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5:30AM, we’re up and prepping to head off to St. Augustine.  Unfortunately, the wind direction isn’t what was predicted, so we made the decision to do a little more ICW. Oh well, we wanted to put in at St. Augustine both because we’d heard from many people that it was a great town and would be a shame for us to miss it, and also because Jeff had given us the hot tip about Sailor’s Exchange, a marine consignment/used parts shop that was within walking distance from the Municipal Marina.  As usual with the ICW, a pretty darned uneventful trip. We only saw one other boat on our way down, a large trawler that passed us about 5 miles before we got to St. Augustine’s harbor. The harbor entrance was quite confusing with multiple bouys for various channels, but Brian took the helm and piloted us up the harbor, while I went below to hail the Bridge of Lions for an opening.  Given that we were coming in later than we’d hoped, the wind and weather was rough, with strong gusts opposing the current, and given that we needed to do some minor repairs, we opted for putting in at the Municipal Marina for the night and take advantage of their ample facilities.  We halied the marina and were assigned a slip for the night, and once docked and checked in, we set about taking care of the items on our checklist. Based on a recommendation from the gentleman who’d checked us in, we walked up to A1A Brewery for a beer and some dinner.  I have to say that of all the meals we’ve had on this trip, this was one of the top!  We ordered their beer sampler and some coconut shrimp to start, and after selecting a beer from the sampler (which was no easy choice since all of the options were delicious!) we ordered a wonderful dinner, seared tuna for Bri and Pecan Crusted Salmon for me.  Absolutely DELICIOUS!  Anyone following this blog who’s planning to put in at this port, we’d highly recommend A1A! We decided to call it an early night, and walked back to the boat around 7:30, tired and ready for a restful night’s sleep.  On our way back to the boat though, we stopped in at the boater’s lounge and chatted with a few other folks who were staying at the marina or who had bought dinghy passes for the day, and did a quick scoping out of the shower facilities… the nicest we’ve seen since Southport!  The next morning, after a great night’s sleep, we got up and trekked over to Sailor’s Exchange.  WOW what a bonanza of great boat stuff!  We were able to find a large piece of plexiglass - the thick smoked kind that our missing slat had been made of - a practically brand new window to replace our last leaky one (for $10!!!) and an assortment of other items that had been on our list.  I think that had we not had to be back at the boat by 11 (and they not closed at 2 on Saturday) we could have happily spent a whole day there. As it was, we cut it really close on time - and were fortunate enough that a really nice guy who works for NOAA gave us a ride back to the marina, since as it was we were already past our 11 curfew!  I checked in with the marina staff who were very kind and said we had a little more time since the boat taking the slip we were in wasn’t there yet.  We quickly assembled the portabote took our gloriously hot showers, and I threw a quick load of laundry (to run while I showered) into the wash - items like our foulies which were filthy, but we wanted to wash but then hang to dry on a sunny windy day - which Saturday was PERFECT for.  We fired up the engine and went out into the anchorage to find ourselves a nice spot to park the boat for the day.  After dropping anchor, and taking care of a few final bits to our repairs, we hopped in the portabote and putted into St. Augustine for a little wander around.  We walked around King Street, enjoying the shops, buying ourselves a rice krispie caramel chocolate treat, and stopping at a few shops, including a great second hand bookstore, a couple of art shops, and a fantastic spice shop called The Spice & Tea Exchane (on Hypolita - www.spiceandtea.com) where we got some amazing tea, whole nutmegs paprika, and most exciting of all - CATNIP for Skipper!  As it grew dark, we ambled back to A1A where we each enjoyed one more pint of their delicious beer, and another appetizer of the coconut shrimp before we headed back down to the dinghy and out to the boat for dinner - Beef Stroganoff yet another delicious meal prepared in the pressure cooker - I LOVE that thing!  We snuggled up to watch a movie, and then drifted off to sleep.
9:30AM - a little bit of a restless night’s sleep for us both.  The winds were pretty strong, and kicked up quite a bit of chop making the boat dance on it’s anchor all night.  We had a few things to do before we could head over to the fuel dock and get ourselves some ice, showers, fuel and water, most importantly - we needed to reassemble the autopilot which had been being quirky on our trip down to St. Augustine.  Due to our late start, we missed our window to take the dinghy in and get showers.  Fortunately when we pulled up to the fuel dock, the attendant on duty was the same nice guy I’d spoken with the day before, and he gave us new keys to take quick showers - as long as one of us stayed with the boat.  I ran up and took another quick but hot shower while Brian disassembled the portabote, and when I came back and we’d stowed the dinghy he ran up for a quick shower while I went and got ice and settled up our fuel bill.  We hailed over to the bridge requesting a passage through their 2:30 opening, and were given clearance once the Schooner Freedom had come through.  I was sad to leave St. Augustine, and it is a place that I would like to visit again.  Friendly people and a beautiful town, but it was time for us to make our way further south, so we headed out the channel, and set our sails and our course for Cape Canaveral.