Cruising Through Florida!

Thus far Florida has had its fair share of highs and lows. Our first stop was Jacksonville Beach. Luckily the waves were up, so this allowed us to fit in our first surf session. The waves were great, and it was nice to get back in the water. Our second stop was at St. Augustine. We certainly made the most of this historical town. It turned out that the waves were going to be up the next morning, so we took the dinghy at an early 6:00am across the ICW over to the beach. The waves were breaking quite close to shore and there was an extremely strong current, so we decided to keep moving on to Flagler Beach, which was calling for 7.5 feet. After a 5-hour cruise, we set anchor and motored to shore. Ignoring the no trespassing signs, we tied up the dinghy at an abandoned dock, hopped the fence, and headed to the beach. When we got back to the dinghy, our luck took a turn for the worst. We were greeted by a police officer and landlord hovering over the dinghy. They preceded to interrogate us, and realized that we were up to no harm. Luckily we got off with a warning, but were told that we could have been arrested. The next morning we pulled up anchor and headed south to Daytona. We pulled into Caribbean Jacks, a modern marina with a pool and restaurant, and took full advantage of the facilities. We decided that to keep moving down the coast and anchor to avoid the steep marina fees. As we continued our adventure south, our luck once again took a turn for the worst. Our engine died on route and we were unable to start it so we instantly dropped anchor. We decided that the problem was with our fuel pump so we went ashore to the local engine shop and picked up a new pump. After installing the new pump, we realized that this was not the issue. The next morning we had to tow the boat a good two miles with our dinghy to a marina in Ft. Peirce. We consulted the engine shop once again, and told them that we needed a mechanic. A few hours later, two mechanics showed up and worked away for 3 hours finally solving the problem. It was then that we got hit with the $850USD bill. It was quite a bummer. We managed to get our sail picked up in Ft. Peirce to get it repaired as well. It is now Friday, and we are waiting for our sail to get dropped off to us in Stuart, FLA. Our plan is to get to West Palm Beach tomorrow, fix up the rest of the boat issues, and wait for our dads to join us for the crossing to the Bahamas. We are quite excited to have our first guests. We will keep you posted on the crossing.