St. Simons Island

St. Simons Island, Georgia 31 17 N 081 22 W
Dick sent his computer to be repaired (he's been dropping stuff in the water since I was a kid...). Estimate 3-4 weeks until he's back.
Heading for Savannah, Charleston, Cape Fear.

Posted by John.

Gas Prices

Saint Augustine Harbor, 29 53 N 081 18 W

Tomorrow the drawbridge opens again and we can get out of here. Hooray! That's funny, when we arrived here 12 days ago our reaction was Hooray!

This laptop is showing evil symptoms of something very wrong. Two days ago the LED light in the mouse stayed on even after I shut the computer off. In the morning the battery was drained. Yesterday it shut off right in the middle of my typing. It refused to turn itself back on. Not even the power light would come on. A few hours later it started OK. Just now when I turned it on, it said that it couldn't find the hard disk. I retried and it booted normally.

So, what might you ask does this blog article have to do with gas prices? Nothing at all. I thought it might grab your attention. Maybe the search engines will find it and label my blog as a political commentary on the news of the day.

Ants

Saint Augustine Harbor, 29 53 N 089 18 W

Ants. Ants. Ants in my pants. Monday morning I had a dentist appointment, so we remained at the marina. Tuesday our week was up and we had to leave the marina. The trouble is that the drawbridge on the Bridge of Lions is closed for work until Friday morning. We can't leave. Even Friday's weather doesn't sound good for traveling north so we may have to wait until Saturday. Soon it will be May and we're still in Florida. Will we arrive up north soon enough to do New England, or will our plans be spoiled by being too late again? Will we have to shoot up the coast skipping all the scenery just to make up time? Ants. Ants. Ants in my pants.

The prospects for having sailing company this summer are improving. We already have a promise from the Undrills. We have a tentative date from Sten-Orjan Lindahl, he does an annual pilgramage from Vasteras Sweden to Idaho Falls, Idaho. He can sail on the way back from that. Yesterday I talked to Pete Lemme and with our daughter Jenny. Today we heard from the Allens in Syracuse and from Pete Vonie in West Charlton. All of them hope that we can connect someplace up north for some sailing. Our granddaughter Sara and grandson Nick get out of school for the summer mid June. We've yet to contact our friends the Dobberts, my sister Nancy, my cousin Warene or my cousin Brian regarding sailing in the Northeast. With any luck our social calendar could be quite full. It makes us very glad that we aborted the trip to Belize, Panama and the Pacific. We could have been in exotic places, but longing for company.

p.s. Soon I'm going to send my laptop away to get the keyboard repaired. Be prepared for 2-4 weeks with no blogs.

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Wow! The Picture

Recently, in the blog entitled The Cities Within . I discussed the contrast between the scenes we see from the water and life on land.

I just pulled down this picture from Google Earth. It shows where we were anchored on Peck Lake. That was the place that inspired us to write Florida's Best Beach It proves my point better than mere words.

Study the picture to see what was visible from the anchorage (see the flag). We could see almost nothing but nature. We rowed into shore and walked to the unspoiled beach visible on the picture. The Google Earth picture also shows that masses of crowded humanity were just to the west of us hidden by the mangrove trees. We had no idea.

By the way, Google's technology continues to amaze me. Were I 30 years younger I'd love to have been a part of that startup. Those guys must be on such a high. Libby and I put some of our retirement money into Google. Not much, but just enough to make us feel like we have a small part of the excitement.

Portuguese Man-of-War

Jonnie Hackett saw the picture I posted on the blog and provided the correct identification. Jonnie said, "Dick, those baggie things are Portuguese Man-of-War. STAY AWAY from them. The have tentacles like a jelly fish and will leave red burning welt lines on you. People who have severe reactions can have breathing and cardiac arrest (quoting from a web site). Their tentacles can be long even when they blow up on the beach."

It's a good thing we didn't touch them just out of general caution, although I did stand too close to one on the beach in bare feet. Tsk tsk.

Thanks Jonnie.