February 05, 2001 -- Our Last Day in Royal Island

February 5, 2001 -- Our Last Day in Royal Island Today, we spent the morning doing some boat chores. While we were in Fernandina Beach, we purchased two floats to help mark our anchors when we have them down. While we were in West Palm Beach, we purchased the line to go with them. Since we had some time, we cut the line into 15, 25 and 35 foot lengths. We are now set to have anchor floats the next time we anchor! In the afternoon, Sandra and I decided to go find the big house ruins on the island while Mike stayed aboard to read and nap (he says he has napping down to a science). As we were walking along the original set of ruins contemplating how to get there, we discovered a path that we had not seen the last time we were on the island. We followed the path, and found the two story house ruins that we could see from the boat. We also found what appears to have been some kind of barn or garage as well as a boat house. As we wandered through first the garage and then the boat house, we found several old refrigerators (doors off of course) as well as a large outboard. Based on the size, I would hazard to guess it was probably 200+ horse power. There wasn't much to see in the boat house, other than a large winch. Our next stop was the two story house. We wandered through the ground floor of the house admiring the tile floor, and the general layout. I braved the upstairs, but only around the actual stairwell. I looked in virtually all of the rooms. Sandra took her turn after I came back downstairs. We weren't ready to go back to the boat yet, so we headed for the beach that we had seen the last time we were there. The path we were following opened to a beautiful and picturesque setting. The water was simply magnificent in all its hues. The original owner of the island had scooped out an area and made a cement retaining wall that formed almost a 'C'. We walked around the top of the C, where the stone work had started to crumble. We were treated to the sight of several crabs, a couple of large reef fish, as well as several schools of small ones. We wandered around the rest of the top admiring the view as well as looking for other marine life. We then walked around to the bottom half of the C. This area is still in relatively good shape, so there wasn't nearly as much to see. However, I did see two large crabs. Finally, we headed back to the boat. We arrived there just in time since five minutes later we were deluged with a heavy rain! We spent the rest of the day listening to the rain fall and reading our books.