Marineland

Thursday evening we put into Fernandina Beach. As we approached it looked rather industrial but turned out to live up to the image you get from the name. Center St was tourist shops full of bric a brac with a pirate theme as well as "antiques". The harbormaster had directed us up Center St to Fred's food shop next to a bicycle shop. Ah ha perhaps we could get a saddle and post to replace the one I had left behind. It was one of those bike shops run by someone who loved bikes above profits. He was busy restoring an old Schwinn. He started to talk to us but started coughing, grabbed a rag and then coughed for the next minute then tried to speak and collapsed coughing again. This happened about three times. Apparently cleaning rust off with a brass brush was a dangerous occupation.
The next morning I rode up to the shop and he checked the bike over, changed the post, problem solved.

Friday was cold with about a 5-10 knot northerly wind. Fortunately for the most part we were heading south so although cold, dressed in our thermals and full foulies it was bearable. Until we entered the St John's river that is and turned North, then it was bitingly cold.
Peter and Terry joined us later and we ate at the Sand Dollar restaurant.

Saturday the wind had started as light and variable but was forecast as WSW 10-20 in the afternoon so we took the ICW (St Augustine Inlet has a bad reputation in poor conditions). The wind did pick up and we motor sailed with the genoa out down to St Augustine. When we moored up the sun was out and the day turned pleasant. The marina staff were amazingly helpful. The historic downtown was surprisingly busy. It really is a special place with its Spanish heritage. Somehow we ended up in a bar drinking genuine pirate grog, according to the proprietor who gave us a detailed history of it origins. It was more of an entertainer/audience situation rather than barman/customers. The place was so full of boxes of wines and pirate paraphernalia that there was barely room for more than the four of us and two other customers.

To add to the history there were two replica Spanish sailing ships in the marina. The smaller being a replica of Magellan's Nao Victoria which was the first (at least as far as Europeans are concerned) to circumnavigate the globe. Terry and I went aboard in the morning and although it was a sturdy little ship it seemed amazingly small to have gone off into the uncharted waters in search of spices. Spice, the final frontier, I guess. It was also amazing to think of the impact the return of the Victoria must have had in Europe. To have demonstrated that the world was round and there were vast new lands. Not so significant but perhaps the closest in our generation was when we saw the Earthrise from Apollo 11.

Sunday - We took a relaxed start to the day as we only planned to go as far as Marineland which opened in 1938 and was the first place to keep dolphins in captivity and to breed them. It was the major tourist attraction in Florida in the 1940's but was later upstaged by the theme parks. Boaters had recently been banned from visiting the center because of the mobillivirus although apparently they've now lifted the restriction. Instead we walked along the beach.
Peter and I practised using the throwing line although packing it back into the bag was so tedious we only tried it once each and then deemed ourselves qualified to use it in an emergency situation.
Later we were invited to join an impromptu meeting of the Sundowners Club (location a wooden table overlooking the water) . Danielle and Lisa, Canadians from French Quebec provided nibbles as we gathered to observe the rite of the Sun going down. Lisa provided a conch shell for us to signal the event. There were four couples and getting to know each other and swapping stories quickly moved from formal to fun.