Flamenco in St. Augustine

May 18, 2007 Friday
Here are a few more pictures of the ICW trip.
A lot of the canals on the ICW have homes on them, most with docks.
But sometimes we go right through big cities like Daytona Beach.
Here we are coming into St. Augustine. This is the South Anchorage with the cityscape behind it.
No tourist town would be complete without a traditional sailing boat taking out day-trippers. This is Freedom.
They are rebuilding the most famous bridge, the Bridge of Lions. It was deemed structurally unsafe and so the city raised many millions to rebuild it instead of just replacing it with another bridge. It is one of the city's major landmarks and a beautiful structure. It will take several years to complete and unfortunately the construction is right next to our marina. Fortunately, we got another slip further from the noise and it isn't bad now.
One of the amazing things about this marina is that the currents through it can run up to 6 knots. At peak, the water roars past the boat. That means that every move has to be planned around the tides. On the other hand, the marina is totally comfortable and they are going to let us store our bikes in an inside room so that we don't have to leave them outside. Last night we were having wine in the cockpit with friends and about 8 dolphin were swimming off our stern, feeding on mullet. They would chase the mullet and catch them with a leap to our cheers. There are so many mullet that tomorrow I am going to take our dip net and net a few right under the dock. Sometimes they just boil all around the boat. I'm curious how they fry!
We have been marketing ourselves as flamenco artists with a very good reception. Last night we went out to dinner with our friend, Eric. In the process, we played at three different restaurants. The first was an "open mike" where we made the audience stop talking for the first time since we got there. Nice reception. Then we went to a tapas bar where we now have a gig lined up for tomorrow night. Finally we went to the local Spanish restaurant and stirred things up with them. I think we're going to see a lot of action. This town has lots of musicians. Hurricane Katrina caused a lot of New Orleans musicians to migrate here and they never left. But we don't have too much competition in the flamenco world. We hope to meet the local dancers to see if we can put on some collaborations. This is serious fun!
Late update: we got a regular gig at the Tasting Room, a splendid tapas bar and wine tasting. Just the kind of place I like!
We will be in St. Augustine until early June. I will be doing boat projects during the day and flamenco at night. Don't be afraid to call or email.

The ICW to St. Augustine

5-14-07 Monday
Here we are in St. Augustine, in a marina where we can stay a month if we want. The trip up the Intercoastal Waterway (ICW) was a trip! Travelling in a narrow channel of water that is from 10 - 14' deep keeps you on your toes. Our keel goes down 6 feet, so if we get careless and wander out of the channel for an instant, oops! Stuck in the mud. There are markers (colored signs on posts) sticking out of the mud on either side of the channel, so all we need to do is stay between the posts, except that they can be more than a mile apart. Fortunately, we have electronic navigation and can see the channel on the electronic chart. There are two dashed lines that show the edges of the channel and a single dashed line down the middle. So, I put the little electronic boat on the centerline and keep it there. Mostly, we have to temper that with a little judgement by looking out at the real world, but the second morning of the journey, we had just pulled up the anchor in New Smyrna Beach and started through some winding channels. Suddenly, a dense fog descended and we couldn't see the markers at all. So, going very slowly, we just put the electonic boat in the middle of the electronic channel and kept it there. Finally the sun came out and we were able to speed up. But there is no time to not pay attention. I steer with the autopilot and electronic charts down below and Andi stays on deck to watch all around us. Fortunately, we didn't go aground.
But the bridges! There are two kinds of bridge over the ICW, fixed bridges with 65' of vertical clearance (the top of our mast is 60') and opening bridges. The fixed bridges are nerveracking at first because it never looks like the mast will fit under them and you are sure that there is going to be a horrible crunch. But it fits. The other kind of bridge requires that you call the bridge tender on the radio and request an opening. Mostly they do that just as you arrive and you hardly loose any time at all. But some of the bridges are restricted so as to not cause traffic jams. Those bridges mean that you have to drift or go in circles until the next scheduled opening. We are in a marina next to the Bridge of Lions in St. Augustine and it only opens on the hour and half-hour.
Here is one of our first bridges, a bascule (lift) bridge.
And here is a swing bridge, the roadway revolves around a pedestal. These are rare.



Do you think it will touch? We finally got used to it.
In the fog in New Smyrna Beach, this egret stood out. (Double-click to enlarge)
There are many beautiful estuaries that can be explored by dinghy, but not by the big boat.



It was an adventure. It's good to be here. Our cellphone works again because we are in the US, so you can call us any time you want. We're going to find some flamenco gigs in the next few days and start on some boat projects. I'll put up some more St. Augustine pixs soon.

Stalled by Andrea

May 11, 2007 Friday
We are still in Port Canaveral at the yacht club. There has been the first named storm of the season, sub-tropical disturbance Andrea off the coast of the Carolinas and slowly drifting South. This is not a hurricane since it started in cold waters, but it is a rotating storm around a low pressure. The winds in the center never got much above 40 knots and now are around 25 knots. But this has been enough to keep Florida weather unsettled and windy. I am reluctant to go poking around in the shallow waters of the ICW for the first time in strong winds. Ergo, we have remained in the marina and have partaken of a virtually non-stop run of parties hosted by the Davidsons. We were delighted to meet David, an English guitarist who accompanies cante and dance very well. We had a great deal of flamenco fun (to say nothing of good food and companionship).
Every morning we get up and check the weather and every morning the forecast changes from possible to not-any-fun. We are getting tired of getting our hopes up and then finding out that we can't go. Tomorrow is currently forecast as light winds and so we are planning to leave early. If we get in long days, we can make St. Augustine in 2 days. And that is handy, since a new cold front is forecast on Monday. But, we can't know for sure until tomorrow morning when we check the forecasts yet again. Keep your fingers crossed for us.

On the brink of the Intercoastal Waterway

May 5, 2007 Saturday
We are tied up at the Port Canaveral Yacht Club, a very friendly club. We actually got to hose the salt off the boat and are enjoying 110 V AC electricity. What luxury - at a considerable cost however, like all transient marinas in Florida. They charge what the market will bear. We have been visiting with Bill and Fran Davidson (the guy who distributes the flamenco DVDs) and talking about old times, playing guitar, etc.

We have decided, due to forcast bad weather in the Gulf Stream, to take a try at the Intercoastal Waterway (ICW) that is a ditch running from the Northeast to Texas. It provides sheltered water (and frequently shallow water), but takes us through the heart of cities and through sleepy coastal villages and isolated anchorages surrounded with wildlife. Many folks travel up and down it every year to adjust the climate to their tastes. We don't want to see any hurricanes up close, so we are going North. We'll probably go fairly quickly up the "ditch" and then take our time coming back down next Fall. Boston is probably as far North as we want to go. I have always wanted to see the famous yachting centers around Martha's Vineyard, Block Island, Newport, etc. And I think that sailing into New York Harbor would be memorable. I can't imagine what slips cost there?

So we bought a bunch of charts and guides to the ICW and I have been studying hard to learn all the new skills needed. We will go through another lock just a few miles from where we now are and between here and St. Augustine, there are about 8 bridges that will have to be raised to allow us to pass. We have to call the bridge tenders on the VHF radio and ask for the span to be raised. That should be interesting! The channel in the ICW can be quite narrow and only about 8 - 12' deep. That means you have to pay attention to where you are or you drift out of the channel and get stuck in the mud. There are a bunch of channel markets on posts all along the ICW, so you pay careful attention and hopefully don't get stuck. Our boat is 6'-2" deep, deeper than most powerboats, so we have to be especially careful. Just in case, I bought an unlimited subscription to TowBoat/US - a good investment since just one tow would cost more than a whole year's subscription. And with 1000 miles of ditch up the East Coast, most folks get stuck at least once.

So in a day or so, we are going to move the boat up to Titusville where Bill Davidson lives. He will join us to provide a little local knowledge and we will put up some pictures of the ICW. We didn't put up pix of the Gulf Stream because it was just more water....

Cruising Florida

May 3, 2007 Wednesday
When the weather got favorable, we had to tear ourselves away from Key West. We had a 42 mile run up to Marathon that was easy enough. We anchored outside the harbor rather than try to fit our 6' keel into a 5' harbor. Actually, it is probably deep enough, but we are California kids where harbors are at least 18' deep and then there is a little bit of 200' and then it drops off to 2000' deep. We don't think much about how deep it is. Not so in Florida. As we ran along the keys in Hawk Channel, a deep spot would be 20' and much of the time it was more like 12'
The next day, we left Marathon early to do the long 92 mile day up to Miami. To get there before dark, we used the sails and motor. We don't like entering strange and shallow harbors in the dark. So we were roaring along at 7.75 knots in 11' deep water. We could see the grass and sand in the crystal clear water. After a while, we got used to it. Just before sunset, we arrived at Key Biscayne, felt our way through the shoals, and anchored in a cute little harbor called "no name harbor". It is maintained by the Park Department and had a nice little restaurant with a lot of Cuban things on the menu. Given the staff (Cuban) it was no surprise. We spent an extra rest day there.
And now, we are out in the Gulf Stream heading North with 3 knots of current boosting us along. The wind is light, so the waves are mellow. I like mellow. I also like to see more than 9 knots of speed on the GPS! We are going to take a slip at the Port Canaveral Yacht Club for a few days to hang out with some flamenco friends there. We were sorry that our good friend Miguel Ochoa is having a medical crisis with his kidneys and was hospitalized when we got to Miami, so we talked to his wife, Carla, on the phone. It wasn't the visit that any of us had hoped for. Now that we are pretty convinced that we will stay on the East Coast for the next year, we are going to be looking for flamenco performance opportunities. It should be pretty easy.
Don't forget to write.