Dolphin Watching

One of the great experiences of ocean sailing is dolphin watching. They aren't much, but these are my two best dolphin pictures. They followed us many times, swimming in our wake. The dolphin under our grill was a gray dolphin, but as we went further north along the Florida coast, we saw more and more Atlantic Spotted Dolphins, like the one swimming just underwater beside our boat. Unfortunately, the camera has to have a much quicker shutter speed to catch all the leaping and surfacing we witnessed. In addition to the dolphin shots, I have 47 pictures of water, taken moments after the dolphin went under. The most interesting dolphin event was in the harbor at St. Augustine where a small pod of dolphins fished for their dinner, throwing 12 to 18 inch fish into the air and catching them. Anyone out there know why they were doing that?

Jacksonville in a HEAT WAVE

Jacksonville was memorable for the heat wave while we were there. The heat and humidity were opressive and put a damper on our memories. Their River walk was very nice and our stay at the Navy Base allowed some unique sights...a high school ROTC camp took place there as did Navy Patrol training. And, we did have beautiful sunsets in a quiet cove.

St. Augustine is charming. We toured the fort, the oldest house, the beautiful museums and Flagler College, the old Spanish Quarter, the local lighthouse. The only glitch in the plans was that the early heat drove us to a marina, where we could have air conditioning on the boat. Still, we lucked out and had a slip with a gorgeous view of the marsh.


ST. Augustine was great fun as we had a chance to reconnect with Cookie's cousin Suzette and her family and our old friends from days in Madrid, Paul and Manila Clough.

Cape Canaveral

One thing we discovered...our wireless coverage....the one where they stand in the swamp and say the internet can't hide from you....well, apparently the swamp was not in northeastern Florida. Our wireless was so poor, we couldn't interact with the blogger. SO here is the delayed version. We stayed in Cape Canaveral several days, touring all the space facilities. We got to touch a moon rock and see the current shuttle (at least the fuel tanks) ready to launch. One of the events was a speech by an astronaut Roger Crouch, very inspiring. He was not accepted into the astronaut program until age 56, despite getting a Phd in science and applying every year as pilot, mission specialist and payload specialist. They finally accepted him and he went into space twice. His message was never give up your dream. Our next adventure...the port of St. Augustine.

Fort Lauderdale to Cape Canaveral

We enjoyed a week of intermittent rain and sunshine in Fort Lauderdale and managed to have our refridgerator /freezeer repaired once and for all...too much freon, even after having some taken out in Key West. So now our freezer stays happily at 18 degrees vs the 34 degrees previously. We had a marvelous sail to Lake Worth, 10-12 knot winds and a friendly gulf stream and anchored in a large anchorace with about 50 other boats just south of the harbor entrance. The following day, we motorsailed to Fort Pierce and found a tiny anchorage next to an intercoastal bridge where we tucked in for the night. Here is a picture of Rick, planning the next sail, just after sunset.

On June 5th, after dodging two large thunderstorms at sea by using our Sirious Weather system, radar, and the chart plotter, and manuevering cleverly across the seas, we were feeling pretty cocky. The rain shower in the picture was our only rain. It was actually very pretty. Each heavy drop causes a tiny splash that gives the whole ocean the appearance of endless blue water with dry ice floating just above its surface. We lost our cockiness shortly after. Just as we entered the Cape Canaveral channel, an intense thunderstorm erupted, a sudden shift and burst of wind, lighting and thunder everywhere and rain so intense our only option in a strange channel was to stay, almost motionless within sight of the one channel marker we could still see. Just as the rain eased and we could make out the dim shadow of the shoreline again, we received a radio message asking all vessels in the channel to contact the cruising ship "Monarch of the Sea" which was leaving the dock to sail through the channel.....we did make it past the ship and to safety, but the chief engineer (Rick) had to spend some time trouble shooting some of our electronics, which seemed to have reacted poorly to all the lightning discharges nearby.