Last night we spent the evening with Peter and Charlotte... had a few drinks and an awesome dinner. It was great visiting with them and catching up on things... we really enjoyed the evening.

During dinner Susan and Charlotte made plans to go the grocery at 0800 in the morning before we left. Susan needed to restock a few things and Charlotte was so gracious to take Susan.

Alarm still went off at 0600 but this mornings routine was a little different which was sort of nice change of pace. Anyway we were at the docks behind the Peter and Charlotte condo at 0800 and of course Peter was there to greet us and help us tie up the dinghy. We walked up to the their condo and Charlotte and Susan were soon off to Publix. Peter and I enjoyed the morning sitting on his lanai watching the water... Coffee for Peter and TAB for me... a slow start to the day... very nice!

Soon Susan and Charlotte were back from the grocery and we all headed back to the dinghy with the groceries... We departed on the dingy back to SAILS... always sad leaving but knowing it won't be that long until we return in the fall makes it easier... We had a grief but great time with Peter and Charlotte.

Arriving back on SAILS we prepared to depart... lift the dinghy, weigh the anchor and we were underway at 1015 heading north... destination undetermined at this point.

We had an outgoing current sitting at anchor so I assumed that being on the south side of the inlet we would be faced with the same outgoing current on the north side of the inlet... nope! We got a boost of speed soon running 7.5 knots... at times we were hitting 9 knots... with this boost in speed we could easily make St. Augustine... so we made St. Augustine the destination for the day.

Just before Palm Coast we were running along 12 feet of water and 7.6 knots... BAM! the boat lifted up on the port side... we had hit something... I quickly throttled back to idle and checked the depth sounder and we were still in 12 feet of water and dead center of the channel... we were actually between a red and green day marker one to port and one to starboard... not sure what we hit but it sure startled both of us... I checked behind us and could see nothing in the water... I checked the bilges to be sure that whatever we hit had not punctured the hull... All good... I brought SAILS slowly back up to speed... no vibrations... All was good other than we hit something... Susan thinks it was a manatee or more than one manatee... seemed to solid to me and don't think a manatee could jar the boat the way this had... it's a mystery we will probably never solve.

After this this the rest of the trip went smoothly and we arrived to St. Augustine at approximately 1800. We hailed the marina and they gave us our mooring ball assignment... M5... the same ball we had used last time we stopped here... always a pain finding the mooring ball... numbers always facing the wrong way... but knew exactly where this one was... at 1815 we were secure on the mooring ball.

Our location for the evening…. N29°53.345’, W081°18.442’. We traveled for 8 hours covering 57.6 nm averaging 7.2 knots.