Stop-over in St. Augustine FL

A web log of the sailing vessel "Gyatso"

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Stop-over in St. Augustine, Florida

Gyatso and crew arrived in St. Augustine, Florida on Monday, February 27, 2006 to spend a month or two finishing the initial refit and repairs. We finally reached temperatures in the 70s and 80s! During our first week, we had sunny and dry weather which was perfect for refinishing the brightwork. We were also honored with a visit from Lisa's sister and brother-in-law. We hauled the boat for out-of-the water maintenance and repairs on Monday, March 6th and departed the following day for a week of to wrap-up work in Annapolis and visit family in Vermont. After returning to the boat, we continued working our long "to do" list including more brightwork (we ended up re-doing everything including the butterfly hatch), bottom painting, installation of a new bimini and dodger, etc. Lisa took a week of vacation from boat chores to visit with her family at her sister's house on Anna Maria Island and a "girls only" outing to Disney World with mom, sister Suze and niece Betsy. While Lisa was away, David tackled the brightwork with heat gun and scraper in hand.

The "DIY" yard at St. Augustine Marine on the San Sebastian River is a busy place. Some boaters haul-out for quick repairs and others spend a month or two, like us. Living aboard a boat while on land is not much fun, especially the yard dust and loud equipment but climbing up and down the ladder was certainly good exercise. We spent many evenings at Hurricane Patty's or other local bars and eateries with fellow DIY'ers to get away from all the dust and grime. For many of those evenings, we enjoyed the company of Glen who was refitting Island Time, a sport fishing boat located off our stern in the yard. We also spent time with Bob (a former Tayana 37 owner) who is spending several years rebuilding his sailboat, True North. One day, Lisa noticed another Tayana 37 headed up the San Sebastian River with a Seven Seas Cruising Association commodore's burgee. A few days later, we met and had dinner with Ken and Helen who were staying a week at another marina aboard their lovely Tayana 37, Tatiana. We spent a few days getting to know Dick and his friend Fred who had just sailed Baccalieu, his Passport 40 (another Bob Perry design), back from the Bahamas where Dick and his wife had spent five months. We enjoyed learning about their experience and eating several meals of Mahi Mahi after they emptied their freezer in preparation for several months of storage. We commiserated lots about refit projects with Joe and Patricia who were in the DIY yard for a month working on their 38' Island Packet, Imagine. They also bought their boat last October and had a cold trip south in December and January.

After more than six weeks "on the hard" and working hard on the boat, we re-launched on Friday, April 21, 2006 and departed the following Monday for North Palm Beach, Florida. We stayed at a mooring in Vero Beach for a couple of weeks until we had to leave the boat and catch a flight to Vermont for a LakeNet board meeting.