Ah-Ooo-Gah, Ah-Ooo-Gah!!

Heck, we have to do something for excitement, and when we leave one state and enter another, we always blow our horn, whether it is in a car or on the boat.  Yes, we will finally leave Florida and enter the Peach State during this blog entry (admit it, you thought we would motor around Florida, indefinitely, didn't you?).  But first, we have one more Florida stop to make, right at the tippy-top of the state, at Fernandina Beach on beautiful Amelia Island. 

Fernandina Beach's Shrimp Fleet

Beautiful sunset at the mooring field

  We did the ol' trick of getting a mooring ball for the first evening, saving mucho dollars, then pulling into the marina the next morning. Our first evening we enjoyed a wonderful Mexican meal, along Fernandina Beach's lovely main thoroughfare. 


Gigantic Margaritas!!!!!!!  (Thad's, not Cindy's)

This is where we first are encountering significant tides, about 7', and will begin using our fenders (you know, the bumper thingies) as we will be at floating, not fixed docks, as we continue north.  With a floating dock your boat is tied to the dock and you both go up or down with the tide, vs. a fixed dock where the dock does not move but your boat goes up or down with the tide, while still tied to the dock.



You do NOT want this to happen, not a pretty picture!

Imagine a 7' tide in which your boat moved that much but the dock stayed in place.  And remember, tides also mean current, and we had quite a juxtaposition of the wind and current when we left Amelia Island.  Once again, the wonderful dock hands worked hard to get us safely to the pump out dock and then away.  What might we be pumping out, you ask?  One guess; you're right - two people can make, quite a lot it seems, over a number of weeks.  Enough said, as this is TMI (Too Much Information)!



While on Amelia Island, we had a very important person to make contact with.  Thad's boss at his previous employer, PivotHealth, the much loved, much admired John Phillips.  He and his wife, Carol, have a home on Amelia Island, which is one reason we stopped, as we wanted to see the two of them.  We had an absolutely wonderful dinner with them but were so busy talking (imagine that, John!!), that we forgot to take any pictures,  So, though we have no pictures of our evening together, I will leave it up to you to choose which of these very distinguished fellows (if any), all bearing the moniker, John Phillips, is the REAL John W. Phillips!

The morning we left I witnessed a scene right out of the Alfred Hitchcock movie, The Birds.  Several seagulls were attacking a ray, which was swimming in the marina.

Does anyone really like seagulls??

Over and over they flew down, pecking and tearing at its flesh, crazed Genus Aves Iratus.  Definitely brought back memories of Tippi Hedren in the scary phone booth scene!

We also had an intriguing neighbor at the Fernandina Harbor Marina.  The legendary 104' Trumpy designed, fantail motor yacht, Freedom, built in 1926, and perfectly restored within the last several years.  She's a sister ship to Sequoia, the former United States presidential yacht, used from Herbert Hoover to Jimmy Carter.

Absolutely beautiful.

So we left Amelia Island on late Friday morning, the beginning of Memorial weekend, bound for Cumberland Island, a short hop of only 5 miles, just over the Georgia border.  More about that adventure in the next blog entry.  I'll leave you with pictures of the roses growing at the marina. 

Lovely, aren't they?