Jacksonville and "Draggin' anchor marsh

Draggin' Anchor and other Adventures!

Hi Gang
Since our last report we've been in Jacksonville, Florida...where we stayed at the FREE city dock and enjoyed the newly re-vamped donwtown of Jacksonville with many restaurants, shops a tram and bus, even saw a huge fireworks display to celebrate the Players Golf Tournament that was taking place while we were in town.
....Next we cruised up the northern route to Amelia Island, and specifically the town of Fernandina Beach whixh is absolutely wonderful. This is the place the shrimp industry in North America was born, and the locals are very proud of their shrimping heritage...lots of shrimp boats around...The town of Fernandina Beach looks like a movie set...it is turn of the 19th century vintage with over 50 homes on the National register of Historic places! This is one place that has not been ruined by development. There are amazing restaurants, beautiful beaches, an old fort to explore etc...the only negative is that when the wind blows in the wrong direction you smell the two paper muills on the island...yuck!!! Maybe you get used to the smell if you live there...
Next, on to Georgia...coastal Georgia is really a surprise to us as most of the barrier islands are either owned by the state or controlled by the State, thus vastly limiting deveopment on these gorgeous islands. This is one of the prettiest places yet, especially after the developed coasts of Florida.
The night before last we anchored on the Wahoo river which is basically a river through vast, untouched marshland. We went up the river about two miles and passed one boat , "Seashell" after the first mile. The peace and quiet was wonderful, and we saw, lots of water birds, marvelled at the miles of grass, and enjoyed a remarkable sunset.
Tom and I turned in about 10:00 pm and slept soundly as we bobbed at anchor...about midnight
HONKKKKKK.....HONKKKKKKK What the hell was that????
We lept out of bed to bright lights flashing in our eyes, and as soon as we became oriented we saw a big boat, right off our bow...Tom indignintly said "What the hell are you doing?" The people in the boat said "we've been here all night, what the hell are you doing????? As soon as I could get my heart out of my mouth, and my eyes adjusted to the pitch black, I looked out to see the trees outside our windows...TREES OUTSIDE OUR WINDOW????? There were no trees outside our windows when we went to bed, just miles of grassland and little rivers....We had dragged anchor, in the middle of the night when the tide came in, and drifted over a mile down the river right passed the boat named "Seashell". Thank goodness the people aboard "SeaShell" were late owls...they told us later that they couldn't figure out what was coming up the river toward them until we were right on top of them...we were lucky not to have hit them!!!! Of course we thanked them profusely for their help...we might have drifted all the way out to sea.
Another disaster adverted. We quickly re-set the anchor and stayed up an hour to make sure we were secure...in the meantime we got out the vaccuum to suck up hundreds of black bugs that came into the boat when we had the doors open re-setting the anchor. Today we're tied up to a marina just outside Savannah...we'll go sight seeing later when the smoke from the forest fires clear...the smoke is pretty dense right now. Boy, do we have respect for Mother Nature!

St Augustine Update

We're still in St Augustine waiting out high winds (due to tropical storm Andrea) and heavy smoke (due to the wild fires in Florida and Georgia). We plan on heading north on Friday, May 11th (as always, weather permitting)

Until then, please enjoy these pictures taken in St Augustine.

American Idol ROCKS!!!!!!

Hi Everyone from Los Angeles
A quick update to tell you we were in the audience of American Idol last night and it was an incredible experience...Stephanie and I both LOVE Blake...He is gutsy, creative and talented. All the contestants last night were great and the energy in the audience was amazing. Right after the performance we went to the theatre to see the opening of Steph's new play "Dreaming in Castellano"...It was fantastic and I'm going back tonight to see it again with my son, Tommy who is driving up from SanDiego. Tomorrow we will go to a taping of "Ellen" .
It's weird to be off the boat after almost 8 months on board. The bed does not move and I can go to the bathroom with abandon (with apologies to Cheryl Crow I have used more than one piece of toilet paper and not worried about where it goes when I flush. We went to Trader Joes where I stocked up on all our favorites!!!Tom and Kodi are anchored out right off the old fort in St Augustine, probably enjoying the solitude...I miss him, but its fun to be here with the kids.