Pizza and Rum Rum Rum

Around 5:30 AM this huge thunderstorm came barreling thru. There was constant intense lightning everywhere lighting up the sky as if it were daylight. After it passed, we got a bit more shut eye.

When we finally got up, it was still raining hard and we could see on the local radar that it would stop soon so we waited. Bobby had to put the air filters back on as well as reinstall the drain plug for the muffler. We inspected the patch and everything seemed good, it had cured to a smooth hard surface overnight. Now was the time to check out our handiwork.

Bob fired up the diesels and slowly brought the revs up. Yippee ! We were correct, the engines were starving for air yesterday and that’s why we couldn’t rev them up. We were back to 2700 RPM for a top end on both engines. What a relief. We went down in the engine room to see if the patch was still good and that there were no other leaks. Everything was perfect. Let’s go to sea.

June 18, 10:38 AM 640 hours

We bid Beaufort SC goodbye and headed down the channel to sea for St. Augustine. The day was almost perfect and the diesels purred beautifully as we cruised along. We noticed another casualty from yesterday’s fiasco. The starboard alternator isn’t working, however this is no big deal since they are mechanical diesels and don’t require electricity to run. We’ll fix that later.

Around 5:30 we pulled into St. Augustine inlet and there were no storms to greet us ! I think that’s a first on this trip. This inlet is very tricky and the coast guard has to constantly move the entrance buoys around because of shoaling and buoy movement from large wakes and waves. Even maptech doesn’t have any clear detail on how to get in. We lined up the best we could with the buoys and were very concerned when we saw waves breaking at one of the green cans. We decided to stay away from that since it is a clear indication that the buoy is in the wrong place and the bottom is very shallow there. As we worked our way thru the inlet we watched as the bottom came up from 25 feet to a mere 5 feet under us. Not for the timid, especially after our previous experience. Right after that the water started to deepen and we breathed a sigh of relief. We figured we’d get some local knowledge on that inlet before we head back out there tomorrow.

We pulled into the marina, fueled up and settled down for a couple of cocktails. We tidied up the previous days blog and posted it. At this point we didn’t feel like going into the city like originally planned. Instead, Bobby called the restaurant at the marina to see if we could still get food. It was 9:15, they stopped serving at 9 PM. Even with all his sweet talking nothing doing. So we tried for pizza. Not knowing where anything was around us he called information, explained we were on a boat in a strange harbor and that we’re looking for a pizza place that delivered. He gave her the address we were at and she listed three places for us, now that’s service above and beyond. Anyway, we all had a few rumrunners under our belt when Bobby called the pizza place. Bobby was such a sweet talker that she decided to deliver the pizzas herself. What a hot ticket ! She sat down and had a rumrunner with us, these southerners are such sweethearts. Bob showed her how to make rumrunner and then she made one for us. After she left, we had another cocktail talked about worldly things and hit the sack.

PS For those of you who are having trouble with posting comments because of the word verification, I removed it so you shouldn't have any issues now.