A Southern Christmas

It's still a little strange to me that Christmas here comes with 80 degree temps, shorts and tee shirts, and possibly a run up the river in the dinghy tomorrow. In a perverse way, I miss the snow and the cold this time of year. But only a little. It's easier to adopt what my niece's husband (and frequent boat visitor) calls the Florida attitude. 

To me that means paint the toenails, put on my flip flops, walk on the beach and try to remember to wear a sun hat! Another big part of the Florida scene are the boat parades all along the waterways at Christmas time. I've always wanted to see one, but we never seemed to be in the right place at the right time. 

This year we saw two-- the first quite by accident in Fort Pierce where these photos were taken and the second here in Fort Lauderdale was a bit more planned. We were fortunate to have the company of our niece and two of her friends join us for the last day of our southern trek, from North Palm Beach to our marina here in FTL. They were lots of fun and are old hands at parades, Mardi Gras or otherwise, and were smart and considerate enough to buy folding canvas chairs and stake out a place on the dock for us. We watched the parade in comfort, with a glass of wine perched in the arms of our chairs.

Since the parade last Saturday, we've begun to settle in here, as we expect to be here for a few months. A kind friend has loaned us a car, which we've been enjoying. We had given up on rentals, which are barely available here during the holidays and ridiculously expensive.

Paul has been working hard to get both of our computers back up and running properly, and I think mine is finally healthy, not to mention a great deal faster! 

Now we're ready to kick back and enjoy the holidays-- the red velvet cupcakes just came out of the oven, next I'll start the sauce for the pasta. We'll put on one of our Christmas CD's, pour a glass of wine and put aside our projects. 

And to all our you, we send our very best wishes for a Merry Christmas and all the best in 2013!

Warm At Last

Finally we are warm. It's been such a chilly, gray and damp fall, or maybe just that's the way it's felt to me, with the extra blast of weather from Sandy and the two week northeaster that followed on her heels. Finally we are out of our fleece jackets and layers of blankets at night and reveling in 80° temperatures in Fort Pierce. Out to dinner without a sweater or jacket, to the farmers market nearby in shorts-- it does feel good.

Finally, too, I'm back on line. My computer has been plagued by frozen screens and spinning balls. We think Paul has corrected at least the major problems and he's on standby to check out any quirky happenings before they become bigger problems. 

We've had an uneventful trip down since I last wrote three weeks ago from Wilmington, NC. North Carolina seems like a distant memory probably because while we've had so much gray and damp weather, the inland sounds and large rivers that can be so nasty were flat and pleasant to cross. We stopped in Charleston for Thanksgiving week and celebrated our anniversary there, remembering our honeymoon there 36 years ago. We also stopped in Hilton Head to visit an old friend and enjoy our favorite breakfast place on the entire east coast (that's the Sunrise Grill, if you're ever that way)!

Looks like Trouble

The Real Thing

As we were going up Broad Creek to our HH marina, we were rather alarmed by the AIS target in our path. That's the big blue ship shaped mark on the chart at right. We love our AIS (automatic satellite identification) which tells us the name, size, course and closest point and time of encounter with our boat. It is also sized on our chart in proportion to the size of the vessel. We trust it almost without question. And we still do, but it took a moment or two for Paul to realize that the captain of the vessel in question had clearly entered the wrong data for the size of his vessel! Still we looked for the biggest boat we could on the docks that we passed. 

Of course, when we located the vessel by the name on it's stern, it was this small blue cruiser, laying quietly at it's dock. We can only guess that the owner does not have the proportional size feature on his AIS! 

After a nice visit with our friend in HH, we left on a calm Sunday afternoon to travel outside overnight to Fernandina Inlet and Cumberland Island National Seashore anchorage. We had lots of company during the night, mostly sailboats taking advantage of the same quiet, moonlit conditions that enticed us. There have been few weather windows for going outside this fall, and this trip outside was a great opportunity to miss a couple of days of shoaling and bridges on the inside route.

Marineland Beach

We spent several nights between the National Seashore, Fernandina Beach and St Augustine, doing some errands and provisioning and enjoying a rendezvous with friends that we met last year in Jacksonville. The last stopover was Marineland, at a little marina that we almost passed over as it's so close to St Augustine. We're so glad we didn't. The marina operators who double as ecology tour leaders could not have been more delightful (the dockmaster reminded us of our nephew, never a bad thing to us!), the setting was so  not touristy (a great contrast to St Augustine) and there was one of the most spectacular (and deserted) beaches I've ever seen. It's unusual rock formations are coquina clams and other tiny shells that have combined over the centuries with the soft silica based rock there. Just beautiful!

Only two more days underway, interspersed by a few days in North Palm Beach, and we'll be in Fort Lauderdale. We'll spend at least three months there and I have to say that we're both looking forward to settling in for a while.