Hanging out alone In St. Augustine.

By Mike Jastrzebski

We’re out at the end of the south mooring field here at the city marina. Except for on the 4th when a slew of boats took up mooring balls to watch the fireworks, we haven’t had many boats around us, and that’s the way we like it. In fact we were surprised when we arrived and found our assigned mooring ball at the far end of the field. There were at least 4 or 5 empty balls closer to the marina, but when they sent someone out to register us and he said we could take one of the closer moorings if we liked, we turned him down.

It’s not that we’re antisocial, we did manage to get together with our friends Kate and Allen, and another friend, Sadler. it’s just that we like our space. It’s why we prefer to anchor out or take a mooring ball rather than stay in a marina.

Our plan was to leave on Saturday the 5th and head up to the Carolina’s, but when it looked like Arthur was going to do some damage to N. Carolina we decided to stay here another week and see what happened. According to friends of ours who are in Wilmington, NC it was pretty much a non-event. No complaints on our part though. We’re in no hurry and St. Augustine is a nice place to visit.

As for the fireworks, they were spectacular. One of the reasons we decided to stay through the 4th is that for as long as we’ve owned the boat (19 years) Mary has wanted to sit back in the cockpit, have a cocktail, and watch fireworks. It was worth the wait because the fireworks were as good as any I’ve ever seen.

Friday the 11th, weather permitting, we plan to head out to the ocean and sail directly to Charleston, SC. We’ve heard that the intracoastal through Georgia gets a little shallow for our 6’4″ draft. Besides, we tested out the engine on our trip from Titusville, now it’s time to do what we love best, sail.

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