Manatees and Sir Francis Drake

What a delight she is to sail.  Not without her idiosyncrasies but then what boat doesn't have them?  She's about ready to be trailered, brought ashore and tweaked with the addition of extra cleats, new line of rope as opposed to nylon (ughh), flag pulley's, etc.  We've done a thorough sailing inspection of what she needs to sail well in Florida - particularly a bimini if we can find one small enough - a self made one if not.  The sun here in North Florida is intense this time of year - Jacksonville being at the same latitude as Cairo, Egypt.  More manatees in and around the boats at dock today.  This time a mother and calf. But a great sail none the less with a nor' easter blowing in off the Atlantic just a few miles away at a steady 15 knots.  As soon as it starts to cool down in October we'll be taking the English Rose on some expeditions up and down the St Johns river. Expect photographs of alligators as big as she is swimming along side her. St Augustine, Florida is just down coast some 30 miles as the crow flies.  As the oldest city in America she is celebrating her 450th birthday.  Not much time for you Brits but a fair piece of time for us in passage.  The King and Queen of Spain are coming for a visit to help celebrate.  As such I have been commissioned to do a rendered reconstruction of the Golden Hind captained by one Sir Francis Drake. He sailed in and burned St Augustine to the ground in 1586 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._Augustine,_Florida ). I'll be starting the artwork soon and will post the stages of the ship as she's penciled, inked and painted here on the forum.

Manatee alert signs for the animals that feed close to shore.


A manatee and baby among the docked boats...


Coming up for air.  You can run a hose off the dock and they will hang out for hours taking a long drink.  Technically illegal but the Feds are thin on the water...


The 25' Venture behind me pulled up and we traded Mexican beer to each other. I was passing them Modelos over the taff rail and they were passing back Pacificos.  No one, but no one makes better beer than the Mexicans. Magnifico cervesa!


Took a tumble in the cockpit snagging cold ones from the Venture.


Tropical rains scheduled to hit in the next hour or so.  It'll rain 4" in an hour, the sun will come out and the standing pooled water evaporates in the next hour.




Deb at the helm.

Great post Tom - really captures the atmosphere of your wonderful part of the world!  Pleased that you find your boat a delight to sail.  We have just returned from two weeks sailing Mustang on the Camel estuary in Cornwall, using our new Jeckylls mainsail which has delivered excellent upwind performance, transforming the way the boat handles.  I'll post a video on here as soon as Greg tells me how to do so.  

brian johnson wrote

I'll post a video on here as soon as Greg tells me how to do so.

The easiest way is to make an upload to the likes of YouTube or Vimeo and then use the "Embed" code that those sites provide.

Those sites do the job of making sure that the video gets converted to an Internet acceptable format, rather than the likes of .AVI that my camera produces. They also offer such privacy options of only making it available if you know the exact URL of the video, which for all practical purposes means you have to visit this site to see it (should you want to restrict those who can see it).

I made a post a while back on the UK Home Boat Builders Rally Forum that explains the technique. Some of the images are dated as things have changed a little at YouTube but I think it's still understandable.

As this forum, unlike the UKHBBR forum, is embedded in another site, I would be more specific about size you select for display here. In Step 3, if your video is of sufficient quality choose the "Customized" option for size and set the width to 750px (with whatever height is appropriate depending on whether your video is 4:3 or 16:9 format.). That way it should fill the full page width available and not cause overflow by being too large.

I'll try and make time to post an updated FAQ on the subject on this forum, but I'll wait to hear if you had problems understanding the UKHBBR post first, to see if it can be improved.

(I'll then edit this post down so it's just a link to the FAQ, so as not to distract from Tom's excellent report - including his best photos yet using the full 750px width!)

Will be on the Google Earth maps today looking up the Camel estuary. I would love to see the video - send it to my personal email. Surfed256@hotmail.com.
Ever thought about a vacation in Florida? Deb and I have a big house here and all the kids are gone. We're both a very youthful 61. I still surf most days as we live close to the ocean and the huge St Johns river. We would love to host you (and your Mrs/girlfriend) if you would like to go sailing in Florida. We could even trailer my English Rose to the Bay of Biscayne or the Florida Keys for a few days. But visiting time would be the winter as summer in this part of the world is a wilter. Especially for you higher latitude Anglos. Anyways, consider an invitation extended. And send me that video. I'll send you some of mine...
Tom