Free Wheels, Fort Matanzas & Freshies

We wanted to make the most of Stephan's generous offer to let us use his Jeep. We had about four hours, so we planned our time carefully. We certainly rent cars from time to time, but having the use of a vehicle when it's totally unexpected is like manna from heaven. We'd been lugging supplies and groceries in our backpacks and shopping bags, using the local buses and foot power. No complaints, but this method limits the volume of the purchases, as well as the weight and is quite time-consuming. With Stephan's Jeep, we could buy to our heart's (and budget's) content in no time. Dangerous stuff! I made a list (checked it twice) and we headed into shore to meet up with Stephan … the list remained on the salon table. Duh! We found an Aldi's which is an interesting grocery store that we've seen around the world. (It's German-owned by the same company that owns Trader Joe's.) Their prices and quality are good; the variety of products offered is different than the run-of-the-mill grocery store and we like poking around there. Bring your own bags and you have to pop a quarter in the shopping cart which is returned to you when you return the cart. We bought all sorts of good stuff for the larder. We were hungry and didn't have our list … what would you expect?

We stopped at WalMart for some basics and mostly because we could. We found ABC Liquors … a great liquor store with more varieties of rum than possibly imagined. We found some rum for Neptune and some beer and wine for us and loaded it into the Jeep. We'd seen a wonderful roadside fruit/veg stand on one of our walks and stopped there. We loaded up on freshies … a huge, aromatic melon, blueberries, broccoli, cabbage, red grapes, Honeycrisp apples … enough for an army. A few more stops and we were out of time. We headed back to the marina where we needed a dock cart to get all the stuff back to the dinghy. Stephan met us and asked if we'd like the Jeep for another day. Really? Absolutely!

We were up early in order to get our morning chores as well as a round of sanding and varnishing done. We met Stephan at 0900 and headed to Fort Matanzas National Monument, located about 12 miles away on Anastasia Island … just over the Bridge of Lions and down “scenic coastal route A1A”. It's not very scenic actually. It's lined with commercial properties … hotels, motels, souvenir shops, strip malls, etc. It provides access, however, to the state park and all the local beaches … and the historic fort.

Originally built by the Spanish in 1740-42, Fort Matanzas is small, coquina and limestone fort, which served as an outpost and first line of defense of the Matanzas Inlet to protect St. Augustine from a southern attack. Matanzas, by the way, is Spanish for “slaughters” and refers to several massacres of French troops by the Spanish that occurred here in 1565. When the US took possession of Florida in 1821, the fort had deteriorated and was unusable.

The national monument area is lovely … quite different from retail-ridden A1A. A grove of live oaks shades a large picnic area. There's a small Visitor's Center with a parks ranger to answer questions and an 8-minute orientation movie to provide insight and information about the fort. A ½ mile boardwalk loops through diverse coastal flora and, best of all, a short ferry ride across the Matanzas River deposits visitors on Rattlesnake Island for an escorted tour of the old fort. Both admission to the monument and the ferry ride are free!

We picked up our ferry tickets, watched the movie and, since we had a 40-minute wait, decided to walk the short boardwalk trail through the coastal scrub and check out the “barrier island ecosystem”. A trail guide with numbered locations provided information about the local fauna and flora. Birds chirped, cicadas hummed and anoles scampered across the boardwalk, alarmed by our footfalls. The sun filtered through the trees above and the morning air smelled fresh and wonderful.

Though ospreys, eagles and pelicans ply these skies and gopher tortoise call these shores home, we saw very few critters. We could see tortoise tracks in the sand, but alas no tortoises. Except for the anoles, the only fauna to be seen were spiders ... which were in great numbers. Their intricate webs glistened in the sunlight. Spiders are not my favorite, but with a name like hairy-kneed golden silk spider, I couldn't resist the urge to photograph it. Thank goodness for the zoom.

According to the Fort Matanzas website, “On October 15, 1924, using the power granted in the Antiquities Act, President Calvin Coolidge named … Fort Matanzas as a national monument. During the late 1920s, extensive repair was done on Fort Matanzas. The garita (sentry box), which had fallen off, was rebuilt. Iron rods were placed within the tower, and the gun deck parapet and lower walls were rebuilt. The land on Rattlesnake Island surrounding the fort was set aside as a bird sanctuary.” The fort was visible just upriver from the ferry dock.

We were amazed that about 50 people were waiting in line for the ferry. We had no idea this national monument would be so popular. They herded about 25 of us aboard for the first trip out to Rattlesnake Island. We saw no rattlesnakes, by the way. Manatees and turtles could be seen at a distance during our 5 minute trip upriver. A hungry, savvy, snowy egret, apparently unimpressed by the ferry's arrival, stood on rocks near the dock just above an eddy where small fish were easily snatched up for breakfast.

A ranger accompanied us ashore, provided information about the fort and its history, gave us a few admonitions, then she set us free to explore. The fort is tiny and the exploration didn't take long. We climbed steps to the first level where several weathered canons stood in place, at one time ready to defend the inlet. The re-attached garita (sentry box), an iconic feature of Spanish colonial forts, provided a good photo opp for many visitors.

On the same level, we checked out the soldier's quarters. Pretty spartan digs and probably quite a boring post. Upstairs, a smaller solitary room housed the officer in charge. He shared his room with the powder magazine and the ladder which led to the observation deck. The ladder had been declared unsafe just days before we arrived and was off-limits to visitors till it was repaired.

About 20 minutes later, we headed back to our ferry as another load of tourists was debarking. Hordes of tiny fiddler crabs with their big claws raised, saluted us as we headed back to the mainland.

We think St. Augustine might be a place we'd like to visit again and it's on the list for ports of call when we head back south next winter.

New Friends, Old Friends

It's quite different being back in Florida. First, we've had a hard time remembering we're actually back in the States. We get and can make phone calls! We don't have to check in with Customs or Immigration every time we move from port to port. We also have lots of friends and relatives here and have received all sorts of “welcome back” messages and opportunities to get together. It's good to be back. We met up with Doug, one of our oldest cruising friends. We met him in Charleston back in 2000 when we were just starting out. Lots of things have changed throughout the last 16 years, but our friendship has endured. He drove up from Lake Worth and stayed the night on the boat. We haven't seen him since 2012 when he visited us for New Year's in Sydney, but we picked up as if it was yesterday. There was not a minute that we weren't chatting and catching up. Doug was most noted for receiving, consolidating and sending or toting boat parts to Nine of Cups wherever we were in the world.

We were in the dinghy heading back to Cups one afternoon when we heard a hail from shore “Hey, Nine of Cups”. Kurt and Pamela from “Big Frisky” had been following our blog for some time. Embarrassingly, they knew way too much about us, but in the few minutes we had to chat, we learned a bit about them as well. We have the cruising life in common and we're all SSCA members. They're heading north, too. We hope to meet up with them again along the way.

We got an email from Zack who had read David's article about Dyneema lifelines in Good Old Boat. He recognized our boat name and sent us an email letting us know that we were neighbors in the mooring field. His ketch, Moonlight, is moored just in front of us. We'll get together with him before we leave.

Cheryl and Dave aboard Renaissance have been following our blog, too and we've had lots of emails back and forth over the years as they prepared to throw off the docklines and embrace the cruising life. And they did! They're here in St. Augustine. Getting together with them was like meeting up with old friends, though we'd never met before other than through internet correspondence.

Our niece, Jill, and her family made the 3-hour trek from Florida's west coast just to visit with us for a few hours one evening. We hadn't seen her since 2007, but after lots of hugs and kisses, it didn't take us long to begin catching up over dinner at the pub. What a fine, enjoyable reunion.

Then, out of the blue, we got a call from Stephan, one of the marina employees. Uh-oh … what did we do wrong? Nothing. Our friends Alyson & Mara from the Boston area follow our blog and are friends with Stephan. He called to welcome us on their behalf and offered us the use of his Jeep! Wow … wheels in St. Augustine. Awesome!

The world of cruisers has always been a friendly one. Though the passages may be long sometimes and sailboats are notoriously slow, we prove time and time again that the world is small. Meeting up with relatives and old and new friends is one of the wonderful aspects of cruising. Being back in the USA means we're all more accessible to one another. We're hoping this trend of meeting new folks, old friends and relatives continues as Nine of Cups and crew sail north in familiar home waters.

The Blue View - Watching Out for Hurricanes

We've had a taste of three tropical storms during our sailing days – one in a marina and two at sea. When we were still chartering boats a few decades ago, we learned that the rates were significantly less if we rented a boat during hurricane season. I figured the odds of encountering a hurricane during the 10 days of each season we were chartering were pretty low. The odds caught up with us one year, however, when we took a direct hit from Hurricane Bertha in the British Virgin Islands. We hunkered down in a marina in Virgin Gorda, prepped and secured the boat as best we could, then sat through it. We watched coconuts fly through the air as though fired from a cannon, and had a brief “eye-of-the-storm” party before the second half of the storm assaulted us. It was only a Category 1 hurricane, and was more of an adventure than anything life threatening – especially since it was a chartered boat and not ours.

On Nine of Cups, we got chased down the Tasman Sea off the west coast of New Zealand by a cyclone one year, then got a taste of another cyclone between the Chatham Islands and the east coast New Zealand's north island another year. Neither was a direct hit, but both were certainly unpleasant. Both were out of the normal cyclone belts and weren't predicted until we were en route on passages. The first one caused some rough weather, but veered off before catching us. We caught the edge of the second one and suffered a knockdown and considerable damage from it.

We'd just as soon not have any more encounters with tropical storms, hurricanes or cyclones, especially at sea, and now, as we are heading north up the east coast of the U.S., we're paying close attention to what's brewing out there. Hurricane season didn't officially start until June 1, but Tropical Storm Bonnie beat the gun, hitting the Carolinas on May 29th. We had planned to depart St. Augustine right about then, but it wasn't a difficult decision to postpone our passage until she passed by.

It should be a 4-5 day passage to the Chesapeake, and if another tropical storm develops while we're en route, we should have enough notice to seek shelter. The forecasters usually provide that much warning these days, and you can be sure we'll be downloading weather advisories daily.