Leg #2 -- 4/17 to 5/1/13 -- St. Augustine, FL to Savannah, GA

We are back in St. Augus­tine for two days.  We stopped on the way to the boat at Whole Foods and the World Golf Hall of Fame and Museum.  With your ticket they have a nice lit­tle hole set up so that they can give you one ball to hit over the water to a nice lit­tle green and then they sell you more balls until you make it on.…good income source.

 

\We did more walk­ing in this beau­ti­ful city.  We have pre­vi­ously vis­ited a lot of what is here but this time went into Fla­gler Col­lege, the pre­vi­ous Ponce de Leon Hotel, and the City Hall and Light­ner Museum grounds, the pre­vi­ous Alcazar Hotel.  Both hotels were built by Henry Fla­gler in the late 1880’s.  I could stay here for a long visit if time allowed.

 

Lobby of Ponce de Leon Hotel now Flager College.

Court­yard of the now Fla­gler College

Inte­rior Court­yard of the pre­vi­ous Alcazar Hotel which now serves as the City Hall and Light­ner Museum

One of the many beau­ti­ful cob­bled streets lined with lit­tle restaurants.

We took off around 8:00am on Fri­day head­ing to Fer­nan­d­ina Beach.  We docked at the munic­i­pal marina on a beau­ti­ful and warm day.  We walked around this quaint lit­tle town and were impressed with the charm and avail­able restau­rants and shops.  We made plans with Den­nis and Joanne from Miss Cameron (neigh­bors in Legacy) to join a groups of MTOAers for din­ner the next night.

 We woke to a cold and rainy morn­ing.  I was able to get in a walk–then it poured for a cou­ple of hours.  When the rain calmed down to a sprin­kle, Ken hit the hard­ware and we had break­fast at a lit­tle cafe and later checked out the Farm­ers Mar­ket. If we wouldn’t have been so full, I’m sure we would have bought a pie !  I was able to hit all of the gal­leries in town and really enjoyed talk­ing to a few of the local artists.  We got the bikes down and rode to the other side of the island and back.  Ken, the for­ever “be care­ful” per­son, took a video of us while rid­ing and, if asked, would love to show every­one me “#%@$!” at him in the back­ground because I’m truly afraid he is going to kill himself.

We had din­ner later with Den­nis and Joanne and a group of boaters that stayed over from the MTOA Ren­de­vous.  We just became mem­bers of this group a cou­ple of weeks ago.  They are another large group of boaters that offer great friend­ship and advice !  We now have to fig­ure out how to fly the MTOA burgee along with our AGLCA burgee.

Early Sun­day morn­ing we were plan­ning on head­ing out.  The heavy winds and rough water are going to keep us in Fer­nan­d­ina Beach another two days.  Brunch at 29South with Joanne and Den­nis and a walk around town make for a nice morn­ing even if the wind is seri­ously blow­ing.  We went back to the boat for a rest­ful after­noon.  We wanted to take a bike ride but the wind seemed like it might blow the bikes out from under us.  Later, Ken and I walked the North side of town and did our own lit­tle pub crawl–Green Tur­tle Tav­ern, The Palace and the Salty Pel­i­can.  Back to the boat for a night of rockin’ and rolling.

The boats next to us on the out­side dock, Aqua Vitae from Green­land and Sea Flat, had a really hard night.  We watch them seri­ously rock for two days.  They had to put out extra lines and bumpers but with the waves it looked as though they might hop up over the docks.  This weather went on for two days.  We tried again the next day to hit as many restaurants/bars as pos­si­ble while held up in this great town.We headed out Tues­day morn­ing around 7:30 to Cum­ber­land Sound where we anchored for the day and night.  We took the dinghy to land and did about a 4+ mile treck around the island.  The old Dun­ge­ness Estate owned by the Carnegie’s once occu­pied most of this island and the ruins are still stand­ing after a fire destroyed a good por­tion of it in the 1950’s.

The his­tory on this area is amazing…again.  There are wild horses still occu­py­ing the island.  They don’t act or look very wild as they allow you to get some­what close and they look well kept–not like my horses when I was a kid that looked hag­gard when you didn’t brush them enough.  We walked over to the beach on the east side and though it was a very windy day, it was a beau­ti­ful beach with only a few peo­ple.  This was a beau­ti­ful, unspoiled island and a great anchorage.

We headed out Tues­day morn­ing around 7:30 to Cum­ber­land Sound where we anchored for the day and night.  We took the dinghy to land and did about a 4+ mile treck around the island.  The old Dun­ge­ness Estate owned by the Carnegie’s once occu­pied most of this island and the ruins are still stand­ing after a fire destroyed a good por­tion of it in the 1950’s. 

The his­tory on this area is amazing…again.  There are wild horses still occu­py­ing the island.  They don’t act or look very wild as they allow you to get some­what close and they look well kept–not like my horses when I was a kid that looked hag­gard when you didn’t brush them enough.  We walked over to the beach on the east side and though it was a very windy day, it was a beau­ti­ful beach with only a few peo­ple.  This was a beau­ti­ful, unspoiled island and a great anchorage.

Ken as Tarzan swinging on the vines.

On Wednes­day, we moved north to Jekyll Island.  We were able to ride our bikes up to the Jekyll Island Hotel area and have lunch at the Raw Bar on the water.  We rode over to the east/beach side, then south, then back to the marina.  We had a nice din­ner at the marina restau­rant and rode bikes back in to the hotel in the morn­ing for breakfast.

Off to Brunswick the next morn­ing.  We were boarded by the Coast Guard right before we turned up the chan­nel to Brunswick.  Very nice young men and women try­ing to find boats to train the rest of the nice young men and women of the Coast Guard–we had no prob­lems to report !  Brunswick has poten­tial but sure has seen bet­ter days.  Half of the stores were empty but you could see the archi­tec­ture was there from the past.  The Schn­abels joined us for din­ner and Larry stayed on board for our trip to Savan­nah.  Ilene ended up sleep­ing on board instead of mak­ing the long trip back home that night.….
Off to Sun­bury Crab Com­pany Marina the next morn­ing.  A longer travel day than we’ve been doing but we made good time since there were not many other boaters out.  Ken, Larry and I had a fun din­ner up at the fam­ily run bar/restaurant.……

Off early in the morn­ing for a run to Isle of Hope Marina to drop off Larry.  We stopped and had lunch with both he and Ilene then off to down­town Savannah.That few miles took 2.5 hours before we tied up at the River Street Mar­ket Marina.  The no wake zones made it take a lot longer.
The two mari­nas, River and Mar­ket, whichever one is which…are both han­dled by the same peo­ple.  We don’t care about show­ers, restrooms, laundry.…it’s the best loca­tion to have access to down­town Savan­nah.  Again, eat, walk, eat, drink, walk.  We did the tour of the his­toric dis­trict with Larry and Ilene.  These tours always give you a nice view and under­stand­ing of the his­tory of the city.  Then we hit one of the local brew­eries, ate in the Mar­ket Dis­trict and hit Leopold’s Ice Cream for dessert.  We walked a lit­tle more and then headed back to the boat for a snooze.

The sec­ond day we took the trol­ley to go back to a few of the places we wanted to see fur­ther from the day before.  So much his­tory to take in but won­der­ful sights at every turn.  Churches, muse­ums, B & B’s, inns, restau­rants and shops.…..all within a short walk.
The deci­sion to end this leg at Savan­nah instead of Charleston after the two day lay­over in Fer­nan­d­ina Beach gave us the oppor­tu­nity to stop and really take in the Geor­gia coast.  We both are glad it turned out this way.
We took the boat back to Isle of Hope Marina to leave it this time.  Clean­ing and laun­dry and a lit­tle repro­vi­sion­ing took up most of the day.  Larry and Ilene came and picked us up, took us for a tour of Ski­d­away Island after see­ing Chad and his fam­ily and then shared a nice din­ner at the Drift­away Restau­rant.  Off to home in the morning.