Christmas in Florida!

Just Barely in Florida... Fernandina Beach is the very first town you hit after crossing the GA-FLA border.

We spent Tuesday night in St. Marys GA (off of ICW mile 712) which is on the St Marys River (duh) which forms the GA-FLA border. Since we anchored in the river, we might have slept exactly on that border. St. Marys is another very nice town, with a waterfront park and nice downtown. Riggs and I had a late lunch on the front deck of a restaurant that made good fish tacos and spectacular hush puppies. We also saw an interesting art gallery full of paintings of Barak Obama, made from various press photos.

Wednesday we had a very short (6 miles) cruise to Fernandina Beach (mile 716), first stopping at Florida Petroleum, which is THE place to load up on marine diesel. Its all they sell and I paid $2.52/gal for 120 gallons, which is 20-30 cents less than any marina around here. By the way, our last fill-up was back in Beaufort NC, more than 500 miles ago, so Spray is maintaining better than 4 mpg, which is great.

After filling the tanks we picked up a rental mooring in front of Fernandina Harbor Marina, and paid for 3 nights stay ($15/night which includes dinghy access, showers, trash and pumpout services). So we stayed in Fernandina Beach through Christmas, which was a good choice. For one thing, we finally saw some warm weather, especially Christmas Eve (Thurs.) which was in the 70's.

Thursday was a day for walking. Riggs and I walked through downtown where we found much of interest (see photo), then across the barrier island (2 miles) to the beach on the Atlantic where we walked and played chuck-it, then 2 miles back to Spray where I parked a (hopefully) tired Riggs.

Then I took off and walked 2 miles to the local multiplex and saw a matinee showing of Avatar3D, which was very cool (plus I got a free pair of sunglasses!), and then back to Spray, with a detour to a pet 'bakery' for a little last-minute shopping.

Christmas was nice and quiet. We walked through the town which was deserted and peaceful, and had a feast aboard Spray (used 2 pots!). This morning the weather had shifted back to cold (50's) so we filled the water tank, emptied the holding tank, and cruised 25 miles south to anchor just north of the St. Johns River. We are technically in Jacksonville at a place called Sisters Creek (mile 739).

Tomorrow we'll get an early start and should reach St. Augustine.