- 15.9 miles
- 2 hours 28 minutes underway and 1 hour not underway
- 10-15 mph winds
It was all going so well…..until it wasn’t. We were enjoying our departure from New Smyrna Beach and heading to Palm Coast when, all of a sudden, we found ourselves stuck on a shoal at Ponce Inlet beside the Ponce Inlet Lighthouse. This is apparently an all too common occurrence for boaters in this area as, we learned later, this is an area notorious for extreme shoaling that changes frequently. We ultimately decided we should call for a tow. In the meantime, although tide was starting to come in, we did not want to drift into even shallower waters ahead of us so we decided to drop the anchor. The only problem with this was that the windlass wasn’t working! Thankfully, we had a spare anchor which we were able to drop. As we were on the phone with Boat US to schedule a tow, we saw a Sea Tow boat heading our way and radioed the captain for assistance. The Sea Tow captain could not have been any nicer or more helpful and got us back into deeper water. At first, everything seemed to be okay – the engines and rudder seemed to be working fine – but once we got up over about 1,100 rpm we experienced a good bit of vibration so we decided it would be best to stop in Daytona and have the props checked out rather than continuing on to Palm Coast (about 5 miles vs about 35 miles). We made arrangements with a marina in Daytona and took it slow until we got there.
Once we were safely docked in the marina, Kevin noticed a leak coming from the stuffing box in the engine room but he was able to troubleshoot over the phone with a mechanic and had that fixed in no time. He also discovered the windlass hadn’t worked because the circuit breaker needed to be reset.
Divers were able to come the next day and remove the props without us having to be hauled out. The props did have a little damage which is what was causing the vibration but, thankfully, they were able to be repaired.
While this was an unfortunate experience, it is also something that happens to just about everyone at one time or another. There is a saying that, if someone says they have never run aground, they have either never left the dock, haven’t been boating long enough or they aren’t being truthful! Another saying is “If you haven’t run aground, you ain’t been around”.
We rented a car while we were waiting for the props to be repaired. We enjoyed a leisurely drive up A1A to St. Augustine and stopped at the marina where will will eventually bring the boat and had lunch at the onsite restaurant, Hurricane Patty’s, which has an amazing crab dip! We decided to drive back to St. Augustine the next day when we would have more time for exploring. We have both been to St. Augustine many times but neither of us had been there for about 20 years so it was nice for both of us to be there again and relive old memories. There is so much to do in St. Augustine, the oldest city in the US. We did not feel the need to revisit most of the attractions that we had already seen multiple times in the past but it was nice to see that things had not changed much since we were both there last.
We had an amazing brunch at Sainte-George restaurant which had been recommended to us by our friends from Marathon, Leslie and Hal. We sat on the balcony overlooking Castillo Drive which runs along Matanzas Bay had had a wonderful view of the old city gates, the fort and the bay. We walked along St. George street after brunch. A favorite attraction for both of us from our past trips to St. Augustine was Castillo de San Marcus, the nation’s oldest masonry fort, so we decided we would like to tour that again.
Construction of the fort by the Spanish began in 1672 and was completed in 1695. The fort was occupied by Spain (twice) and Great Britain before both Union and Confederate US forces assumed possession and it was ultimately used as a military prison. Control of the fort was transferred each time via treaty rather than by force. The fort came under fire many times but was never captured as it was built of coquina (light and porous mixture of shell fragments). If a cannonball was able to penetrate the walls of the fort, the holes were easily repaired and coquina was also impervious to fire.
On our way back to the marina in Daytona, we stopped at the Holly Hill Arts Festival.
