CHAPTER NINE - DEBBY DOES FLORIDA

CHAPTER NINE – DEBBY DOES FLORIDA

SLOW MOTION LOG, JUNE 25, 2012:

We’re surrounded by tropical storm Debby. She’s bringing lots of wind and rain to St. Augustine, and we’re feeling her power in our slip in the St. Augustine Municipal Marina. We raced with Debby all the way from the Adventure Yacht Harbor Marina, north of Smyrna Beach, to St. Augustine, and we beat her by minutes yesterday afternoon. Art did a perfect job of docking in wild winds and currents right next to a bridge he thought he was going to be driven against. The guy on the dock who helped us tie up said: “Okay.  Take a deep breath. Let it out, and now you can relax.” For the most part, the folks at the marinas we have visited are really helpful and very pleasant.

There is one exception to that, and he deserves a short paragraph. “Phil” at Melbourne Yacht Harbor Marina in the City of Melbourne is a most unpleasant character. He was pretty useless at helping us dock, and we really needed the help of someone with some expertise. We had to back into a narrow slip again. Then all the locks on the ladies’ room were broken. I found a necklace in the shower room and gave it to him – no thank you from him. He advertised that they had Wifi. They do not, and I told him, and there was no discount. He is a one man operation, and he acts like he inherited the job. He had given us an evaluation form to fill out, and I filled it out noting his deficiencies and the defects at the marina. I also noted that we would not be returning to his marina, in response to a question.  As we were leaving the marina, an unidentified male voice came on the EMERGENCY CHANNEL (16) of our radio: “You have a lot to learn, you have a lot to learn…. You will not be missed.” What kind of person does that? So I contacted the Chamber of Commerce by email – they’re not open on Fridays – and started writing about this incident, but they didn’t leave enough room for the entire message. They probably deserve each other. DO NOT TAKE YOUR SHIP TO MELBOURNE, FLORIDA.

Thank God we stayed at the friendly Titusville Municipal Marina the next night, where “Aunt Bee” (Andy Griffith Show) runs the store and the office. This is a marina where most of the people appear to live full time on their boats – even moreso than at Nettles Island. Aunt Bee helped me arrange to rent a car to go visit the Kennedy Space Center. It was kind of strange being on land for a whole morning, driving on top of bridges and causeways, instead of under them. Unfortunately, the Kennedy Space Center opens at 9 a.m. and charges a lot for a visit, and everything takes at least 2 hours, and I had to have the car back before noon. So I saw the outside of the Kennedy Space Center and the outside of the Astronauts Hall of Fame (opens at noon) and a lot of beautiful scenery driving through the Merritt Island Wildlife Refuge. This is a depressed area, with the space program taking a back seat to two wars in faraway countries. My Enterprise agent used to have a skilled position making the tiles for the defense contractor for NASA. Of his company of 10,000, 7,000 have been laid off, and the company’s going to go out of business.

Manatees! Aunt Bee had them! They were gathered at the dock, and then Art saw a bunch eating seagrass near our boat. Did you ever see the Kevin Bacon movie, Worms? I think the manatees played the roles of the monster worms. They appear harmless enough, but must weigh a ton – underwater hippos.

It was hard to leave Aunt Bee and the great showers in Titusville, but we need to get out of Florida. And already on June 23, the weather reports for the East Coast of Florida were looking very iffy for a boat our size. So we left at 11:30 on June 23 and headed up to Adventure Yacht Harbor, a place run by Jim with the blonde Afro. He was a big help at the dock. When I told Jim we were from California, he asked if we had come through the Panama Canal. So our greenness is not showing quite as much as it did a few days ago. Jim advertised Wifi and he had Wifi. (Same with Aunt Bee).  Jim’s Marina had the first covered docks I had seen, and he had a lot of smaller boats under the roofs, out of the water. The docks were not in good shape. But we had a sturdy new dock at the end of the marina, easy for departure the next morning. This marina had an open air restaurant right next to the docks. Art fully enjoyed fried oysters and shrimp and half of my huge hamburger.  And the egret next to our table just stared at our food until it was gone.

We took off from Adventure Yacht Harbor with some trepidation, because the weather map for all of Florida had suddenly turned bright green (inches of rain), with spots of orange and red (drenching rain). We left a little before 8 a.m. and planned to reach St. Augustine by 3 p.m., hoping that the high winds and thunderstorms that were predicted for the afternoon would hold off until then. Well, we lucked out. The storm kept pace with us. Fortunately, we had a current behind us most of the time and arrived in St. Augustine before 3 p.m. This was a tense day of travel, constantly looking at the skies and waiting for the first clap of thunder.

I know this traveling is supposed to be tension free, but so far, as we learn a lot every day, we have our tense moments. Art’s worst moments come when he approaches a dock. I feel that tension too, and when I’m steering Slow Motion, I’m still not relaxed. Boat travel is a real test of any relationship, not only because of the tension related to keeping the boat afloat and in the middle of the ICW and docking it without crashing into a piling, but also because of the 24 hour closeness you experience. You do everything on the boat together to make sure that the trip is smooth. When you dock, there is a short break to take a shower at a marina, but then you spend your evenings together on the boat, planning for the next day’s excursion. I have never had this much closeness before in my life. So there are adjustments. Both of us need our quiet time, and we’re learning to appreciate that. As I write this Blog, Art is in the cabin sleeping or using his iPhone. I don’t have anything funny or witty to say about this, just that we’re a work in progress. As we learn more about Slow Motion, we are learning more about ourselves – and that’s a good thing, right? Enough with the philosophizing.

Today I did a little exploring of St. Augustine, as Art did computer work. Tomorrow I’ll find out more about the First City, weather permitting. The atmosphere is like a residential area of New Orleans. The “Old Town” is covered with brick roads and paths, and the buildings are Spanish in style. The people are friendly, except the guy at the Post Office. But so far I think I’ve met transplants from Kansas City, Chicago and San Diego, no natives. Maybe the natives know better than to come out in the rain.

And so to bed – with the sound of pounding raindrops on my head.