Back In St Augustine

We have two battery banks on board Mystic; bank 1 has 3 batteries, and bank 2 a single battery on it’s own. Bank 2 is used solely to start our engine if bank 1 is too low. The engine wouldn’t start on bank 1 this morning. This has never happened before. We are not sure why it is happening now. Our solar panel feeds bank 1 and is supposed to keep up with our refrigeration. It may be a charging issue; we are not sure. We’ll have to keep an eye on it.

Battery switch

Battery Meters

Battery Banks 1 & 2

We'll make it back to St. Augustine today where we will resume our Great Loop adventure. We left our Daytona anchorage by 8:00 am. A beautiful ketch followed us out of the bay. We waited for them at the first lift bridge so they could make the opening with us. The bridge tender appreciated our thoughtfulness. The captain on the ketch, Emerald Lady, passed by and moved ahead of us. She hailed us on the marine radio; told us how pretty Mystic is and asked her make. We chatted a bit and discovered that we saw them in Vero a few weeks ago. It’s like that on the water. Boats leap frog from port to port, and are delighted to run into each other again.

Emerald Lady

We planned to travel 50 miles today and anchor near St. Augustine. Dave checks on the engine throughout the day. He is disappointed to find another leak coming from our anti-siphoning valve loop. It won't be easy to reach. He took apart our manual bilge pump to get to the source. It appears to be a slow leak but will have to be addressed. The water that passes through this valve cools our engine. We watch it closely as we move north.

Anti-siphoning valve cap

We attempted to anchor just before the Route 312 bridge in St. Augustine. There were several boats already there. Dave guided me in but we made a soft grounding. We are able to pull ourselves off. We'd had enough of the shallow water, so we headed up to the municipal marina to grab a mooring ball. This was not an easy task. We had to fight wind and current as well as a mooring ball that wouldn’t swivel correctly. We finally got ourselves settled, seeing first hand why people complain about this mooring field. It has a lovely view of downtown St Augustine but the current is strong and fast.

Beautiful blue Crescent Beach Bridge on
the way to St. Augustine

A colorful spot along the ICW

A huge houseboat named Thirsty is sitting next to us. They are loopers from Texas. The captain came by in his dinghy and asked if we were having trouble with our mooring ball. He said everyone else is having the same problems. It’s just the way it is.

St. Augustine Pirate Ship

Looper Boat Thirsty sitting in St. Augustine mooring field

View of Bridge of Lions from our mooring ball

We never ended up going ashore while we were in St. Augustine. It's probably for the best as we've always had such a hard time leaving there. Dave fixed the anti-siphoning valve leak by taking it apart and cleaning it, then reassembling it. We’d never heard that this valve needed such attention. We are 100% sure that we should not have left Mystic on the hard for so long. We are paying for that with all kinds of issues popping up each day.

In spite of our challenges, today was a good day. There was a lot of traffic on the waterway; kids hanging on for dear life as they are dragged over wakes on a tube. Pontoons, cruisers and a few obnoxious boaters who think they own the ICW speed past us. We smile and wave at them all.