23rd January 2010 St. Augustine is an inviting little town and we are going to take a stroll through the city. We love it. The sun is shining, lots of people, shops and restaurants everywhere. Music is playing on every corner of the inner city. In St. Augustine you can find the influence of the Spanish history. The streets are small and cute, the houses are very original and lots of cathedrals and churches. St. Augustine is the oldest civilized city in the Unity States, 444 years of history. We took a ride with the horse cart through the city. The driver is very informative and we enjoy to find out more details of what has been going in the last four hundreds year. We are having Paella for lunch and a game of Mini golf, Julia and Carlos enjoying themselves. The next day we are going to explore the old fort, which has protected St. Augustine for centuries, because of its clever design. It has never been able to be defeated; the only way to take it over would have been to starve the people in the Fort …. What a discovery after 400 years… We are having the best ice cream ever and visiting 2 chocolate factories, of course we are trying to compare to Mangawhai Bennett’s Factory… But won’t go into further details! We absolutely love it here, but we have decided to move on tomorrow, to go to Daytona Beach and on to Cape Canaveral, where the US space station.
The story of St. Augustine is a long and exciting chronicle of a city that has existed for 444 years. It is the longest chronicl
e of any city in the United States. St. Augustine was founded in the sixteenth century, in 1565, gradually strengthened its settlement in the seventeenth century, survived several international wars in the eighteenth century, entered the United States when the peninsula of Florida was acquired in the nineteenth century and commended modern development in the twentieth century. St. Augustine, founded on September 8, 1565, was settled only sixty-nine years after Santo Domingo (1496 in today’s Dominican republic), and counts to the oldest continuing European settlement in the World. In fact, not many other cities in North of South America are older than St. Augustine. Perhaps some twenty-five communities can claim an earlier origin of all the thousands in existence and most of those cities are located in the Spanish Caribbean, first discovered by Columbus and in Mexico, where precious metals were initially found and mined in great quantity. On September 8, 1565 the city was founded by Pedro Menendez d
e Aviles and named St. Augustine because his fleet had reached the Florida shores on the day of the festival of San Augustine.
25th January 2010 the sky is overcast and we have decided to leave St. Augustine today. Ups… we just discovered that the draw bridge will be under construction for the next week and won’t be open again until next week! We do not want to stay that long, so we decided to motor down the ICW to Daytona Beach. The bridges in there should be 65 feet high and as our boat measures 65 feet on high tide…. we should be able to make it. We continuously have to watch the tide in the channel as some spots are quiet shallow, especially 20 miles south from St. Augustine is a shallow spot. As we are leaving St. Augustine at 11.45, the sky is opening up and a blue sky is greeting us. There is a slight breeze and with the tide going out we are making good way down the ICW. The ICW is quiet tight and Sven really has to concentrate as he navigates the boat around little corners and small channels. Everything is going smooth until 10.40, all of a sudden …. Wumps….. the boat is coming to a stop. We are stuck in the sand. The kids are excited as everything inside the boat h
as left its place; the fridge has sprung open and everything inside is now lying around in the boat. Concerned and a bit nervous, Sven is getting the boat out of the situation and we are on our way again. He is now even more concentrating until the next excitement hits us; the navigation (GPS) in the cockpit upstairs has shut down. The water level is really low and at 2.44…. wumps….. we are stuck again in the sand, this time Sven is handling the situation with ease and seconds later we are free again. We are passing a couple of draw bridges where we have to call the bridge master and he then opens up the bridge. That is quiet fun to watch when you can see how the bridges open up and close again once we have passed through. At 4.56 we are passing our first fixed bridge, they are high, but as we came, we hoped that the measurements are correct …. The closer we come the more I hope …. And then we are going underneath the bridge… first it looks like we are hitting it….. but we are just scratching…. we hear the sound of our antennas touching the bridge. Hui, that was close on the next fixed bridge, a couple of people are working on the bridge, and as we are going through they are telling us that we have got 3 inches left before we would have touched the bridge!
It was beautiful motoring down the ICW, the weather is sunny, the breeze a bit cold, but right and left
the sides are lined with beautiful houses and gardens, everyone has got their own dock and all the boats and jet skis are on lift able docks. Lots of birds are around, most o f them we don’t know and Julia and Carlos are watching out for Dugongs and crocodiles Its getting late and we are in need of a place to stop, that does not seem to be an easy task. We are approaching low tide and the water level is getting to low, so wherever we are trying to get out of the main channel, the water level is too low and we are in danger to get stuck again. Its getting late and dark and we still haven’t found a suitable place. We are approaching the lowest level on low tide and at 6 o’clock we are stuck again… now it becomes crucial to find a place to anchor for the night. We assume that the ICW are not very suitable to anchor at night for big ocean cruiser!! At 6.30 we are dipping the anchor for the first time into the water, we moved as much out of the channel as we possibly could and trying to settle down for the night. I am preparing some dinner and Sven is constantly checking whether the boat is all right and whether we are moving or not. As we are just deciding to settle down for the night (8.30) we hear a boat approaching, we are asked to move our boat as we are blocking the channel and it is too dangerous where we are. All over again, lifting the anchor, getting stack a couple of times before we finally (9pm) sitting with the nose in right direction and lowering the anchor line and position of the boat. We are having a quiet night, no motor noise, no seasickness no problems, just Sven getting up and down like a jojo to check on the boat…… I can live with that
26th January 2010 we are getting up early and it’s still dark outside, but we have to move the boat. At 6.30 am we are lifting the anchor to keep going. Everything is going smooth and everyone is in a relaxed mood, but Sven said that he had enough going down the ICW. We can see high rise building; we must be close to Daytona B
each. We are approaching our first fixed bridge with a nearly high tide, the antennas are scratching against the bridge again, a few miles down the track the second fixed bridge for the day, this time we have to anchor (8.30 am) in front of it, as the water level is just 64 feet. We have to sit for an hour to wait for the water level to drop and than we are arriving in the Loggerhead Marina in Daytona Beach (10.30 am). Julia and Carlos are excited because they have a swimming pool and a spa pool. Usually Daytona Beach has got a population of 120.000 people, but from next week on the population will rise to 2.5 million. Daytona Beach is the capital of events for the United States Daytona 500 race, Harley Davidson bike week etc. We also find out that Florida has had the coldest winter since 1971; they had ice and snow, which has caused the death of dugongs/ Manatees and tropical fish. We do remember seeing lots of dead fish floating on top of the ICW.
The story of St. Augustine is a long and exciting chronicle of a city that has existed for 444 years. It is the longest chronicl
e of any city in the United States. St. Augustine was founded in the sixteenth century, in 1565, gradually strengthened its settlement in the seventeenth century, survived several international wars in the eighteenth century, entered the United States when the peninsula of Florida was acquired in the nineteenth century and commended modern development in the twentieth century. St. Augustine, founded on September 8, 1565, was settled only sixty-nine years after Santo Domingo (1496 in today’s Dominican republic), and counts to the oldest continuing European settlement in the World. In fact, not many other cities in North of South America are older than St. Augustine. Perhaps some twenty-five communities can claim an earlier origin of all the thousands in existence and most of those cities are located in the Spanish Caribbean, first discovered by Columbus and in Mexico, where precious metals were initially found and mined in great quantity. On September 8, 1565 the city was founded by Pedro Menendez d
e Aviles and named St. Augustine because his fleet had reached the Florida shores on the day of the festival of San Augustine.25th January 2010 the sky is overcast and we have decided to leave St. Augustine today. Ups… we just discovered that the draw bridge will be under construction for the next week and won’t be open again until next week! We do not want to stay that long, so we decided to motor down the ICW to Daytona Beach. The bridges in there should be 65 feet high and as our boat measures 65 feet on high tide…. we should be able to make it. We continuously have to watch the tide in the channel as some spots are quiet shallow, especially 20 miles south from St. Augustine is a shallow spot. As we are leaving St. Augustine at 11.45, the sky is opening up and a blue sky is greeting us. There is a slight breeze and with the tide going out we are making good way down the ICW. The ICW is quiet tight and Sven really has to concentrate as he navigates the boat around little corners and small channels. Everything is going smooth until 10.40, all of a sudden …. Wumps….. the boat is coming to a stop. We are stuck in the sand. The kids are excited as everything inside the boat h
as left its place; the fridge has sprung open and everything inside is now lying around in the boat. Concerned and a bit nervous, Sven is getting the boat out of the situation and we are on our way again. He is now even more concentrating until the next excitement hits us; the navigation (GPS) in the cockpit upstairs has shut down. The water level is really low and at 2.44…. wumps….. we are stuck again in the sand, this time Sven is handling the situation with ease and seconds later we are free again. We are passing a couple of draw bridges where we have to call the bridge master and he then opens up the bridge. That is quiet fun to watch when you can see how the bridges open up and close again once we have passed through. At 4.56 we are passing our first fixed bridge, they are high, but as we came, we hoped that the measurements are correct …. The closer we come the more I hope …. And then we are going underneath the bridge… first it looks like we are hitting it….. but we are just scratching…. we hear the sound of our antennas touching the bridge. Hui, that was close on the next fixed bridge, a couple of people are working on the bridge, and as we are going through they are telling us that we have got 3 inches left before we would have touched the bridge!It was beautiful motoring down the ICW, the weather is sunny, the breeze a bit cold, but right and left
the sides are lined with beautiful houses and gardens, everyone has got their own dock and all the boats and jet skis are on lift able docks. Lots of birds are around, most o f them we don’t know and Julia and Carlos are watching out for Dugongs and crocodiles Its getting late and we are in need of a place to stop, that does not seem to be an easy task. We are approaching low tide and the water level is getting to low, so wherever we are trying to get out of the main channel, the water level is too low and we are in danger to get stuck again. Its getting late and dark and we still haven’t found a suitable place. We are approaching the lowest level on low tide and at 6 o’clock we are stuck again… now it becomes crucial to find a place to anchor for the night. We assume that the ICW are not very suitable to anchor at night for big ocean cruiser!! At 6.30 we are dipping the anchor for the first time into the water, we moved as much out of the channel as we possibly could and trying to settle down for the night. I am preparing some dinner and Sven is constantly checking whether the boat is all right and whether we are moving or not. As we are just deciding to settle down for the night (8.30) we hear a boat approaching, we are asked to move our boat as we are blocking the channel and it is too dangerous where we are. All over again, lifting the anchor, getting stack a couple of times before we finally (9pm) sitting with the nose in right direction and lowering the anchor line and position of the boat. We are having a quiet night, no motor noise, no seasickness no problems, just Sven getting up and down like a jojo to check on the boat…… I can live with that 26th January 2010 we are getting up early and it’s still dark outside, but we have to move the boat. At 6.30 am we are lifting the anchor to keep going. Everything is going smooth and everyone is in a relaxed mood, but Sven said that he had enough going down the ICW. We can see high rise building; we must be close to Daytona B
each. We are approaching our first fixed bridge with a nearly high tide, the antennas are scratching against the bridge again, a few miles down the track the second fixed bridge for the day, this time we have to anchor (8.30 am) in front of it, as the water level is just 64 feet. We have to sit for an hour to wait for the water level to drop and than we are arriving in the Loggerhead Marina in Daytona Beach (10.30 am). Julia and Carlos are excited because they have a swimming pool and a spa pool. Usually Daytona Beach has got a population of 120.000 people, but from next week on the population will rise to 2.5 million. Daytona Beach is the capital of events for the United States Daytona 500 race, Harley Davidson bike week etc. We also find out that Florida has had the coldest winter since 1971; they had ice and snow, which has caused the death of dugongs/ Manatees and tropical fish. We do remember seeing lots of dead fish floating on top of the ICW. 
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