We waited until daybreak to start our journey out of the St. Augustine inlet. It was a foggy morning and the helm enclosure made visibility a little tough. Luckily the sea state was fairly calm as we motored our way out.
Our next port of call would be Ponce de Leon Inlet just outside of Jacksonville. We had stopped at this inlet on our way to Brunswick so we were familiar with the inlet. We had been warned the last time we stopped over here to stay close to the jetty. Bubba had also been watching another boat we met in Brunswick make their way into the inlet so we had a good gauge on their heading as well. Since it was late in the afternoon we chose to anchor in a location across from the Coast Guard station we had anchored at the previous time. The wind was gusting pretty good but we felt that our Rocna 73lb anchor would hold.
We woke up the next morning to mother nature telling us we were not going to be leaving Ponce. The winds were gusting 20 plus mph and we had a pretty good idea what the water outside the inlet looked like. We sat debating on moving around the way to Sea Love harborr. I was in contact with my walking buddy Michele from Vista Vida as I knew they were at the marina across from the anchorage. I had also reached out to my friend Sara on Be4checkout who had also been anchored previously in this area to see if she could offer advice. Just as I heard back from Michele I got an anchor alert that we had drifted outside the zone I had set up. Looks like the dear Lord decided our fate for us so we pulled up anchor and began our way down the ICW.
It took a couple of attempts to get our anchor to hold. We finally ended up getting a solid hold closer to the lighthouse using the marina as a blocker for the wind that was gusting 25 mph for most of the day. Bubba filled our tanks up with the diesel from the Jerry cans and then went to the marina to fill the cans back up. While he was there he picked up dinner from the marina’s restaurant. While he was away I was on watch as we had another catamaran close to us.
We enjoyed the restaurants version of Bang Bang shrimp for our dinner. Our view for the night was not bad either, the Ponce de Leon Lighthouse was directly in front of our boat. The lighthouse was built in 1883 and has guided mariners for over 130 years. It is Florida’s tallest lighthouse coming in at 175 feet in height. There are 203 steps that are open to the public to explore or 213 steps that go up to the lantern room which is not open to the public. I have yet to visit this lighthouse for myself. It was too windy and gusty while we were there and I needed to catch up on work.
We got a good nights sleep that night as the winds died down to about 15 mph. We would get up the next morning to begin our journey back down the ICW to the inlet so we could begin our first overnight passage to Fort Pierce.