We got an early start of 7a leaving FB and headed south. Around Jacksonville a yard was working on a ship that looked like a destroyer or something.
The current was working for us again, which was good because it was so strong in places there were standing waves, such as under this bridge. Up to about 4 knots, which is a little more than half our max speed.
Along the way I relieved Heather at the helm. I know what you're thinking - no we didn't run aground. I guess indirectly we almost did, but something else happened. We realized that we were going to miss the Bridge of Lions opening by a couple minutes, so we wanted to speed up. We were already at least close to maxed out. I had my had on the throttle and started applying pressure, but I'm not convinced the thing had moved yet. The engine died.
We tried restarting it but it was at least temporarily locked from pressure in the cylinders. We were in the ditch and drifting without control towards land, so we quickly decided where we should drop the anchor. We wanted to be out of the channel to avoid traffic, but not aground after the tide dropped. Not a lot of shades of gray there, so some quick mental calculations were required.
After a pretty good anchoring drill, considering the urgency and the lack of practice, we tried the engine again. It started right up. We are still pondering the significance of this, since this seems to be a new permutation. Among other things the diesel fuel has been in the tanks for about 8 months, although the fuel filters looked good and didn't show any significant back pressure. Hmmm.
We arrived in St. Augustine in time for the next bridge opening on the half hour, so not a lot of time wasted. This is a view of the St. Augustine fort from the water. This seems to be one of the few places in Florida that has some history beyond "there was this developer who bought some swamp land and turned it into subdivisions, strip malls and money." We picked up a mooring in the strong current with ease and rewarded ourselves with dinner out. We'll be here for at least a few days.
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