Christmas, cruiser style

While we love cruising, being away from family at Christmas is tough.  Thanks to skype and the phone we were able to talk with parents, kids, and grand kids during the day.  Cruisers band together on holidays and today was a perfect example of a Christmas potluck.  At least 50 people banded together for a Christmas dinner.  Each brought a special dish.  The food and the company was outstanding.  The weather was great and we had a very special day to remember.

The gathering of cruisers for the Christmas potluck dinner.  There were several areas where people gathered for a total of more than 50 cruisers.

 Admiral Marlene with the AICW in the foreground and the Atlantic Ocean in the background

The AICW looking north from Vero towards Wabasso.  This is one of our favorite parts of the AICW as it winds between islands and beautiful homes.

Warm weather is as easy as 1,2,3...days that is.

Well, we are off again on our winter cruise to sunny southern Florida.  Like last year, we spent 2 nights at our Marina watching beautiful cruising days pass by, but the nights were in the 30's.  Better to spend those nights at the dock with a heater on the boat.  Our journey to warm days...and nights took exactly 3 days.  The first stop was in St. Augustine, the second stop was in Port Orange (south of Daytona, and the third night was at Cocoa Village.  The nights progressed from the 40's to 50's to 60's with each stop.  We made Vero Beach on the fourth day.  This is a favorite stop for us and we plan to celebrate Christmas with the boating community here.  You will have to excuse me for not updating the blog sooner, but I discovered my blogsite does not like Explorer, but I discovered it is fine with Firefox.

 

 TIKA, ready go to at the our home Marina in Jacksonville, The Marina at Ortega Landing

 A cold night watching TV and a Christmas decorated sailboat, while fending off nights in the 30's

 The closest we get on this journey to our house.  This is the AICW at Ponte Vedra, 12 miles directly east of our home.

 TIKA at our second night stop at Port Orange, about 10 miles south of Daytona Beach.

 The Beach at Port Orange was a short walk of about 2 small blocks from our Marina

 Our third night stop at Cocoa Village.  Nights were now in the 60's...great sleeping

Night number four.  Sitting on the back porch of TIKA wth Marlene drinking Rum and Coke and watching the boats in the Vero Beach Mooring Field.

The Voyage Home

I woke up at 5 AM to the sound of amplified guitar music and what sounded like folk singing on the waterfront by TIKA.......whaaaaaaat was going on?   Sunrise wasn't until just after 7AM.  We planned on departing St. Augustine at sunrise, so I started to get up to investigate.  Turns out, it was EASTER MORNING and there was a crowd of people at the old Spanish Fortress on the waterfront for an Easter morning sunrise service. The sun rose over the St. Augustine inlet as we departed for Jacksonville.  The morning was gorgeous with calm seas and light winds.  The voyage home was starting perfectly.  We rode the rising tide up the ICW and up the St. Johns River cutting off an hour or more from the all day trip.

As we arrived in downtown Jacksonville we started to feel we were close to home.

The Jacksonville Landings signaled we were only minutes away from our own marina.

 

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Final Nautical Term: HOME PORT

After more than 3 months on TIKA, travelling more than 1000 miles, seeing some of the most amazing ports of call in the US......there is no place like home.

 

 

Admiral Marlene and Captain Kevin hope the Chronicle of our Voyages of TIKA left you enlightened and entertained.  Now that we have the experience of our first extended voyage, we will be planning our next exciting adventure on TIKA

 

 

Museums, Pirates, and Goodbyes

We decided to spend 2 days in St. Augustine with the intention of renting a car and sneaking home which was only 15 miles away at this point.  We thought we could run one of our cars up to the Marina in Jacksonville, so we would have a car when we arrived.  Lets just say those plans fell through, so we decided to make a day of it in St. Augustine.  We visited the Lightner Museum. which was one of 3 grand hotels built by Flagler, who brought the railroad to Florida.

 If you have ever spent much time in Florida, you wonder why Florida isn't named Flagler.  He made Florida accessible to the rest of the US by building the railroad which provided transportation all the way to Key West, before the Overseas Highway was built.  The 2nd Hotel is now Flagler College and the 3rd hotel is still in operation, the CASA MONICA.  It is the most luxurious hotel in St. Augustine and brings back the feel of times past.  The Lightner Museum is not only interesting for the exhibits donated by the Lightner Family, it is a step into the past to view this grand hotel.  After some shopping in the old city, we headed back to the boat for some afternoon margaritas on the upper deck of TIKA.  Within minutes, two Pirate ships conducted a pirate battle next to our boat.  We basically had front row seats. 

We capped off the day with dinner with Jim, Kathy, Ed and Lynn who had arrived in St. Augustine at the same time as us.  The next day we would head off to Jacksonville on the ICW and they would take Skydusky and Charm on the outside for a two day sail north.

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Nautical Term of the Day: SALON

 

On a boat, it's not where you get your hair done.......it is where you do most of your living.

 

TIKA's salon has a table and L shaped sofa that converts into a second berth (bonus nautical term....another word for bedroom) when you lower the table and add cushions.  TIKA has a helm (second bonus nautical term....where you drive the boat) in the salon. 

Back in St. Augustine

The Waterfront of St. Augustine.

 

Well, we are one stop away from home.  We arrived mid afternoon after a pleasant cruise up from Daytona Beach.  We plan on spending 2 nights, then head up to Jacksonville on Easter morning.

Marlene at the St. Augustine Marina next to the Bridge of Lions

 

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Cool Nautical Term for the Day

LAZARETTE

You may think of it as a Trunk on a Car, but it is where you store a lot of junk.

We actually have 2 bicycles stored in our LAZARETTE.  Our Lazarette is located in our COCKPIT.  So, you get a bonus nautical term.  The area between the swim platform and interior is called the COCKPIT,

 

 

 

 

Departing Vero Beach for Titusville and Daytona Beach

While the fair weather crew of TIKA sat out the  high winds in Vero Beach, friends that we ran into in Key Largo's Tarpon Bay were working their way north and caught up with us on our last day in Vero Beach.  Jim and Kathy on Charm and Ed and Lynn on Skydusky rafted up next to us in Vero Beach and we all met on Charm for happy hour, then we took our dinghies to the restaurant under the bridge.  We all departed together heading north the next morning.  The ICW was forecast to be choppy, but the 25 plus mph winds with gusts to 40 backed off to a more manageable 10-15mph.  The north wind direction did provide us some salt water spray over the bow to contend with. We made a 70 mile, 11 hour run to Titusville on Wednesday, followed by a more manageable 50 mile cruise to Daytona Beach on Thursday.  Charm and Skydusky weren't far behind also arriving in Daytona Beach on Thursday evening.  We are all  headed for St. Augustine on Friday morning.

 Sailing Vessel Skydusky rafted to Charm

Sailing Vessel Charm 

TIKA following one of many cruisers heading north.  We only passed a few intelligent cruisers heading south. 

 

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This winter's cruise is coming to a close, but I thought it would be a great opportunity to share with you one of the unique joys of being a cruiser......a unique vocabulary.  So in the last few posts of this cruise I will introduce you to some of the nautical terms we use.

 

PROVISION

 

Normal people call it stocking up on food or going to the grocery store, but cruisers call it provisioning.

 

Kevin's definition: WELL PROVISIONED

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 



How to recognize a cruiser

If your are curious about people who cruise on boats for months at a time, here are some dead give-a-ways to identifying one.

• Keys, I-phones hanging around a person's neck are designed to float
• They always carry a bag or backpack, filled with laundry, clean clothes for a shower, beer, groceries, boat parts, etc.  A sack with the words WEST MARINE is also a good clue.
• Beard.....cruisers drink lots of Rum which kills brain cells.  This can result in loss of memory.  An early sign is forgetting to shave.
• Wrinkled shorts and shirts.  There are no irons in the world of cruising.
• Hat.....you just don't want to see that unruly hair.
• Flip-Flops....while cruisers are excellent at tying knots, shoes don't have cleats, posts or rails. Cruisers use lines, not shoestrings.  Also, flip flops can be worn in marina showers. 

There you go, you are now an expert at identifying a cruiser.  They are really harmless and generally friendly. Your best chance of running into a cruiser is a bar with a happy hour within 4 blocks of a marina or has a dinghy dock.