We left our mooring ball in Fort Lauderdale at 3:30PM and arrived in time for the 4:00 PM 17th St. bridge opening. After the bridge, we exited the ICW through Port Everglades and were out in the ocean a little after 4:00PM.
Our home for a month, the little white mooring ball in the background.
We had about 8 hours where the wind and gulf stream worked together to let us sail at 8 knots, but eventually the wind died and the gulf stream got choppy making for an uncomfortable night from about 2AM to 6AM.
Leaving Port Everglades and heading north towards Palm Beach we sailed within a few miles of the coast. This is Ft Lauderdale in the background.
Saturday was a slow day making our way up and around Canaveral but by dusk we made it around and headed toward our final waypoint in St Augustine. As Saturday progressed and we had to use our engines to make headway, we started seeing white smoke coming from the exhausts in both engines. We decided it looked more like steam, though, which is better than smoke! We made a note to check the impellers once we get into port.
Saturday night we only saw two other boats and that wasn’t until we neared the Ponce de Leon inlet. It was a lot quieter on this stretch than it had been the night before from Port Everglades up to Port Canaveral.
As dawn arrived on Sunday morning, we realized we were going to get to St Augustine midway between high and low tides. We slowed down to get there closer to low tide, to make it a little easier to dock. We entered St Augustine inlet around 11AM and by 11:30 we were docked at the St Augustine municipal marina, ready for some much needed sleep after two nights at sea.