Follow-up of our trip to St Augustine.....

Ah, sleep!  Sure felt good last night as the mooring field was quiet and the breeze was gentle.  Today we have much more energy..........so we'll cover the trip north.

The trip from Melbourne up to Cape Canaveral was a good starter for us after a month off.  The wind tried but when we got out in front of Jean & Tom's "camp" we saw 1.5 kts and knew we would be doing some motoring.  Not a big deal as we only had a few miles to go, turned right and into the canal.  We caught the timing for the bridge without stopping and motored into a quiet anchorage for the night.  We were the only boat there!

Morning ......time to pull up the new Spade anchor (happy we have a windlass!) and into the Canaveral Lock.  It's plenty big and again, we were the only boat inside.

After the canal it was through a double bascule bridge and time to head into the Atlantic.  We wish every inlet would be like this one.......BIG and no nasty chop to plow through....

Disney has a cruise port here

Plenty of marinas 

Looking west back into the canal

There are plenty of water activities taking place in and around Cape Canaveral.  We didn't realize how many people came to the area for fishing, boating, sailing and even the cruise lines go out from here.  On the way south we went by a few of these fishing boats anchored a few miles offshore with dozens of people fishing over the side.  The rolling action of the ocean was fairly pronounced so we did comment about the number of people that were chumming the water unintentionally.  Maybe a few??!!

Looking for the "big one!"

So after heading offshore we had to go quite a ways east to get around the Cape.  From there it was a heading of 338 degrees and off we went.  The wind was not as forecasted but we managed.....

Of course the T-storms had to come through but overall we knocked on wood and saw only one blow through.  We used the radar for the first time and saw it coming towards us and it even gave us an avenue to go through a small section of it at a right angle.  Pretty cool machine.......I have to read the book!

From there we kept making progress into the night, using the radar to avoid boats and small storms but the wind slowly kept going further in front of us until 1AM.  Then........the Direction Finder took over and it was either head towards Ireland or motor.  Well, motor we did and the seas were rather rough (Kissey.......remember our last night heading south??!!) but we know now how strong our boat is and what she can take!  All we can say is "we love her!!

Dawn brought us almost to St Augustine and we caught sight of a sailboat coming out of the inlet so we hailed her and they told us almost the opposite of what Boat US told us when we called them on information on the inlet.  Note, this inlet is not a class "A" inlet; meaning it is sometimes not the greatest avenue to get inside.  But......the channel was marked correctly and we never saw less than 13 feet under us.  The dredge must be doing a good job!

A common Yellow Throated Warbler needs a break on a long trip too!

Now we will spend another night in St Augustine and decide which way to head north from here.  We are checking weather to see if a long run outside is warranted or not.  There is also a good Ranger vs. Capital game Saturday night so who knows......this small city is very nice to hang out in and the moorings are not too crowded.