At some point in the last couple of days, we surpassed our previous record for longest continuous time spent on the boat (on our Canadian summer trip two summers ago). Despite that, and even the current need to practice social distancing, we are still happy and in love and not suffering from cabin fever. We’ve been on the move quite a bit since our last post. We intended to stay in New Smyrna for a couple of days, including spending some time on the beach. Unfortunately we arrived a bit too late in the day for the 40 min walk due to delaying in the morning for the (aborted) rocket launch. Since the next day was a Monday and we saw most everything in town via an evening stroll, we decided to pull anchor and head to our next stop early.
The next stop was Palm Coast, which was really just a half-way point for us to Jacksonville. I had a really nice run along the ICW, where the few people I ran into did not seem to have heard about the 6ft distance thing… The following morning we again headed north to St Augustine, where we had planned to stay for 2 nights. This is the oldest town in the US and has some really great architecture. And, of course, we took no photos of it, since we were either on a bike or I was going for a run. Sadly, due to trying to practice social distancing, and the fact that we were here for two weekdays working during the day and things were starting to close, this all meant that we really didn’t get to explore the town.
It was St. Patrick’s day, so while we wanted to avoid the club scene, we wanted to do something. Also, David had brought his ridiculous suit along, so he had to wear it. The governor of Florida announced that bars and nightclubs would need to be closed, and restaurants could remain open at 50% capacity with tables spread out. We decided to go out for a meal, since it was likely going to be our last opportunity for a while, and restaurants sounded pretty dead when we asked about reservations over the phone. At 5pm, the mayor of St Augustine mandated that no alcohol be served in the city, so we had a dry dinner before heading straight back to the boat.
An interesting side effect of Coronavirus has been the social normalization of group video chats for adults. Kids have been doing this forever now, but adults have largely shied away from “hey wanna video chat for a while to catch up?” While we were forcing the issue with some friends before isolation practices kicked into high gear, social distancing has made our attempted chatting advances much more normal, so we’ve been doing lots of “hanging out” the past week.
After St. Augustine, we traveled the long leg to Jacksonville for one night in the free marina. Apparently everyone else finally got the memo about staying at home since we were the ONLY boat in the entire marina. Or possibly the marina is used only when there is a football game at the nearby stadium. We’ll never know.
Also we’re almost out of diesel, since we’ve been rationing to try to make it to the 2$/gallon diesel just south of Jacksonville. When you’re filling up with hundreds of gallons of diesel, these things add up. But tomorrow is fill-up day, hopefully…
What’s special about Jacksonville that they have such cheap diesel?
I think it’s just the largest major city for a couple hundred miles. There was like $2.30/gallon diesel near Fort Lauderdale at the start of the trip that we missed out on because of a huge line and not knowing it existed until we drove by it, then was more like 3$/gallon everywhere else until Jacksonville. The super cheap marina was pretty rinky-dink sketchy, so who the hell knows what our motors are burning, but so far seems to be working fine… This is why all marine diesel motors have 2 stages of fuel filters, per engine.