No less tourists in St. Augustine!

Saturday 7 Dec, St. Augustine FL, day 1: Walk in the town and resume video editing.
Very peaceful night and a well deserved sleep. As we have breakfast in the cockpit we hear lots of noises coming from town. The usual cannons going off with their puff of smoke, lots of police cars sirens and some red flashing lights that we can’t make out what they mean. Soon we figure out there is a parade. Maybe there are some interesting happenings in town today.
So we get ourselves ready to go ashore, but the dinghy has other plans for us. Actually, the fuel tank, which for some reason won’t prime to the engine. Glen fiddles with the fuel pipe, cursing, and in the end we use the spare tank and brand new fuel line and we head off.

Once in town, no sign of any organized crowds, the parade has finished. We do see the random small groups of people dressed in era costumes. We walk the center of the town, which seems just as busy with tourists as it was last June, if not more. Too busy for us, and we have no interest in the shops anyway.
Trying to find our way out of the crowded streets we come across a small restaurant which advertises New Castle Brown Ale. Glen can’t resist to such a sign, he hasn’t had this beer in ages and suddenly fancies one. So we take a sit on their sunny patio, enjoying a beer and an apple cider and watch the world go by. Tuning to the conversations of the people around us, we learn there was a Christmas parade in the morning and there will be another parade at 7pm. Hm, too bad we missed the morning one.

Hydrated and relaxed, we head out inland, on quieter roads. Here, nothing screams “tourist town”. Just normal houses, all tidy and some nicely decorated for Christmas. We do enjoy our walks through towns, just observing houses and gardens. And it’s a lovely day for a stroll, sunny and warm.
We walk for another hour, the quiet streets being disturbed only by the tourist trolley tours. Lots of them! And we giggle at the recollection of our trolley tour last year.

Early afternoon we are ready for a cup of tea and to rest our legs, so we head back to Cloudy Bay with the intention to return to the town in the evening. Back onboard Glen faffs around with the fuel tank and the fuel pipe, again, and finally gets it to work.
While checking emails, we learn that some of our deliveries are arriving later than we expected, maybe as late as Wednesday. Hm, we can’t leave till we get them all. Quick look at PredictWind forecast for next week tells us we would probably not leave before that anyway due to head winds. So nothing lost there. But by Wednesday there is a strong Nor’Easter coming which will clip here but not go below Cape Canaveral. So it would be good to get ahead of it.

Late afternoon the sky darkens and it gets windier. As we have our late lunch there are some drops of rain too. Conditions which quickly make us change our mind about going ashore again. Neither of us fancies a wet dinghy ride. Just as the sun sets it actually gets very chilly and we retire inside, switching on the heating and sealing ourselves in. Now what do we do?

Although I have no drive to resume video editing, I bring the subject out for a vote. Which is met with enthusiasm and ovations by Glen, so that decides it: there will be a video editing evening. We quickly decide there’s no point starting with the backlog of footage from last season, we will never catch up. Better start with the current season. And so we tackle the boat works footage from Herrington Harbour North yard. I though that should be a relatively easy project, as I didn’t record that much this time around. Really? When we open the folder, 320 raw videos stare us in the face. Hmm, turns out it will be yet another tedious and time consuming project. We need some “incentive” (or at least I do!) so I quickly make some hot wine which feels perfect on this weather.

Meanwhile, Glen ventures out to secure the anchor. With the tide swing the wind is exactly against the current and Cloudy is riding over the anchor, rubbing antifoul paint off the bow. So he passes the snubbing line through the bow sprit to stop that. Hope the bow sprit can take this downward force!

And so we start the editing at 6pm, and by midnight our eyes are crossed not from drinking the full bottle of wine, but from editing 60 clips. 6 hours of hard work for 8 minutes of final product. To be continued tomorrow.