Finally, despite the shorter daylight hours of winter, we have a jump that can be accomplished by leaving in the morning and we can comfortably arrive before sunset.  We checked this journey a number of times on the various maps and it looked like it was going to be a pretty simple matter and it turned out to be just that.  Sitting just a few feet from the bridge, it was a piece of cake to request an opening on the radio and just drift over to hop through once it opened.  Of course, Lisa and I echoed the bridge tender's broadcasts to ourselves on the bluetooth headsets we use to communicate when we are casting off!  Having already done the harbor at St Augustine once before, we were confident that it would go smoothly and the inlet at the other end looked well-marked and easy to navigate as well.  We planned to actually stop short of New Smyrna and simply anchor off the Ponce de Leon inlet since we planned to just get up and contin...

      St Augustine is a charming city with a nice compact historic core well-suited to walking around with many conveniently located restaurants at the center.  We stayed at the very central marina, but honestly I think the mooring fields would have been just as good and a lot cheaper.  One of our new boat friends had also anchored out beyond the mooring field and despite what we had read about it having dubious holding, they had no problems at all, even though it did blow fairly hard.  Unfortunately for our enjoyment of the town, we arrived just ahead of a record cold spell.  Once the front came through, the winds were gusty and cold.  We were disappointed that despite arriving in Florida, we were still going to need to use our space heaters.    As the weather worsened, the seas got choppy and soaked the docks. Apparently this drove fish into the dock, because the pelicans took up residence.     We also found ou...

      We had, by some bizarre twist of fate, been thrust into the position of being the seasoned old sailors when the boat next to us at the marina turned out to be newer than us.  They had a big family with all cabins occupied so they had no way to use space heaters for the whole boat (there is limited electrical power available at the dock).  We introduced them to our hot water bottles, which were apparently extremely popular with the kids who fought over who got the "cool" ones.  They were also quite anxious about getting off the dock, which is now something that we don't even really think about anymore.  We ended up joining with half the dock handling lines, shouting encouragement and occasionally conflicting advice.  Somehow they managed to get away without problems.  They were planning to go anchor somewhere else for the night before doing a day sail to St Augustine.  We elected to leave just before sunset and just plow t...

      If Beaufort, NC was the quintessential sailing town, Jekyll Island might be the ultimate isolated getaway town.  You have to either dock there at the marina or drive over a bridge that is the only connection to the mainland.  They charge a fee to come over and don't seem at all bothered that this might restrict visitors.  I think restricting visitors might be the entire point.  When you travel by boat and are reliant on walking around for transportation, you really come to appreciate how poorly designed most cities are for pedestrians.  Not so Jekyll Island.  There is an extensive network of wide paved trails, well suited for bicycles and runners that covers the entire island.  Admittedly, its only about 7 miles long and maybe a mile across, so that isn't so difficult to do.  We tucked in a day before a big storm was scheduled to blow over and spent most of the afternoon securing Dragonfly to the dock.  Everyone...

      We got a bit lucky preparing for this final leg of the journey because my sister Kathy texted me out of the blue one day to point out that she had a good friend who lived in Charleston and offered to drive our car back home if we wanted to drive to Charleston.  Since Omicron was going crazy and if we caught COVID it was going to put a big delay in our Bahamas plan, we weren't that crazy about flying, plus we always like the idea of buying another carload of food, wine and electronics.  We had a new microwave/convection oven, an air fryer, a space heater and I don't even know what else.  It was a mad day or two of loading, stowing and organizing.  By organizing, I mean I just threw everything into the "cabin of holding" and Lisa either figured something out or left it there.  Its probably good that no one was helping us because although we have three additional cabins on the boat, I've converted one of them into my workshop, another...

      After completing our post-Christmas isolation from an exposure to COVID (thankfully, neither of us ever did show symptoms), we looked at the every growing pile of stuff we planned to bring to the boat and it became very clear that there was absolutely no chance in hell that we would be able to fit all of that into our luggage allowance for the flight back no matter how much we stretched the rules.  Once we decided that, it seemed logical to go ahead and buy non-perishable stuff from our usual stores rather than try to do all of that in unfamiliar stores in Charleston.  Once that decision was made, we very quickly were able to stuff the SUV to the roof with provisions, space heaters, blankets, etc etc.  I left Lisa at home to hang out with the cats, because she's no great fan of 6 ½ hour road trips in general, much less two of them in two days.  Its not a very entertaining drive, especially now that a stop between the Carolinas doesn't ...