More History - Dec 4

St Augustine to Matanzas Inlet - Dec 4

With a short travel day ahead we weighed anchor in time to go through the 8:00 am lift bridge in St Augustine. On the other side we stopped for fuel and a pump out. They do it right here. Pump outs are free in an effort to keep the water cleaner. Some places, especially in North Carolina, it was hard to find a pump out and when you did they wanted $15. I don’t think I’d want to swim in those rivers. Our journey today was only 15 miles and the sun was shining and the wind was light. That meant peeling off the layers and letting some skin show, even on the water. Our new anchorage was on the Matanzas River just beside Fort Matanzas. More history! This is an interesting spot. To get to the fort we had to dinghy past it, go to the national park visitor centre and beach the dinghy there. Then we got on a small ferryboat that took us back across the river to the fort. An interpretive guide in full costume accompanied us and filled us in on the life and times of this small fort. It’s main purpose was to guard the back route into St Augustine. Its name, matanzas means massacre referring to the Spanish massacre of French soldiers in 1565. Brutal times. Our guide provided some information that helped better explain some of Christopher’s boat schooling unit on Florida as well. The visitor centre had a fine nature trail so once again we got our walking exercise amongst the ever more tropical flora and fauna. And all this was free – hooray for the National Park Service! We are getting good at finding the free stuff as it is often better than the places with admission charges and they fit much better into the travel budget – especially with the Canadian dollar in the slumps. Speaking of the dollar, we saw a wintering loon here in the river today. Not sure if it recognized us but it didn’t disappear when we dinghied right by it. We have also seen many turkey vultures, some of which I am sure have circled over our Mono Centre home. Could be a good way to send messages home in the spring…