MONDAY MARCH 1ST

We left Daytona Beach and headed to St. Augustine. No boat traffic and the water was like glass. Whenever it allowed, we ran the boat much faster than our normal cruising speed. There is some serious shoaling in an area we had to go through so we wanted to make it through there around high tide. Shoaling is where it gets very shallow because the currents and waves have caused sediment to accumulate in a spot. There are websites that one can access that has important navigational info so you can be aware of this type of thing.

We arrived early afternoon so rode the bikes to the historic area of St. Augustine. It is a beautiful city. The buildings have a Spanish/Moor look to them. The Live Oak trees are everywhere and filled with Spanish moss. You almost feel as if you are someplace foreign.

St. Augustine is the oldest, continuously European occupied city in the United States. Ponce de Leon landed here in 1513 seeking the Fountain of Youth. This statue sits near where he landed. He looks pretty puny up on top of it. But that’s because he was! At 4 foot 11 inches tall, and the tallest of his battalion, he must have thought the local Timucua Indians, who where between 6 and 7 feet tall, where giants. In his day the average lifespan of a Spaniard was around 40 years old. A Timucuan Indian lived an average of 70 years. Small wonder he thought he’d found the source of the Fountain of Youth. The fountain didn’t do him much good though. He kicked the bucket from getting shot with a poison arrow.








The Spaniards stayed and it is reflected in much of the architecture here. They built the oldest masonry fort in the United States. It’s not made from cement but from what is called coquina. Coquina is layers of crushed shell, sand and sediment that nature has compressed. It is very pliable when excavated so they cut it into blocks. When it dries it is very hard. Most everything around the town was made of coquina. As a material for a fort, it also had the bonus that it would compress and surround a cannon ball when hit. So it was almost impossible to blow out a wall by enemy fire.





The interior of the fort is now bare, but they did have some of the cannons on display. They were not just functional, but almost works of art in their beauty.















This one is a mortar.