Monday 6th November

Blount Island, Florida.

At last we are off on our trip home. We left the Whitney's Marina at 13.00hrs after a round of goodbyes and good wishes. After 4 years of living there it was quite sad to see the place vanish into the distance.

Goodbye to all our nieghbours and friends in the Jacksonville area, thanks for 4 years that we will never forget. Special thanks to Bob and Karen for helping us get away from the dock, Barbara, Luther and Alice for the donuts, Lyn and Peter for the fishing gear, Steve and Marilyn for a wonderful "last supper".

Leaving the dock at high tide to ensure we didn't get embarassingly stuck in the dock channel meant that we could only get as far as the Buckman bridge and then had to anchor there until low tide. Our 64'9" mast only just clears the bridge at low tide and we didn't need to get caught under it. We anchored just off to the East side of the bridge, turned on the generator and sat waiting in the cool, eating dinner and then at 19.00hrs we carefully edged our way under the bridge - scraping the ariel as always but with no other problems. Once the bridge was cleared we motored down the Saint John river in persuit of Bob and Kathy who are travelling some of the way with us, they have a shorter mast so cleared it much earlier in the day.

The Jacksonville lights were spectacular as we travelled down river, I'm sure my pictures won't do it justice but I tried!

We arrived at Blount Island at 23.13hrs and dropped the anchor, tidied away the mess and went to bed.