Still Waiting

 So, we've been back in the country 7 days and we're on our second out of season tropical storm.  I guess at this point I should apologise to the boating community on the Eastern Seaboard and confess: the storms follow us around like a cat does a gecko. (I used to put the blame on Mr Mac, as we were generally in the vicinity of each other when these storms came around, but now that they're in Tobago, where it's nice and sunny, and we're here, with the storms, that's a little harder to do.) 
So, anyway, we're making the best of being weathered in in St Augustine. Not that it's in any way a hardship, a beautiful old city, cobbled streets, little shops and taverns, a winery. We went out for cheeseburgers and fries and cold beer and margaritas, all at the same time! We walked to Target and strolled around for an hour in the air conditioning , marveling at all the things we weren't missing. We did buy an extra large bag of Twizzlers, you know, to sustain us on the 2 mile walk back.

Great Blue Heron, posing along the ICW.

We 'drove the ditch' to get here from Cape Canaveral. It was much different than what I was expecting. Steve and I call the east coast of Florida the Condo Coast. From off shore it looks like an unbroken line of condo buildings all the way from Miami north to the Georgia boarder.  On the ICW, though, it was beautiful! Salt marshes and tidal flats stretched all around us. We saw manatees and dolphins, eagles, herons, osprey, egrets. We actually got pushed aside by one of the manatees. It dove next to the boat and came over and gave us quite a thudding nudge to one side.  It was about the size of our dinghy and looked a lot like a gigantic potato with barnacles. 

Daytona Beach, the Condo Coast.

Today, we're on board, listening to the weather and watching the tide rise and waiting to see where Beryl goes from here. We might just get a window to follow her up the coast toward the middle of the week.