We moved to Florida in the hopes that it would be all warmth and sunshine.  Florida, apparently, is made of lies.  We knew there was a strong front moving through on Christmas Eve and had everything on the boat safely tied down.  All we had to do was sit and wait for it.  The wind kicked up and Jason was up on deck making sure everything was still good to go and had just barely made it back inside the boat when all of a sudden the wind knocked the boat over and all hell broke loose.  We’re talking multiple gusts to over 40 knots and rain.  Our boat recorded a max of 47 knots, while one of the boats in the north mooring field recorded around 70!  It didn’t last very long, but it was a strong storm! I’m really happy with how well our boat handled the storm.  She’s heavy and sturdy and while she leaned over, I never felt unsafe (although I haaaate storms!)!

The main problem with the storm wasn’t the storm itself, it was the freezing temperatures that came with it.  Our boat doesn’t have a generator and also doesn’t have a heater.  We have a small electric space heater but not enough power to run it.  We solved that problem before the storm hit by running into town and buying a small gas-powered Honda generator.  Not generally the way that it’s done on a boat, but it’s cheap and lightweight and it’ll get the job done.

The generator worked out pretty well for us to run the heater and keep the cabin of the boat warm enough to not be totally miserable.  We woke up Christmas morning and had to wear our foul-weather sailing gear to warm up for a while.

The weather was horrible on Christmas day, so Jason and I didn’t end up going to visit his sister in Jacksonville.  We just huddled on the boat and played on our phones and hung out.

The main reason we haven’t just left St. Augustine yet and headed south is that we need to drive to Missouri in a few days for Jason’s little sister’s wedding.   This is relevant because we realized that cormorants like to land on the boats out here and shit allllll over them.  I don’t want to leave the boat for a week covered in bird shit, so I need to fins a way to hopefully keep them off of it.  Unfortunately, the bird wind socks and other devices weren’t in stock at the West Marine we walked to and no one else had anything.  I realized that I need to make my own solution.  As usual, my mother is full of bright ideas… as a kid she was on a nonstop vendetta against the squirrels and deer in her garden and at some point had CDs hanging from all the trees.  Apparently the reflections and movement keep critters away.  I figured that was as good an idea as any, so we stopped by target on the way back to the boat and I got some fishing line and a small pack of CDs.  I tied them in multiple places outside the boat but quickly realized that the lightweight fishing line was going to break easily as it twisted around and I had to redo most of the CDs with string to keep them up.  It ended up looking pretty hilarious with these CDs flying around the boat, but it helped a little bit.  The CDs keep the birds off of the deck and the boom, but they don’t go up high enough to keep the birds off the spreaders on the mast.  I’m just hoping that it makes our boat less desirable to sit on than the other boats and we don’t come back to a boat covered in crap.

On the last day before we were set to leave, we were taking the dinghy to shore and saw a really cool boat with an orange sail and dinghy.  That’ s a pretty unique color for a boat and also our favorite color so we rode over to check it out…and realized that it was SV Delos!  Delos is one of the original youtube sailing channels and they’re famous on the internet and with most sailors!  It was neat to see such a well-known boat and crew in person!

Eventually it was time to head to Missouri.  We got the boat all buttoned up and our bags packed.  The cats were moved onto the boat when it was still on land at the boatyard and they’ve not been off of it, but we’re taking them with us. That means that they have to ride in the dinghy to get to the truck! I shoved them into their cat carriers and put them in the dinghy.  The ride across was fairly uneventful but the cats were *not* impressed at all.  They did better than I thought they would and I didn’t hear them cry that much.  They were so relieved to be in the truck that they did really good on the first day of our road trip!