Feeling Grumpy in Saint Augustine

Saint Augustine - often referred to as the USA's oldest city boasts a unique heritage that dates back to 1565, the Spanish style architecture at this time of the year is even more stunning as the Nights of Lights festival is ongoing, we were welcomed to a really fun Thanks Giving celebration and celebrated our Wedding Anniversary with a Peruvian feast however I have still been grumpy.....

Enjoying the Nights of Lights - only a little bit grumpy

We had an easy and fast trip overnight from Charleston after Andrew disconnected the faulty alternator. We arrived at the inlet channel to Saint Augustine a few hours earlier than the slack tide we had planned for, however the winds were light and the swell was only about 1 metre so we decided to brave the entrance with the tide flooding out at 3 knots. We were a bit nervous of this entrance as it is shallow, subject to drifting sands and we knew this harbour had received a battering from Hurricane Irma only a few months ago. To put our minds at rest we called the municipal marina and they assured us the buoyage was good although not charted so we set a course in.

Lovely conditions on the way to Saint Augustine

Motor sailing during the night we had both noticed the engine was a bit noisy and then when we slowed up to avoid a fishing boat we both heard a distinctive odd sound when the engine reengaged - we therefore entered the pass with sails and our anchor on standby with a lot of nervous tension. It was the first bar entrance we had crossed in months and it was pretty exhilarating with breaking waves on either side and the swell meeting the outflowing tide in the channel but the flat water was only a short distance away and Askari happily made 4 knots over the ground - yay we were in. Next we called for the Bridge of Lions to open and then we quickly tide up to a mooring ball ready to investigate the weird sound from our shaft and our burning alternator. Andrew tested the alternator the best he could but decided it needed to be bench checked by a specialist so we took that straight to a local guy who overhauled it and got it back to us the next morning.

Lights and Christmas Tree

That night we knew was the start of the Nights of Lights festival so we went into to watch the Christmas Lights being turned on and took in a great band - what a cool city this is.

Busy streets - palm trees though

At the Prohibition Kitchen

Next day was a swimming in the ICW day - Andrew's turn to take a dip after I did the last one in Maine. The muddy brown, alligator infested water was at least not too cold. He grabbed a go-pro and surveyed the propeller and shaft which all looked fine. Then moving inside Andrew spent a day working through the drive train and discovered the spare shaft seal was in the wrong place on the shaft (actually it was on the wrong way round and had been destroyed), also a couple of bolts were loose and one was the wrong. We ordered new parts online and spent another day putting the boat back together, while cursing the guy who changed our cutlass bearings in Rhode Island. Its just not worth having someone else working on your boat- they never show the same care as when we do it ourselves.



We managed to escape boat work to celebrate our Wedding Anniversary - I read about a really great Peruvian restaurant - The Llama so we booked in for a totally incredible tasting menu, complete with the best ceviche I ever ate, smoking appetisers and avocado ice cream.

Smoking Peruvian Appertiser - we hadn't had enough smoke this week after all!

Wedding Anniversary Treats

Exploring Saint Augustine

Lightner Museum - previously a lavish hotel

One of the earliest generators in the US produced power before the hotel before White House - Electricity was so new the hotel employed people to follow the guests around switching lights on and off

Lightner Musuem

Flagler College

Bridge of Lions

There's a great cruisers net in Saint Augustine that run a Facebook page and have a daily VHF broadcast with all the local information. We had arrived just in time for their annual Thanks Giving Potluck lunch, unfortunately the weather that day was just awful and there was no let up in the rain. That didn't put off over 80 cruisers gathering for an incredible spread of food and music under a borrowed canopy.

Thanks Giving 2017

Me with Dee (La Mischief) and Katie & Richard (Free Spirt)

Cruisers Jam

The storm passed and we planned to leave on Saturday for the Bahamas so Friday and slack tide we went to refuel and test our shaft work. We knew as soon as we left the mooring ball there was more work needed on the shaft - damn. Then as we came off the fuel dock, something must have got sucked into our bow thruster and we blew a fuse. Quick reactions in the now 3 knot flooding tide and gusty conditions allowed us to escape the tight inside berth, with only a big scratch on our outboard and another thing to fix! Seriously getting quite grumpy.....

This is how I have seen Andrew most of this week

Safely back on the mooring, I went ashore to plead if we could stay longer. 'No, you've outstayed your welcome' was the response I got. What the ???? We know they have a one week limit on moorings in St Augustine but I hadn't ever seen them all full - and so rude. Yes definitely grumpy now..... River's Edge Marina however came to our rescue all allocated us a lovely T-head berth we and welcomed us warmly. Dee & Steve were also there so great a night out was planned.

Beautiful Bobby Blackmon at San Sebastian Winery Roof Terrance

Safely tied up in the marina the work on the shaft continued and continued - Andrew can now remove the CV joint in 30 minutes. Our Oyster contact Adrian has just been amazing working through the issues with Andrew, everyday on the phone and getting opinions and guidance for us. Just amazing as this is not anything to do with Oyster - their customer support continues to exceed our expectations at every turn. Now they have finally co-ordinated to get us the replacement thrust bearing we need and ship them out to us as they are not available in the US. Unfortunately it will take a couple of weeks but at least we know what the problem is and have a plan. I can now stop being grumpy....

I have learnt new skills - servicing a winch for the first time

Tomorrow we move to Oasis Boatyard to wait until the parts arrive and then haul out yet again.

SaveSaveSaveSave

Burning Up in Charleston

Our sail to Charleston was one of the most mixed bags of sailing we have encountered and ended up with us rushing into the marina in fear of setting on fire......

We left Beaufort under the 8.30am bridge on Sunday morning, it was cold but the perfect conditions- north wind about force 3 or 4. We set the sails for a downwind sail poling out the genoa for the first time since we arrived in the US. The trip was about 200 miles so should be overnight arriving Monday afternoon.

We were sailing along nicely and the spotted a US warship about 5 miles away - no AIS of course but we could clearly make out the profile, then it came a bit closer and we saw aircraft take off from the deck. There was three in total buzzing around us, they were Ospreys which look like huge drones as they take off vertically. A pretty cool experience to see these state of the art aircraft in action.

Osprey buzzing overhead

Unknown US Warship

The wind strengthen and came around  to the north east so we put the main away and ran just with the genoa on the pole for a bit. Then at 2am it totally died and we were on the foredeck in the middle of the night bringing the pole in - oh joy! The wind came back from a south easterly direction and we sailed closed hauled for a couple of hours before it went strengthen again and we tacked over for a lovely fast reach in northerly wind as we approached Charleston just after mid-day. It was a pretty full on sail but all good practice and we were super excited to arrive in Charleston Harbour.

Charleston Harbour Marina

The current was running really strongly, we had booked into a marina as we had heard a lot of horror stories about boats losing their anchors  in this harbour which has a lot of debris from the last few hurricanes. The marina advised we wait until about 4pm at slack tide so we ventured up river and anchored for a couple of hours and relaxed - we didn't dare set our anchor properly for fear of getting it snagged and I was so relieved when it came up clean - that kind of thing really stresses me!

Then we were heading towards the marina when we noticed a horrendous burning smell coming from the engine room. Temperature looked fine, I quickly emptied out our wet hanging locker and checked fluid levels and looked for smoke or fire. Nothing but this awful smell and thick air in the engine room, then Andrew noticed the house batteries were not charging meaning our secondary alternator wasn't working. We called the marina and demanded an immediate berth allocation and he somehow calmly docked Askari and quickly shut everything down. Once we had cooled everything down Andrew found a loose connection and a bit of play in the belt but otherwise all fine - we started the engine and got charge - yay that was a win! (or so we thought).

The Charleston Harbour Marina is one of the most expensive marinas we have visited, it is however very nice and the staff are great. You get to pay for and use all the resort facilities including the shuttle to town. Our first night we ran into our friends Scott & Kitty from Stamford, who kindly invited us for a drink - perfect as Askari was still a mess. We went off for dinner and then called into the marina bar for a drink and spotted Kim, Simon & Sienna - Vloggers who have an Oyster 56 called Britican. We have mutual friends so said Hi and shared a drink - what a great family!

We had dinner at Poogan's Porch - like being in someone house - excellent

Charleston After Dark

Lovely streets in Charleston

We had sundowners in a roof top bar - stunning

The next day we went into Charleston to explore and check out some of the famous bars and restaurants. Charleston is a really old city and it's narrow cobblestone streets and lovely buildings especially around the french quarter make it a great place to stroll around and shop. King's street is packed with stunning boutiques and antique stores. Tourism is huge and cruise ship passengers offload to be driven around town in horse drawn carriages.


We had another reason to be in Charleston - Selden USA is headquartered here. Remember back in January we had our furler repaired in St Lucia Blog post st-lucia-continued. As the job wasn't carried out exactly to our liking Oyster arranged for the work to be inspected. Jonas arrived and allowed us to  provide feedback and then he had a good look over our rig and furling system, Thankfully he gave it his approval but was disappointed to hear Selden hadn't met our expectations so dropped off a spare tack assembly should we ever have a similar issue - what great service!

Our gift from Selden which I hope we never need

 Time for once last trip into Charleston for a fabulous lunch at Cru Cafe and a bit of shopping.... ;-)

Christmas Tree in Charleston

Customs House Charleston

Lovely streets in Charleston - the trees are so cool!

Our last night and we invited all our friends in Charleston Harbour Marina for drinks - we had such a fun night with double circumnavigators and long term live aboard sailors all exchanging stories. The most bizarre thing however was that Andrew and Simon from Britican discovered they went to school together - just one year apart.... what a small world. Kim featured this in her latest video for the nearly 10,000 You Tube subscribers  https://sailingbritican.com/soon-to-be-sailing-away/

Simon and Andrew just learn they went to the same school while Sienna enjoys Wifi...

With Scott & Kitty - double circumnavigators from Tamure

Michael, Kim and me

Slack tide the next morning was 6.30am - so we got up early and slipped out of the marina to start our passage to Saint Augustine. First job before we left the harbour was to check the alternator.... nope not working and the burning smell had returned. We found a shallow spot to anchor up while Andrew disconnected the alternator - we would look at that again in Saint Augustine!

It wasn't a problem for this trip as we have a parallel link switch to allow the engine alternator to run the house batteries. We could also run our generator - both part of the redundancy Andrew specified when Askari was built.

Manuals out on passage

SaveSave

Homer's and the Bellamy Mansion

The Bellamy Mansion - Wilmington

We ended up spending 8 fabulous days in Beaufort, NC at Homer Smith’s Docks and Marina. What a great little marina; Tony and Matt who run the place are just fantastic. Not only is it one of the most reasonably priced marinas we have been to, they have a courtesy car, as much free ice as you’d like, free laundry, no additional charge for power and it’s a short 10 minute walk to town. It was also quiet and had far less current than the town dock, plus we had fuel and a pump out at our berth - as we were just inside the fuel dock. The main part of the business is wholesale fish so the fishing boats are coming and going and the guys were all really friendly. Tony said he would happily sell us any fish we wanted – I took 4 IIb of the freshest shrimp and he wouldn’t charge me; we also got a free night as it was easier to charge us the weekly rate……. What a top guy – when the drawbridge is removed next year there will be no stopping these guys as they develop their marina business.

Shrimp Processing

Went to do laundry and got Shrimp too!

Busy day for the Shrimp Boats as storm passed by

You get as much free ice as you'd like at Homer Smith's

We were keen to explore North Carolina and had a bit of shopping to do so we hired a car for a few days. We drove ‘Down East’, stopped for a local lunch at the Fish Hook Grill and then took a ferry to the Outer Banks – it was a beautiful day and we just walked for miles along the inside and ocean beaches. The remoteness really reminded me of Western Australia and then when we started seeing 4wd’s on the beach and big groups of guys fishing we felt very at home. On Shackleford Bank we saw the famous Wild Spanish Mustangs that roam these islands.

Great lunch stop at the Fish Hook

Lunch under a moss covered weathered tree

Cape Look Out Lighthouse

Outer Bank - OBX

We have used this weather station for weeks planning this part of the trip

Looking out on the Atlantic - we sailed by here just a few days ago

Could be in Western Australia

Wild Ponies - actually Spanish Mustangs - they roam free on the banks

 Beaufort is a great destination. The waterfront is just lovely and the homes that surround it all take you to a time gone by. In town beyond the tourist shops there are some really handy stores – particularly a great bookshop and an outdoor gear shop. Then Morehead City, which has every store you ever imagined, is only a short drive away. We stocked up on pilot guides and flags as we settled on our next destinations; Bahamas and Cuba…. Live music plays in many bars especially over the weekend – we just loved it here.

On a really rainy day we drove down to Wilmington – another foodie town where we had an incredible lunch, walked along the river and then had to check out the Bellamy Mansion. We are not sure if they are related to us but the house was worth a look anyway. This Bellamy was one of the richest men in North Carolina, with a large plantation that worked numerous slaves, the house itself was built in 1859 by both free and enslaved black craftsmen. It includes restored slave quarters and is one of only a few preserved urban slave residences in the country. 

Bellamy Mansion

Slave Quarters at the Bellamy Mansion

Bathroom's for slaves..... hmmm!

Looking quite at home Sir!

I think he could get used to this?!?

Dianne our OCC Port Officer made us feel very welcome in Beaufort and even invited us to her home for a fabulous meal of Creole Shrimp. Then the weather cleared at we set sail for Charleston

Morehead City - Fishing Capital of the USA

Leaving Beaufort - these guys sure like to fish

Sailing downwind - along time since we did that! On our way to Charleston

Cold captain on the way to Charleston