St. Augustine to Mosquito Lagoon, anchor

Tides do not wait for you; you must wait for the tide. For us, this morning, that was around 6:30 am. To put that into perspective, the sun didn't come up until 7:30. It was dark when we pushed back from the marina, but the tide was near slack.

Despite being a lovely 80 degree day it was quite windy. We were on the channel so it didn't impact us much, but thankfully kept a lot of local traffic off the water. This is "the season" in Florida, now that the hurricanes are no longer a threat.

Been underway a while when
the lazy sun came out.

The plans have changed. We no longer are heading to the keys first. We're going across Lake Okeechobee (again!) and headed directly to Longboat Key. My folks bought a new home and they really wanted to celebrate Christmas there. The easiest way to do that was for use to be in LBK. 

Additionally, a couple of projects have come into view and Russ wants to get started on them sooner rather than later. Said projects include:

• Diesel heat or chillers to replace our current HVAC system
• Remove rooftop AC unit to make space for more solar panels
• Lots of fiberglass work (patch old AC unit, replace sugar scoops with steps on the stern, install a pull-out ladder)
• Wrap the boat (this will be a color, like green)
• Move out of the storage locker in New Orleans

Salvage thing going on here. One of many 
capsized vessels.

This area was hit hard by Nicole.

Many boats and piers got hammered.

Looking ahead the weather to cross LO should be good Thursday. So we're taking a couple of long days to make sure we can grab that window. With any luck we'll be in LBK in a week or so.