Isle of Hope to St. Augustine

Finally Tuesday morning has arrived.  I had butterflies in my stomach.  The plan was to leave at 7:00.  Well, no.  I did not say goodbye to Chris and Andrew yet.  They were off on Sunday and Monday and didn't come into work until 8:00.  My excuse anyway.  Bill and I finalized everything at the office and turned in our keycards.  To our surprise our community of cruisers had gathered on D-Doc to bid us farewell.  Even Gertie the kitty on Drift Away was talking and all of the dogs were there.  And where was my camera, somewhere on the boat.  Besides I was too busy saying goodbye with tears in my eyes.  For pictures of this and our actual leaving of the dock you can visit Dave and Pam's Blog at www.trawlerdriftaway.blogspot.com.  Finally around 9:00 we were off.  Brian came along to help.

First we travelled through the river where Bill pointed out the building where he thought he could run/buy a restaurant.  Brian told us that it used to be a hotel but was now condos.  Looks to me like the model for this must have been legos.

Then we finally approached the Atlantic.

And oh what a fun ride this was.  Wind on our nose and waves crashing over the bow.  No raising the sails here and only doing 4 knots.  This is gonna be a long trip.  The sunset was beautiful though.  I took a lot of pictures since Enigma was bouncing so much and I told Bill to stop it but nooo.  Oh course he can't, he left his magic wand back in Isle of Hope! This one was my favorite.   I love the fluffy cloud and blue sky above.  Not too bad for a little point-and-shoot camera.

Sometime at night, actually sometime Wednesday morning Bill was resting below and Brian and I were on deck.  Brian looked forward and then at the chartplotter, then back.  A shipping lane.  Lovely.  Then I looked to the port side.  OMG!!!!  Huge ship, but what was it doing?  It seemed to switch directions.  Then we heard a call.  It was requesting a pilot boat.  Bill came up and decided to swing around and let it pass on our starboard side.  Too much excitement for me.  I went below for my 2 hours of sleep.  No picture of the sunrise.  I slept through it.  Did see some warships around Jacksonville.  Not too close.

That line is Enigma's lifeline.  Still rough seas.  They were about 8 ft. at some point.  And still on our nose.  We originally thought we would be docked around 7 a.m. on Wednesday.  Mother Nature had other plans.  We finally made it to the inlet and......a barge working at the mouth.  UGH!

After waiting for the Bridge of Lions to open we docked around 6 p.m.  We had to get Brian back so he was on time for work Thursday.  Bill took him to Jacksonville and I stayed on Enigma.  I really needed to sleep.  Of course I had to read two days of Drift Aways blog posts first.  Six Kleenex later I layed down to sleep.

Patti and Bill :-/