We can hear it now: "What is wrong with you people? You said you were going south to exotic locations. Sunny beaches, the tropics. All you seem to be doing is sitting in the river at St. Augustine, going to Yoga or just hanging out."

Yep. Cruising appears to be like that. We thought we'd be in the Bahamas. We're not.

We are going to Vegas next week to do some house-warming and celebrate a delayed holiday with our kids.

This week, we're fixing to start to get ready to plan the trip south. Asking folks about Lake Sylvia in Ft. Lauderdale. We might skip Daytona and Ft. Pierce, nice as they are rumored to be.

7th. Monday.

Moored at 29°53.03′N 081°33.15′W, St. Augustine

Charged the batteries today. In spite of our tiny array of itty-bitty solar panels. The panels don't generate enough to really keep the batteries charged. In the long run, we're going to get a Wave Stopper dodger and put 180W of panels on that. But for now, we've got a paltry few panels. They cover one battery charging use case well: when we're off the boat: fridge off, no fresh water pumps, no lights.

Walked over to Stewart's to get some fruit.

We dropped of my remaining piece of (semi-) formal wear at a dry cleaners: a sport coat. It had started to mildew because we hadn't cleaned the hanging lockers frequently enough.

CA cleaned some more lockers. So far, we've cleaned almost everything in the boat in the last few weeks. With luck, that will keep the mildew down a bit. And we've got a more aggressive cleaning schedule in mind.

Dinner was a pizza topped with spinach, tomatoes and anchovies.

Travel

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Arrive	Moored at 29°53.03′N 081°33.15′W

8th. Tuesday

Moored at 29°53.03′N 081°33.15′W, St. Augustine

CA had two AM chores:

• Run.

• Drop off the recycling. The marina has a huge dumpster. It has a proper barrel for recycling petrochemicals (gasoline, diesel, etc.) But it has no curb-side recycling pickup for the ordinary St. Augustine recycling. So CA took our bottles and cans down the street a few blocks and stuffed them into someone else's recycling bin.

It's warm (and not raining) today, we're thinking about biking over to the beach for a stroll on the strand. But I've still got the tail end of a cold, so it's better to just hang around here.

CA started to work on sewing some bags to carry our towels and what-not back and forth to the showers. Sadly, the machine was in a bit of "disrepair". Somehow, she'd managed to ding up two of the bobbin-feeding parts, making sewing really difficult. Replacement parts are on order from SailRite.

CA checked all the below-the-waterline hose clamps. We have a drawing of the boat annotated with the various through-hulls marked. Red for below the waterline. Blue for at-or-above. The diagram shown above is a little out-of-date. It still shows two through-hulls that we've removed. And doesn't show the one we've added.

One clamp had failed. We replaced that and cussed out folks who use perforated clamps below the waterline.

Dinner was sweet and sour broccoli.

Travel

Attribute	Value
Arrive	Moored at 29°53.03′N 081°33.15′W

9th. Wednesday

Moored at 29°53.03′N 081°33.15′W, St. Augustine

Laundry day. We spent the morning in the lounge, listening to our clothes wash and dry and chatting with our neighbors in the marina.

For our next leg, we're thinking of a big outside jump to Ft. Lauderdale. This is about 288 statute miles of ICW, and almost exactly as far (250 nm) going outside in the ocean. (Further north, the ICW route is often farther because it's less direct.)

This is as little as a 35 hour sail at 6 knots. In the winter, 35 hours means leaving in the evening; sailing two overnights; and arriving in the morning. At 5 knots, it's closer to 48 hours; leave at noon, sail two overnights; arrive at noon.

We'd be sailing through a number of inshore weather zones: AMZ454, AMZ550, AMZ552, AMZ555, AMZ650, and AMZ651. This is a lot of weather to look at before making a passage. The good news is that there are three parts: two weather zones above Cape Canaveral, the Cape itself, and three weather zones below the Cape.

Advice from other sailors is that wind this time of year of often out of the north, so it's a kind of downwind run (or broad reach) until we get to the trade winds.

Dinner on grace, with Mark (and Sepp and Anton) from Grace Yachting Group.

Travel

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Arrive	Moored at 29°53.03′N 081°33.15′W

10th. Thursday

Moored at 29°53.03′N 081°33.15′W, St. Augustine

Visited with Bye Polar, another Whitby 42 at the dock this morning. That brings the count to four in the St. Augustine Municipal Marina (Joie de Vivre, Creola and Red Ranger.) Tonight is a gam at O. C. White's so, hopefully, we can coordinate a mini-Whitby Rendezvous, also.

Alarming News: The Whitby Gaia II (skippered by Patrick Cornelius) reported a pan-pan emergency off the coast of Cape Canaveral.

Bye Polar has an interesting approach to their mainsheet. Rather than simply running vertically from boom end to deck, they have a turning block strapped to the mizzenmast; the sheet is a bit further aft than on Red Ranger. This causes me to think that I can greatly simplify bimini construction by using a single fiddle block on the boom end, a triple turning block on the mizzen, and a double block on the deck.

This first design would have the same purchase as our current system, but would bring the lines a few inches further aft and higher, clearing the aft bow of a bimini. Adding a set of blocks adds friction, but that's not a real problem with the mainsheet.

And. Bonus! I can ease the main out further when sailing downwind.

Another possibility, with less purchase, is to shackle the sheet to the mizzen, lead this through a block on the boom, back through a block on the mizzen and then down to a turning block on the deck. This uses just three single blocks, stuff we have in inventory. But would I be able to trim in the main when it's blowing? Or, should I be putting in a reef rather than putting in block and tackle?

The smartest choice seems to be this: a single block with becket on the boom, a double block on the mizzen, and a single turning block on the deck. This has the same purchase as our current system; it moves the double block from the deck to the mizzen. The new block on the deck is simply a turning block to lead fair to the winch.

It requires a massive strap or steel hound on the mizzen. Breaking stain on a Garhauer block is something like 3,000 lbs. The main sheet is ½″ or (maybe ⁹⁄₁₆″) nylon line with a strength of 7,500 lbs. I found a piece of ⁵⁄₈″ dockline to use as a strap (it's good for 12,200 lbs.)

In addition to keeping the sheets away from the bimini, this is also an excuse to replace two squeaky old Schaeffer blocks with three new ball-bearing Garhauer blocks.

Another possibility—that's a bit silly for a Whitby—is a two-part (or "cascaded") system, with a low-purchase section for big, easy motions (i.e. a gybe) and a high-purchase bit for tweaking the sail when beating. As if.

Dinner was a sandwich before the meetup of the St. Augustine Cruisers at O. C. White's. We retired to P. J. Henley's with the crew of Perfect Partner, for yet more (and better) beer.

Travel

Attribute	Value
Arrive	Moored at 29°53.03′N 081°33.15′W

11th. Friday

Moored at 29°53.03′N 081°33.15′W, St. Augustine

Final visit to the periodontist today. Things look great. That part of the job is ✔ done.

Alarming News: The Whitby Gaia II has been recovered. Patrick Cornelius is still missing at sea. This appears to be a tragedy.

Tried to take a picture of all four Whitby's in the St. Augustine mooring field. It's a huge spread of real-estate. It's either a bunch of tiny nondescript boats. Or it's individual portraits. I might be able to switch several still frames together to create a panorama that shows all but Joie de Vivre. I used to have some cool panorama software.

Months ago, without knowing what I was doing, I bought a small (800W nominal, 1000W peak) generator that ran on two-stroke gasoline. Same fuel as the dinghy. It seemed logical. And small. Emphasis on the small.

I tried to power the 70A charger with it, but that's close to 1000W draw, and—unsurprisingly—it won't work. I see two choices:

• Call it a lesson learned and get a real charger, capable of 1000W normally. The gold standard is the Honda 2000. Try to sell the too-small generator on Craigslist. Or save it for a possible future trade.

• Get a small, portable charger that doesn't draw 800W. For example, West Marine has a portable charger that can produce 30A (about 420W), well within the design constraints of the generator.

We opted for the latter (adding bits). It's slightly easier than selling and replacing the little generator.

The maiden voyage worked out well. We ran an extension cord from the aft deck through the lazarette to the engine room. It's relatively quiet. It charges the batteries at a proper voltage. It means we don't run Mr. Lehman at high idle for hours and hours.

Also, it appears to burn about 24 oz. of gasoline per hour. (³⁄₁₆ gallon per hour, unlike the Lehman's 1 gallon per hour.) This makes it easy to pour in just 48 oz. of gasoline and let it run until it's out of gas. That we we're not stowing it with a little dribble of gasoline in it's little tank.

Yes, it feels like a jury rig. However. It's cheap and (so far) seems effective.

Dinner was sweet and sour broccoli. The sweet and sour sauce (with a ton of ginger) rocks.

Travel

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Arrive	Moored at 29°53.03′N 081°33.15′W

12th. Saturday

Moored at 29°53.03′N 081°33.15′W, St. Augustine

Shower day. It's beautifully warm here in North Florida. CA, however, is under the weather. I guess she's getting had what I had. We walked over to Stewart's to get some fruit. Then CA's big afternoon activity was a nap in the sunny spot in the cockpit.

I tried a slightly different scheme for running the generator. Today, I plugged the boat's AC main into the generator. I made damn sure that the 70A Mastervolt charger was off. I can then plug the computer and the 30A charger into interior outlets, and charge the batteries while

running the computer. Today I put in 48 oz. of gasoline (³⁄₈ gallon) to see if it really will run for about 2 hours.

Ahhh. We finally have bodacious AC power without battery drain. And we have an inverter to run AC loads from battery if necessary. The inverter produces pure sine wave output to run things like the printer. All the bases are covered. I think.

We can watch movies on the computer without worrying about the energy cost.

Today's lunch was an Onion Soup that used the last of the starting-to-get moldy bread and some cheese that had seen better days. The genius of French cooking.

Dinner at A1A brewpub with crew of Creola and Bye Polar.

Travel

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Arrive	Moored at 29°53.03′N 081°33.15′W

13th. Sunday

Moored at 29°53.03′N 081°33.15′W, St. Augustine

Enjoy the delightfully warm weather. Clean the mildew from cabinets and lockers in the main saloon.

Empty trash. Do Laundry.

Used the Hugin application to stitch together a panorama showing three of the four Whitbys in St. Augustine. Joie de Vivre was far enough away that there's no good angle for stitching the images together.

Pack for the trip to Las Vegas tomorrow.

Dinner was "out of cans": macaroni and beans. We'd dropped the last of our perishables with Creola to keep in their fridge while we were away.

Travel

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Arrive	Moored at 29°53.03′N 081°33.15′W

This Week

Engine Hours: 1.5. Diesel Gallons: 0. ICW Miles: 0.

Books: The Perfect Spy (finished), The Little Drummer Girl (started), You Can Buy Happiness And It's Cheap (finished), The Elegant Gathering of White Snows.

Read Aloud: A Feast for Crows: A Song of Ice and Fire (yes, we finished Storm of Swords.)

Travel

Attribute	Value
Engine	1.5 h
Fuel	0. gal
Distance	0. mi