We have now finally made it to Florida! We arrived in St. Augustine early this morning after two days at sea, which turned out to be quite a cold experience. Henrik found great pleasure in sailing again, though, in spite of the cold weather - and I managed as well.

In Charleston, we waited a couple of days for the weather to get better, since the wind seemed a bit too rough for us, but Wednesday morning, at the prospect of sailing in comfortably 10 knots of wind from behind, we left Charleston. Instead of 10 knots from behind, though, we got 20 knots from the side. I had forgotten to take my seasickness pills before we left, so I wasn't a very happy crew for those two days. However, we've now arrived, and I'm looking forward to exploring St. Augustine. Apparently, it’s the oldest town in USA, but as far as I understand, a couple of towns are competing about that title.

The last couple of weeks, we have spent a lot of time discussing where to sail to and when. I'm always afraid of missing out on something, but USA is a big country, so naturally we need to skip something to make time for something else. The last two days that we've spent on going from Charleston to St. Augustine, would have taken us at least 10 days of sailing all day long in the ICW, so even though we might have missed something along the way, we now have time to explore other things.

In Charleston Harbour Marina a lot of the boats were decorated. Behind the boats is USS Yorktown; an old aircraft carrier, which is now a museum.

At one point we also discussed skipping Charleston, but cruising friends wrote to us that Charleston was “right up Capibara’s alley!” And they were right! The city has a lot of exciting restaurants and young people making it a very happening place, which is a rare thing along the ICW – especially this late in the season. But we have generally really enjoyed visiting both North – and South Carolina, and everywhere we have been met by:

“How y’all folks doing?”, ”Where are y’all folks from?”, and ”Y’all folks have a nice day!”

Now Florida waits, where we among other things plan to get all the things fixed on the boat that is broken, before the whole boat falls apart. We still need to empty the boat for sea water every hour we run the engine, and we need to run the engine to recharge the batteries, since we can't use the American’s 110 V. Unfortunately, the saltwater pipe is also leaking now, and
it is spraying saltwater on the generators, so they now only run with a fourth of the normal power, which means that we need to run the engine for an even longer time – and therefor pump out the water constantly. It’s beginning to get a little difficult! But first we'll explore St.Augustine.

I've read that there’s a martini bar in an old hotel, so I figure that’s a good place to start!

Signe Storr Freelance journalist and friend of Boatshed