December 07 - 12, 2000 -- Fernandina Beach

December 7 - 12, 2000 -- Fernandina Beach Today, we went into town and picked up a new kitchen faucet for the sink. It has been slowly dying since Port Royal. We checked the hardware store there, but we didn't like what they had. After we arrived from Sapelo, it was having problems turning off, so we went to the hardware store and got one. On our way back to the dinghy, we stopped and picked up our mail. After we got back to the boat, we realized that we were incredibly stupid when we came in yesterday, since we forgot to stop and get fuel. We looked around for someone who could baby sit the dinghy we didn't want raise it and put it back down for a short trip to the fuel dock. Unfortunately, the people on the two boats we know just arrived from a 2 day trip from South Port. Instead, I headed over to Second Wish who we had seen at a few other anchorages and asked if they could baby sit our dinghy while we took the boat into the fuel dock for fuel. They were happy to. We took the boat in, took on 250 gallons of fuel and headed back out again. In gratitude, we had Second Wish over for drinks. We had a great time with them, and look forward to the time when we share an anchorage again. On December 8, Mike woke up at 4:00 am when he heard the chain rattling. Thinking we had another problem with the windless, he rushed out into the cold to check it out. As it turns out it was just some chain moving around. Since he was awake, Mike set about cleaning the floor in the galley and getting ready for us to install the new faucet. After I got up, we installed the new faucet! Next, we walked into the Post office to mail stuff. On our way back to the dinghy, we stopped for lunch at Brett's Waterway Cafe. We walked in and saw Bill and Paula from Wave Dancer. We haven't seen them since West Palm Beach last year. We had lunch with them and caught up on each other's adventures. On our way back to the boat, we decided to head over and see Elysia since they were at Tiger Point Marina, just around the bend from Fernandina Beach. We had heard from Wave Dancer that a boat had dragged into the channel and was run over by a tug and barge a couple of days before we got in. One person was killed and one managed to survive. The boat was moved over to Tiger Point. Eric and Susan from Elysia pointed it out to us and told us that they had heard the boat did not have an anchor light on so it was not seen. We see this type of thing all of the time, some folks think that just because several boat always anchor somewhere that it is a 'designated anchorage' and don't use an anchor light. While it is true that an anchor light is not required in a 'federal designated anchorage' most places are not designated anchorages. We always use anchor lights and in areas of commercial traffic add additional lighting like turning on our spreader lights to light up the mast or some other type of lighting for light recreational traffic. On December 9, we heard Windom check in on the net heading towards Fernandina Beach. In fact, they would be in by around 1:00 PM EST. We didn't do a whole lot today, until the evening, when we had Britt and Elana from Windom, Eric and Susan from Elysia and Bill and Paula from Wave Dancer over for cocktails. It was great to catch up with everyone! On December 10, it was foggy and rainy so we didn't do anything! On December 11, we went into town to the dollar store with Eric and Susan. Then we went to lunch at T-Ray's where Bill and Paula and the folks from Sea Love joined all of us. Next, we headed to Standard Boat Supply where we found the final piece for our Sea Anchor system. Finally, we headed back to the boat. We flipped on the TV and listened to the supreme court arguments! Just as the supreme court closed arguments, we fell asleep. That evening, we went over to Windom for a cocktail. While talking with them we said something about having to turn on our anchored in fog signal again tonight. Britt said they had heard it the other day and at first thought that it was something on their boat making noise. They started looking around before they discovered it was us. In thinking back on it we have discovered that so far when ever we are anchored in the fog we are the only boat around us sounding fog signals, at least that we have noticed. This has always made us wonder why other boats don't do this as well. Normally it is a function on the middle to upper end VHF's to sound signals when attached to a hailer speaker or a separate hailer can be purchased that performs all sound signals required by the Navigation Rules. The next time we are in heavy fog we are going to have to ask someone we know why they don't sound signals. Anyway we figure that if you can't see us, you sure as hell are going to hear us, so we use them. We know there is radar, but some of the smaller (35 feet & under) sailboats and power boats just don't show up on Radar very well. There have been several times that we have called other boats, just to let them know that if we did not see them with our eyes we would not know they are there since they are lost in the wave return on radar. So far everyone has taken this, as good to know so they could beef up there return with additional or better reflectors. We expect that sooner or later someone will tell us to f**k off, but if our return was poor we sure would want to know, so we could do something about it. On December 12, we got up at 5:30 AM EST to see if we could leave. It was extremely foggy out, so we decided not to leave. We didn't feel that we could make the speed necessary to make it to West Palm Beach with several hours of fog at this end. Unfortunately, we had forgotten about coming in to Fort Pierce, which would have been a good option. Later that morning, Mike had a touch of a stomach bug, so it was a good thing we didn't leave