Haven't worn my down coat in many days. Still wearing lots of layers, but there are times when we're showing flesh. Hands. Noses. Forearms.

Jekyll Island was a nice place to hang out and wait for Randy's sore throat and cold to improve, but I have to report that the Low Country Boil at the restaurant was a disappointment. Soggy potatoes, hunks of corn on the cob that had seen better weeks, boring sausage, but decent shrimp, which the Capt. loaded up on. I had a great bbq pork sandwich thingy. We got to listen to the same Jimmy Buffet CD (maybe it was an 8-track?) all the next day everytime I walked by the restaurant building, which also housed the loo and the laundryroom.

Beautiful liveoak trees are everywhere, and they're shedding acorns like nobody's business. We saw squirrels that must be full fit to bust. Walking around the marina area, we'd hear pings, bonks, ticks, little thuds -- acorns dropping on roofs, awnings, lids, sidewalks -- missed my head by a few inches once.

From what we could tell on foot, Jekyll Island seems to be mostly resorts, golf courses and conference centres. We had a lovely beach walk, our first!, on a looooong stretch of beach with lots of clamshells, pen shells and dead horseshoe crabs. Those things are really prehistoric looking. The marina was about a mile from a little strip mall with an interesting personality. It had a post office where I mailed off some parcels to my wee babbies at home, and about four stores that sold the worst awful dreck. I've come to the conclusion that there's a world-wide industry built up around guilt gifts that people buy when they've gone off on a business trip or a dirty weekend, and as soon as they know they're headed home, they buy this tacky stuff for their kids/wives/employees, cause they've been away, and maybe got in a round of golf, and everyone else has been stuck at home dealing with dustbunnies or faxes or whatever. Boycott the guilt-crap gift. Nobody really needs a pirate head carved out of a coconut. I almost bought one for Tom. Close call.

Our spot in the marina was close to a highway bridge, but it was the traffic under the bridge that was interesting. Shrimp boats going one way in the morning, and back again at night. Both ways, they were surrounded by clouds of gulls and pelicans, and as soon as the boats went under the bridge span, the birds seemed to get all confused, and they just hung on one side of the bridge, wheeling about, like 'where'd our boat go dude?', and the shrimp boat steamed off in full view. We also sat on deck and watch dozens of pelicans sitting on the water floating by in the current. In the mornings, you could see some of the fellas from other boats walking up the dock with their golf bags over their shoulders. And like several other marina bathrooms I've frequented, there's always a clandestine drinker who deposits their beer cans or bottles carefully in the trash in the ladies bathroom. Go figure.

I walked back up to the phone at the little mall the night of the 15 to call Tom and wish him happy birthday (he and Molly were eating vegan food and birthday cake lovingly prepared by sister Anna and Laura), and walked home to my dinner in the drizzle and dark with the spanish moss drooping spookily all down the dark road to the marina. After dinner Randy was feeling better, so we decided to take another walk in the drizzle and dark and see if we could find some greenery for a Christmassy display of some kind on board. It was such a Martha Stewart moment: decorating and theivery. Shears and flashlight in hand, we skulked around until we collected some stuff with red berries, some cedar with blue berries and some long leaf pine.

Next stop, Fernandina Beach, Florida! We were hoping that Florida would be the magic border to tropic temps, but we got rain, a hundred millimetres in 12 hours (broke records), honking winds, and a picturesque town flanked by huge pulp mills spewing dense fog lit up right nice by the sunset the next evening. We had a walk around town before it rained, and stopped for a beer. The bartender noted Randy's Port of Halifax logo on his vest, and said that he'd been in Halifax when he was in the Navy and was in a group that tried to steal the flags from the top of the Citadel. He said it was a bad scene, don't try it. Good advice. We drank Dirty Dog beer - Randy had a Tirebiter. We toured the very pretty part of town which included St Patrick's Parish Episcopalian Church. The driveway out front was lined with signs that said "Thou Shalt Not Park."

Back to the boat, we installed our version of Christmas decorations, and Randy fixed the head. It had been filling with water when at rest, and after much discussion and head-scratching, the solution turned out to be to replacing the inlet valve with the old one that he took out the last time it was leaking. Works great now. Again, go figure.

Fernandina Beach to St Augustine, 62 miles. Got there just after a small plane had crashed just north of the city, and we motored by all the emergency vehicles on shore and wondered what had happened. Read the headlines the next day. Very sad.

We trekked up to the PO the next morning and were rewarded with a letter from Auntie Mary. Real mail is very satisfying! If anyone else sent us something, note that we did set up a change of address so that mail will be forwarded to us via Randy's friends in Fort Lauderdale. We stopped to use the phone at Flagler College. Stunning building, built as a hotel, and now houses one of the few pay phones in the known universe. Fella at the marina told us that Bell has taken out most of the pay phones in northern Florida. They weren't making any money on them apparently.

There are beautiful buildings and a nifty and very old downtown section - RMS thinks it claims to be the oldest city in the US - and after we walked around for a few hours, we were starved and ate at a not great place, but we were treated to some unique Christmas music: Bing Crosby's White Christmas, with a drum track added. Sort of a disco-y beat. Bing, ya never sounded so weird.

We took our rolly cart and made our way, the usual two or three miles, to the grocery store and spent a pile of money stocking up. There were tons of bargains for those with reward cards, so Randy took the bull by the horns, and went to the service desk and asked what it took to get a Winn-Dixie customer reward card. I don't know what he gave them for an address or contact info, but we got one and saved $37 bucks on wine and meat and other stuff. We waited almost a half-hour for a taxi to take us back to the marina (more stuff than the cart could handle), and we got a brother and sister act - she was driving, he was loading groceries, she was chewing on her fake nails, and he was telling stories about his recent arrest. "Who bailed you out?" sis asks. "My baby's momma," was the reply. Really. Turns out his baby's momma is currently pregnant, and he's hoping the baby comes close to Valentine's Day so he won't have to buy her a gift. Now there's family planning.

St Augustine to Daytona Beach, 52 miles. Quiet anchorage, lovely sunset off of Caribbean Jack's Marina.
Daytona Beach to Cocoa, 70 miles. Long day. Cruised by Cape Canaveral. Nothing going up. We did have a wild moment of glee when Randy spotted flamingoes. Pink? These birds were like bubblegum, Barbie accessory pink. We hopped around laughing. Checked the bird book later to find that Great Flamingoes are rare, and we probably saw Roseate Spoonbills, but hell, they were pink. We felt we'd arrived!

Less invigorating, but equally suggestive in terms of shifting geography, I was scanning the houses along the side of the waterway early in the morning, and saw two big SNAKES on the tile roof of some poor schmucks' dock house. Grey, all coiled up, but the bits that we could see appeared to be as big around as my arm, or bigger. There was a guy in a blue uniform poking about in the bushes by the house, and I wanted to scream at him "the ROOF, they're on the ROOF!!!!," but it seemed undignified, and we were probably out of range anyway. We also saw a half dozen bald eagles in the next mile or so, and many many ospreys, so maybe they'll get the snakes.

On a happier note, porpoises are constant visitors. They can scare the crap out of us when they surface right beside the cockpit. One surfaced as he cruised by today and blew a plume of spray that wet the deck in the cockpit. Porpoise hooligans?

Cocoa to Vero Beach, 54 miles. Nice little marina, crammed full of boats. Each mooring has a raft of two or three boats, and there's no anchoring allowed, it's that full. Good laundry, nice walk to the beach, nice temp - about 63 degrees (16-17) by 5:30 when we walked back to the marina to pick up the laundry. Clean sheets for Christmas! Supper is on the go, glass of wine is in hand, and we're ready to hang here until Monday and get some little jobs done around the boat, and celebrate the festive season, Florida style. We'll try to post again on Christmas day, and it looks as though the email is working okay here, so send news.