Day 13

Hi Everyone,
Thanks for the comments from some of you. Glad we are not boring you with our adventures and enabling some of you to see an insiders view of this ICW journey as you haven't yet done this trip or may never get to do it.
I got a bit behind with the blog schedule as we have had two really full days on the water and now Rhonda and John have gone back to Maryland I have more duties from the Captain to do!
We left Jekyll Island at 8.30am and headed along the ICW to Jacksonville Beach Marina in Florida ,so John and Rhonda could disembark and rent a car to drive back to Maryland the next day. It was sad for us all to say goodbye as we had such fun together and we got to enjoy the wise counsel of John with his ICW and boating experience and Rhonda's great organizational skills and help. It is a pleasurable experience to do this with another couple and invaluable when coming in to dock at the marinas having three pairs of hands to assist in stead of one.
Graeme and I fueled up (you don't want to know how much that costs each time! ) had lunch and then headed of down to St Augustine a further 28 miles.This rest of the journey took us two hours to complete as being Thanksgiving weekend ,there were many pleasure boats on the canal going in both directions as well as all the sail boats heading south.We spent a lot of time overtaking the slower boats, in many ways it's like driving on a road highway in a car.As the dredged part of the ICW canal is quite narrow for the most part ,this is a slow and sometimes tricky operation! We finally crawled up a side river to River Edge Marina in St Augustine. Maybe Redneck Marina would have been a suitable name. The folks there were very welcoming but shame we didn't bring our bandanas and Graeme hadnt grown a beard and been in possession of a motorbike!
We decided to take the suggested half mile walk to the city of St Augustine .In reality it was more like one and half miles but we managed it ok in our tired state. Graeme on a whim said let's take a horse and buggy to see the city and so we did. Barney the 9 year old chestnut horse did a great job as did his driver, who had been suspended for a week as he had left Barney unattended to take a picture of a newly married couple beside a strange local tree called the love tree . We learnt all about the city's Spanish heritage.The city was discovered in 1513 by Ponce St Leon .He was only 4' 9" but he was the tallest on his ship. The average height of the Spanish in those days was 4'6" and the local Indian Chief was 7'. Ponce decided there had to be something good in the soil , so he stayed! The place was buzzing with holiday makers and all the lights covering the buildings and trees were lit. Seems Christmas decorations come early in the south which is funny because it doesn't really get that cold here especially in November.
We had dinner in a local small restaurant and wine bar.When we saw the spiced lamb burgers on the menu posted outside, we were sold. Then the walk back to the boat and bed.