We spent a little over a week in St. Augustine. It was fun and there was more to do, but we planned to return in a few weeks for Christmas so we figured we would have more opportunity then. In the mean time we sailed to Key Largo. Why Largo, and not Key West? Because there was a veterinarian there who was recommended as being knowledgeable for for completing the international travel vaccinations for Kellie….and it too was a neat stopping point.
We already have our “papers” for Kellie to sail to the Bahamas, but still needed a few more vaccinations and a rabies titer test to go to the BVIs and some of the other more restrictive islands. I wanted to get everything done here in the States where it is relatively more convenient. The rabies titer test is a blood test to make sure that the vaccinations worked and Kellie’s immune system will fight off rabies. It takes a few weeks to get the results. I have been told there are only two labs in the world that do the test, one is in Kansas, not sure where the other is located. Definitely easier to have test done here in the States as opposed to overseas where the blood would have to be shipped internationally. As it is the test is a few hundred dollars, can’t imagine the cost if we were outside the States.
Our sail out of St. Augustine was nice. Easy wind and sea state. The wind picked up the next day and turned more northerly.
We beat into it as best we could. We had some good progress as long as the wind stayed up. You can see below on the instruments, beating into into a 25 knot wind. We were doing pretty good thru the water. We at times hit the edge of the gulf stream which slowed us down over land. The weather was great, we made good time most of the sail. I did cheat a little and motor sailed to hold to our schedule.
We had a little bit of “lean” going on… (and a bent genoa furler support….which we found out about later. Oops, need to keep checking those halyards.)
Sometime during the sail, after we got salt water on the decks I realized I hadn’t cleaned up all the carbon dust from replacing the mainsail furling motor brushes. I did sweep off the deck after the job. Not pristine but I thought ok. I thought the brushes were only carbon, like charcoal right?. Apparently there is a ferric metal component to the brush….or the motor is eating itself in some way I have not detected. There were little rust dots all over the work site and anyplace I touched later. (a thought, maybe it isn’t the brushes, it could be that I am a robot and my robot DNA is rusting….)
In any event this is going to be a cleaning project. I think it will take a while to completely eliminate.
Kellie is getting her sailing groove set. She has her “own” bed inside…
and outside. She loves that dinghy
We got into the Hawk Channel, and motored slowly through the shallows and found a nice spot to anchor in about 8 feet of water. Can’t wait to go ashore. There is supposed to be a really cool “dinghy restaurant” on the beach.
