where. When we reached the St Johns river the container ships going by caused large wakes. Sanibel rocked like she was having a party; however, inside her belly, Jimi and I were not having a party. It was “hang on” to ourselves and everything around us. Those ships are simply massive. If you think about it, they can carry hundreds of containers and Sanibel is about this size of 2 containers. Crazy; and kudos to the Captains for having to always be on the look-out for us little guys.

We arrived at the Green Cove Springs Marina more than two weeks early. We didn’t plan this or realize it was happening. But I suppose it’s a good thing it happened. When we were about thirteen miles away I received a phone call from Cencorp asking me if I could fly to Texas the following week. So, we pulled anchor and sailed the thirteen miles to the boat yard. We have taken most of our personal items off Sanibel. We have so much stuff that we don’t need or use taking up space. It’s time to completely reevaluate what we want aboard. We’re leaving our linens, towels, kitchen dishes and some clothing. Everything else is going with us and we’ll bring back only what we know we’ll use. For the past four+ years, Sanibel has been our main home and we’ve managed to collect plenty.

Jimi will drive to Nebraska without me and I’ll fly directly to Nebraska when I’m finished in Texas and from there a new summer adventure awaits.

Sanibel lives on

Where has the time gone? I find myself asking that question far too often. We last left you with the news that we bought a church in Alma, Nebraska. After the closing, we drove back to Sanibel in Marathon, Florida and resumed life as we’ve know it for the last four years.

Our plan was to sell Sanibel and move to Nebraska to begin renovations on the church. After returning to Sanibel and realizing how much we would miss her, we decided to take a different approach. With Jimi not liking the cold winters up North and me not liking the hot summers down south with no climate control, we will become ‘snow birds’. Summers in Nebraska with air conditioning and a chance for Jimi to chip away at anticipated renovations and warm sunny winters on Sanibel along the East coast of the U.S.

This year we’re putting Sanibel on dry dock in Jacksonville, Florida. Our goal is to get there by mid-May. We’ve already delivered the van there waiting for our arrival. As of today, we have 300 nautical miles to go. That means we must sail about 43 miles (approx. 10 hours) each week.

Before we left Marathon, our friend, Juraj came out for a weekend visit. It’s always good to see friends and, though short, we enjoyed our time with him.

 Jimi and Juraj took the paddle boards in to the mangroves. 

 Juraj had fun swinging off the halyard.

We took bicycles to Key West and biked around for the day. Interesting - this larger than life statue is different than the one that stood here just two months earlier.

We went to an Art Festival and found these creatures. A tortoise.

A Spiny Lobster.

A Sea Cucumber.

A Horse Conch.

A Brittle Starfish.

Sand Sculpture in the making.

We said our dreaded farewells to sailing buddy, Bob with a night out for supper.

Dinner with Bob before leaving. Shrimp served on the burger. it was actually yummy!

Jimi surprised me with flowers for no reason at all.

Then just over a week later it was valentines day. He bought roses and made me a salmon alfredo pasta dish from scratch.

 We saw this in Jacksonville when we dropped the van off. It's a main fuel booster tank for a space shuttle that was never put to use.

Our first sail after leaving Marathon was a 35 nautical mile sail to Isla Mirada. We stayed one night and then continued on another 20 miles to Key Largo. Since there’s only one road down the Keys, the area very much resembled Marathon. We could walk a mile to a small shopping area where we visited the local library, K-Mart, a quaint coffee shop and a grocery store. Our final weekend there, we walked 2.3 miles to the laundromat. The area was more populated with many shops to my liking.

The Key Largo city buildings.

City dinghy dock at Key Largo.

Jimi caught a trout and then he cooked it and we ate it.

Coffee for two, please.

Our next sail was 17 nautical miles to the Southern end of Biscayne Bay in Miami. We anchored there one night and then sailed the additional 32 miles the following day. We stayed in Miami’s Biscayne Bay for a week. We never launched the dinghy, as there wasn’t anywhere we could really go or a dock to get on shore from.

Miami skyline from Sanibel.

I took this picture just after arriving. School of canoe boats practiced daily.

We had a bit of excitement upon our exit from Biscayne Bay. As we headed out for the next stop, we passed the Port of Miami. Two tugs were helping a container ship come in. As we got close, the tugs rotated perpendicular to the container ship to push it to the dock. We found ourselves in the wash of the tug boat and were thrown across the channel. Sanibel rocked like she’d never rocked before. I was below deck and even things safely stowed were flying. Following us was a 200 foot yacht who didn’t fare as well as we did. The wash from the tug boat spun the yacht all the way around and the yacht nearly wrecked into the container ship. He recovered and we all went on our away with a story to tell.

A container ship at the Port of Miami.

That’s not all this sail brought us. We went 30 miles on the outside. The sail was rough for both of us.  Variable winds and pointing close to the wind made it difficult for Jimi to keep the sails full therefore he had to constantly babysit them. Anyhow, we arrived about six hours later, before dark, at Lake Sylvia in Fort Lauderdale. Jimi wasn’t happy with the conditions of the anchorage. The bay was packed and barely left any swing room. He stayed up nearly the whole night keeping watch. We would have left, except we had to get to the grocery store. We’d been without meat, most of our staples and were down to coffee, pasta and one potato. We found a grocery store the following day, stayed one more night and left early the next morning.

We decided to travel the intracoastal waterway and dealing with the bridges rather than waiting for a weather window on the outside. No more sailing for a while. We were now on the intracoastal waterway. This stretch brings us an average of a bridge every two miles for the next 40 miles. Most of the bridges open at certain times and others are opened upon request.  We had to pass up one location we’d planned to anchor at because they were entirely too packed. We ended up motoring to Pelican Harbor and stayed there two nights, which gave Jimi some time to rest.

Captain Jimi

One of many bridges.

The bridge is opening.

Almost open.

We’re now another 15 miles up the coast at Mar-A-Lago in Palm Beach.

So far 17 bridges have opened to let us through. We’re finally getting away from the tourist population and into more relaxed surroundings.

In other news - Jimi and I are first time grandparents. My daughter, Jennifer gave birth to a beautiful, healthy girl on March 1st. We're excited to see her when we get to Nebraska.

Aubree Kay

She's a happy girl.

And so alert.