Five nights in St. Augustine

       Getting out of Lake Sylvia in Fort Lauderdale involved a problem; after all of the strong winds we had experienced while anchored there, the knot holding the snubber line to the chain became too tight to be untied, requiring the first use of our new Westmarine rigger’s knife. Its blade is sharp.The rest of the line, since then rewhipped, is now another foot shorter.

       Our passage to St. Augustine consisted of two halves. The first was a very exhilarating romp for the 18 hours from 7:30 am to 1:30 am. Fast, with winds from the east and an assist from the Gulf Stream, we averaged 7.95 knots and had one hourly reading of averaging 9.2 knots. But then the Stream headed a bit east of our coastal course and the winds died and we had to motor sail the rest of the way, from 1:30 am until about 4 pm, when the wind picked up enough to allow us to rest the engine for the last hour.  The passage into St. Augustine from the sea is well marked by buoys over a long shallow shelf, but the buoys are not shown on the chart because they are moved so frequently as the waters shift the sands. Here is the view looking out through the channel to the Atlantic.

  We had just overtaken this dredging operation on our way out:

St Augustine is a very old city, very much a tourist destination and very much a Latin city with its main streets, Mendoza and Aviles, named after Aviles Mendoza, the conquistador. The Bridge of Lions crosses the Inter Coastal Waterway in town.

 

Its ornamentation at each arch somehow put me in mind of the low bridges across the Danube in Prague. We are not sure if this one is named after Ponce de Leon, who discovered Florida for the Spanish while looking for the fountain of youth, or after the lions that guard each corner of the bridge -- or both. These lions don’t seem as regal or pacific as Patience and Prudence, who, prone, guard the New York Public Library.

The bridge, its central span open, awaits our departure.

Our first stop after coming in under the Bridge of Lions, was the Municipal Marina’s fuel dock where we picked up 35 gallons of diesel, our first since George Town. With a capacity of 75 gallons, we were still slightly more than half full. Then we were assigned a mooring where ILENE rested for five nights. It was just west of the west side of the Intercoastal Waterway, by red daymark 8. With up to three knots of current rushing past, first one way and then the other, according to the tides, we were held at strange angles relative to the winds, which were weaker than the current.

The most popular tourist attraction in town is the trolley lines. For about $30 per person they will take you to each of 21 tourist sites and let you get off at those you wish to see, to take up another trolley which come by every ten minutes. We did not take the tour but walked where we had to go. Long walks to food markets, with taxi rides back. We did laundry and used the marina’s very strong wifi signal. 

We visited the Lightner Museum. 

This had been the very grand Alcazar hotel, built by Flagler. He was an accomplice of Rockefeller and is credited with developing the east coast of Florida by building the railroad that went all the way to Key West. This former hotel reminded me of the Hotel Gellert in Budapest. 

Lene at our lunch in its Café Alcazar.

And here is the same room, from a photo, back in the day – the world’s largest indoor swimming pool of its time.

In the Depression the Hotel was closed and reopened by Mr. Lightner as a museum, and a very interesting and eclectic one at that. Mr. Lightner bought the collections of wealthy people who went bankrupt in the depression. So there are displays of samplers, toasters, womens’ canes, cigar bands, stained glass windows, you name it. Nothing very great artistically, but interesting: a collection of collections.

We noticed this urban bird,

and later this next one, standing on a mooring line at the marina.

 Across the street from the Alcazar Flagler built the more ornate and less public hotel Ponce De Leon, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright.  Subject to racial and religious segregation, anyone who had the money could visit the Alcazar, but only select invited guests could visit the Ponce de Leon. Here is the fountain in its courtyard, with frogs and (behind us) turtles.

The archway spells the hotel’s name in its shields.

 Detail of part of the archway, with an extra temporary portable ornament.

After closing and lying dormant for some years or decades, this hotel reopened as Flagler College, where 1600 undergrads study liberal arts, in the ‘60s. It boasts the largest collection of tiffany glass windows still in use (though protected by clear plexiglass where students might fall against them) and here is Lene seated on an original F. L. Wright chair, still in use in the student dining room, formerly the grand ballroom.

 

 The dome of the rotunda in the reception hall, and the chain fence; does it say “Keep out!” or what?

 We had an excellent Cuban dinner at Columbia Restaurant, now one of seven such, founded in 1905 and now owned by the fifth generation in the family and very proud of it. The wines on their wine list have stars, representing the number of generations that each winery has been owned by the same family.

 Another dinner was at a French place; Lene with bouillabaisse and me with a book shaped plate of lemon chicken and ratatouille.

 

The symmetrical, star shaped Castillo de San Marcos, run by the National Parks Service, was built by the Spanish and owned by the British for a while before flying the US flag, but, while attacked and besieged, was never taken. Its thick walls are made of coquilla, a stone consisting of small shells that have been naturally fused with limestone that has leached out of them and is a soft stone which cannon balls can dent but not crack.

We also saw a good production of Children Of A Lesser God, a play about deafness, at the Limelight theater, with some of the actors from the Florida School for the Deaf and Blind, located less than a mile away.