Believe it or not we finally made it to our first sand beach on this trip. So far, the scenery consisted of woods or marshes and even though we are on a boat, the paradox is that it is very hard to stop on a beach when we are on the ocean. The fact is that waves and currents make it almost impossible to anchor close to a beach on the East Coast of the USA. In Fernandina Beach we were able to anchor in a river behind the city and the beach was at about 10 minutes biking distance. As you can see the temperature was quite cool and we had the beach almost to ourselves.
Fernandina Beach had Wallmart, supermarket and Laundromat at biking distance. Yep, doing the laundry is not what it used to be. Pay attention to the red bags below the white laundry basket. These are coolers with hard plastic boxes inside that we found at Wallmart and figured we could attached them to the bike rack and use them as back panniers. Having these new coolers we didn’t need the other ones we had that were pretty much just using space on the boat. So we gave the old coolers to a local fisherman who gladly took them and after chatting a few minutes with us gave us two large fishes he just caught. Fish it was for dinner that night and believe me it was fresh.
The wildlife is also changing around here. These two pelicans were taking a break on the dock of the local marina not much bothered by us. The other picture shows that when you raise the anchor you really don’t know what you can find. I was preparing the navigation instruments when Danielle came running back from the bow yelling “Oh my god Roger, there this big thing on the chain yearrkkkk! Come get rid of it.” I obviously though that an earth worm or something alike got caught on the anchor but found instead this thing coming directly out of a Jules Verne’s novel caught in the chain. We have no idea what it is but it sure makes you step up. The main round shell was about 8 inches in diameter.
For the US Thanksgiving (on November 27th) we went to St-Marys about 8 miles from Fernandina Beach where every years since 2001 the local hotel offers for free, turkey and ham to sailors for the Thanksgiving. The boaters for their part bring the side dishes in this big pot-luck. We brought a banana bread we cooked the night before and shared a good meal with the crews of the other 50 or so boats who showed up for the event this year.