The To-Do List

      Those of you who have been tracking us will have noticed we haven’t gone very far since leaving Fernandina Beach, and that we even backtracked a little bit.  When we left my family on Saturday, we only went a little beyond Nassau Sound before stopping for the night.  In the morning I wrote up a to-do list of things we knew we really needed to get done sooner rather than later.  

A couple of the things on the list were about insurance - confirming that we had boat insurance for the Bahamas cruise, and making sure Dan renewed his health insurance through the Health Insurance Marketplace.  Another item on the list was getting hold of a boatyard in Titusville to schedule a routine haul-out for bottom painting and to check the cutlass bearing.  We also wanted to take on some fuel; Dan knew of a place up the San Sebastian River in St. Augustine which was reported to have a good price for diesel.  It being Sunday, we couldn’t take care of anything, so we cruised to an anchorage just north of St. Augustine.  We would take advantage of the current and the bridge opening on Monday morning.   

Fort Matanzas

Monday we got the fuel, and since we’d been to St. Augustine before, we decided to move on and anchor in the Matanzas River, adjacent to the old Spanish fort there.  There’s quite a current here, and the fort isn’t currently open thanks to the recent storms, but it was quiet and so peaceful we decided to stay two nights.  Dan was still playing phone and email tag with the two insurance agents and with the boatyard, and while we waited for connections, we tackled another item on the to-do list: gathering up all the required paperwork to renew his merchant mariner license.  This was basically a matter of going through a check list and printing out the proper forms, but it took longer than it should have because our printer kept acting up.  But by the end of the day we had that all together and ready for mailing, we had definite confirmation from our boat insurance about our cruising plans, and we’d heard back from Dan’s health insurance agent that he was on her to do list and she would get back to him soon.  We didn’t hear from the boatyard until Wednesday.    

Coquina at Mala Compra Beach

We left the Matanzas River on Weds (Dec 7) morning and were cruising through the Matanzas/Marineland wetlands area when the boatyard confirmed our haul-out for Dec 13.  Titusville is only a couple days’ cruise away and now we had a week to kill.  So we decided to turn back and head north a couple miles to Bing’s Landing, where we’d read there was a small park to explore.  We anchored opposite the Landing, on the other side of the ICW, and for good measure, tossed out two anchors to keep the boat out of the channel and secured from the current.  Bing’s Landing is home to a small archeological dig of an early eighteenth century plantation house, in an area that went by the name Mala Compra, which means ‘bad bargain’ in Spanish.  The area was not very profitable for a plantation and was subject to multiple raids by Native Americans, but the dig is interesting and they’ve done a nice job explaining the lives of the people who lived and worked there.  And we learned the difference between coquina and tabby.  Coquina is a natural formation of limestone which has been studded with seashells.  Tabby is a kind of concrete mixed with seashells that was used as foundations for houses.  We walked a mile to the beach at Mala Compra and saw many coquina rocks in the surf.  The sand there is quite orange in color, too, although we didn’t learn why.  

Marineland Beach

After we got back to the Willie Dawes and untangled the two anchors (why does that always happen no matter how carefully we set them?) we debated - go back to St. Augustine for the night and explore a little in the morning?  Go back to Fort Matanzas for the night?  After all, we have several days to kill now before we have to be in Titusville.  We opted to go to Marineland and take a slip at the town-owned marina there.  So we headed north for another mile or so and turned into the little channel that led to a tiny marina.  Marineland was home to the first Oceanarium, where they trained dolphins and filmed movies like Creature of the Black Lagoon.  We saw the building that still offer sessions of swimming with dolphins, but it wasn’t open, and it was unclear if it is open anymore.  There is another beautiful beach here with orange sand and coquina rocks, but the wooden steps to the boardwalk and the beach were damaged in the recent storms, and you have to “find your own way” as the marina dock master informed us.  This we did, strolling the beach as the sunset and the full moon rose, watching two hearty people do some surfing.

Thursday we left the marina and traveled thirty miles to Daytona Beach to fulfill a couple of other things on the to-do list.  Late Thursday afternoon we walked nearly four miles to West Marine to pick up some bottom paint, returning to the boat at sunset, just in time to see the contrail of a satellite launch from Cape Canaveral. 

Satellite launch

Today (Friday) we walked to the Post Office to mail off our Christmas packages and Dan’s renewal paperwork.  We also went for a walk on the beach here in Daytona Beach. The damage from Hurricane Nicole here is also evident - businesses on both east and west sides of the ICW were flooded, and many sets of steps to the beach were destroyed.  

Repairing Roads

Only two things left on the to-do list:  haul-out, and get the cat to the vet for her international health certificate for the Bahamas!