Once we left Fernandina, we headed straight to our home for Christmas……St. Augustine, Florida, more commonly referred to as the “Nation’s Oldest City”. Founded in September of 1565 by Don Pedro Menendez de Aviles of Spain, it is the longest continually inhabited European founded city in the United States. Home to quite a bit of history and a great amount of beauty, it is a city at Christmas that is a great family getaway for this family.
Our Christmas tradition is to head to Tavernier, Florida and leave the boat for a week while we drive home and spend a few short days with family celebrating the holidays. This year would be quite different. While we miss being home and seeing all of our family, we had the opportunity to meet Michael, Erika, Ian, Elinor and Tessa in St. Augustine after their “Christmas” trip to Disneyworld. So this year our Christmas would be waiting on a mooring ball for the 21st of December when we would then arrive into Marker 8 Marina and await the kids arrival later that day.
Of course we have found this year that if you don’t have a sense of humor you are just not going to get through some the the stuff that life throws at you. So on the 21st we are sitting on a mooring ball where we went from no wind to a little wind to what seemed like 30 knots but in reality about 18 gusting in the 20’s. It was too windy to enter the marina and they called to ask if we could delay by a day. Drop back and punt….this affected the kids arrival…quick call to them to see if they can extend their stay a day and then a quick call to the mooring field to see if we can extend with them an extra day. I am in tears at this point because I know this means one less day with our kids/grandchildren, but we will make the best of it. Well as luck would have it we would have to move in the “blow” to another ball as someone was coming in to the one we were on. Foul weather gear on and we are out there trying to wrestle with picking up a mooring in the wind and blowing rain. The captain did a great job of powering the boat to get it close to the ball. We had it on our second attempt. That is quite good considering how bad it could have been. The kids got to stay in Orlando one more night and we would be good to enter the marina the next morning when the wind speed would be below 5 knots.
It all worked out and boy was I one happy camper to get the phone call that they were at the marina. Greg, the boys and I headed to the parking lot where we all just hugged for a long moment. At that point anything that happened after that was icing on the cake. And we got a lot of icing in one and a half days. We hit the ground and took a quick walk through part of historic St. Augustine and grabbed lunch at Harry’s followed by a train tour of all the historic parts we could not get to by foot. Exhausted we headed back to the boat and awaited dinner at A1A Ale and then took a walk along the boardwalk to see all the Christmas lights. We finished the night with a slice of key lime pie and more smiles and hugs.
Our next morning was sweet with breakfast on board followed by a tour of Fort Matanzas for Erika and the kids while Michael and I did some grocery shopping. Yes, since they had a car I took advantage of getting to grocery shop before they left. We would pick Erika and the kids up on our way back to the boat and then pick up PopPop for lunch at Mellow Mushroom.
Sadly…..that is where we parted but our hearts are still full from the sweet time we had together and the memories we made. We missed Jen and Janek not being with us and that is really the difficult part of not coming home. We will see them later this year in the Bahamas and look forward to that.
We will be off to Tavernier Christmas Day, so with that I will leave you with some pictures of our smiles and the beautiful lights of St. Augustine.
