Ormond Beach to Saint Augustine (and several days there)
We have arrived at the municipal Marina in St Augustine. For those that don't know, St Augustine is the oldest city in America. The Spaniards were here for more than 100 years before the British ever attempted to start a colony in North America. St Augustine, therefore, makes it a habit of speaking about being the oldest at many things.
The first Catholic mass in America was held here, the first European civil establishment (town) was here, the first Thanksgiving was here, the first church services in North America. Lots of firsts, too many to count.
St Augustine is also the place that Mr Flagler decided to create his first southern resort town. Mr Flagler, you might remember, was the person who built the railroad down through Florida and the keys and he also built many hotels and developed cities and plans all through the East Florida coast. He built gigantic hotels here, in Palm Beach, and in Miami.
Since he had moved his family here, at least for the winters, he also wanted to make sure some of the things New York had were available here. In fact he wanted New York elite to vacation here for the winter.
Therefore, he built hotels and hospitals and jails and a number of other things to make St Augustine a proper city.
When he first arrived, however, the railroad stopped at Jacksonville. There was no crossing the St John River because of its tides and width. He tried to get the railroad to build a bridge and extend to St Augustine and the board of directors refused. So he bought the railroad.... Once he owned the railroad he could make them extend it.
There were three giant hotels in St Augustine during the gilded age. Mr Flagler owned all of them. He also paid to build the Presbyterian Church and the Methodist Church and paid to rebuild the Catholic Church after it burned.
Enough of the history of St Augustine... Now I'll start to talk about what we've done here..
But first I have to start in Ormond Beach. We awoke in Ormond Beach to a beautiful sunrise. It seems almost every sunrise is beautiful in Florida.
Okay well maybe this one wasn't beautiful. It was misty and rainy and we had two anchors to pull.... At least there was no ice on the boat like there was when we were headed down the river systems...
It only took a couple of hours, however, before the sun came out and boats came from everywhere. It seems there was a poker run and we ended up in the middle of it.
This wasn't the typical poker run like they have on Lake Michigan. On Lake Michigan, go fast boats run from port to port to pick up cards and whoever has the best hand wins.
Of course everyone knows who got there first also but it technically can't be a race because insurance companies dislike racing.
The poker run here was a little different. There were pontoon boats and little runabouts and Sea-Doos all running from spot to spot trying to quick grab a card and then move to the next location. It meant for a busy channel since the channel wasn't very wide.
There were also a ton of manatee areas which meant .... go slow.
We also got to follow another looper a good portion of this journey - and we moved along pretty quick. We thought we had started quite a ways from St Augustine and we wanted most of the day to do things. I thought I had a lot further to go than what we had to go... Apparently when I picked a point on the map to chart to I picked one near Jacksonville not St Augustine... So we got to St Augustine in a short time....
St Augustine's Marina is also the oldest Marina in the US. This is because it's been continuously operating since the Spaniards were here ... It was, after all, a jumping off point for the gulf stream and people who wanted to travel back and forth to Europe.
One of the first visits we made here in town was to the oldest Protestant church in town (Trinity Episcopal). It was built in 1821, the year that Florida received its independence from Spain. Until that time you had to pledge allegiance to the crown of Spain as well as the Catholic Church or well let's just say you got to meet your maker early...
A French colony had developed up by Jacksonville even though the territory was claimed by Spain. The Spanish took a battalion North to go and drive them out but the French had a spy that warned them so they took to the sea and sailed south around St Augustine. The Spanish quickly took over the Jacksonville area and then went hunting for the French that had run for their lives. They found them in Matanzas, which in Spanish means massacre. The French were shipwrecked because of a horrible storm while they were headed south and ended up about 10 mi south of St Augustine at the next river outlet. Only about 200 of them survived and made it to shore. The Spanish gave them a choice to pledge allegiance to the crown of Spain or else. About a hundred did. The rest were killed. Then the Spaniards figured out they didn't have enough food for all of the French so they killed the ones that did pledge allegiance to Spain as well. Thus the name of the town and river.... massacre Metanzas).
This window in the church (below) was actually made and signed by the son of the founder of Tiffany corporation. (The NY jeweler).
It is one of only a small number of windows he signed. One thing that was distinctive about his windows was that he actually melted metal into the molten glass rather than using any kind of a paint or coating to stain the glass.
One thing I have observed here in St Augustine is that there is a very European feel to the town. Most things in the USA are relatively new but some things here have a feeling like the very old things of Europe... Perhaps it's just the style of the age they were built.
Here's an example of the architecture. Mr Flagler built his first Ponce de Leon hotel here in St Augustine to welcome wealthy visitors who wanted to winter in Florida and escape the climate of the North. Today the hotel is a part of the Flagler College.
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The windows in the rotunda (cafeteria of the college) are all Tiffany glass. Today they have plastic coverings over the outside so that they cannot accidentally be broken in a hurricane or by a vandal. Apparently each of the windows is worth hundreds of thousands of dollars. It was originally the Grand ballroom of the hotel, but today it's just relegated to a cafeteria for students.
We finished our evening doing some maintenance on the boat as I really needed to get the oil changed on both main engines soon. I was reaching my 250 hours quickly since the last change. That's all set.
I also managed to get some boat washing done and the mandatory pump outs and fresh water fill. One thing I had been neglecting was my sea strainers. For those that don't know what a sea strainer is, it's essentially a cylinder in a housing to filter seaweed or debris that would otherwise be sucked into the engine cooling system. After 500 hours of driving I was surprised that both main sea strainers were clean.
The same could not be said for the sea strainers on the generator or the air conditioners.
Here's our journey for the day on Saturday.
First we visited the jail. The town of St Augustine had a jail when Mr Flagler decided to build his hotel. It was right across the street from the hotel. This was unacceptable to Mr Flagler so he asked them to move it. They said they didn't have the budget so he gave them the money, but he said the jail couldn't look like a jail. It had to look nice.
And it does look nice.... From the outside.
On the inside, however, the jail wasn't so luxurious. They would put 12-13 people in a cell like this...
The jail was actually built by the same people who built Alcatraz. The inmates were basically slave labor who could be worked any number of hours doing any task for no pay. People typically got 2 to 5 years sentence knowing that they'll never make it past a year. According to the tour guide no male inmate ever made it out. Apparently some female inmates did, and you can probably imagine what they had to do to get out.
Still others had a premature ending because they chose not to cooperate with the demands of the jailer...
Humans really just don't treat each other very well...
We visited a historical general store...
It seems you could buy everything in the general store that was available. Perhaps even things you couldn't afford which they would gladly finance and keep you paying as long as possible...
We visited the Catholic shrine here. This is the place where the first worship service was held in North America as well as where the first church was built. Interestingly the territory was claimed for the church before it was claimed for Spain. The Spanish leader came ashore a day after the priest so that he could kneel at the land claimed for the church. One of the primary goals of creating the colony was to convert the locals. The natives, surprisingly, saw the Spaniards kneeling and did the same. I'm sure they had no idea what it meant and they were just being hospitable.
We also visited Henry Flagler's Church, the Flagler Memorial Church - a Presbyterian congregation.
We also visited the original school house. (Well, from the outside). Schools apparently didn't get the same priority they do today back in the day. That changed once it became a resort town.
We managed to get the mandatory ice cream on both Saturday and Sunday, but it rained on Monday so we really didn't want ice cream.
Monday we went for a bike ride. Maybe 13 to 15 miles. We went across the bridge of lions to Anastasia Island. We visited the beach and rode the main highway bridge back and around through the suburban St Augustine area. We also biked through some alleyways in Old Town to see the old houses.
This has been a really good visit and a nice town to stay in. Tomorrow we head out again and continue our journey north. Tomorrow might just be our last full day in Florida....
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