Sailing Kismet

An unexpected offer of help and some favorable weather prematurely landed me back in Virginia in April. Here's that story of a great trip. You may remember Tim Cote from my very first post, he's The Man, and was game to sail around Hatteras in January. Well, Tim once again had free time and was ready for another adventure. He agreed to meet me in Savannah Georgia for a trip north around Hatteras. But here I am getting ahead of myself again. We last left off in St. Augustine, how did I get to Savannah?  I had some help. Marcia once again agreed to sail with me, this time from Jacksonville to Savannah. I made the day sail from St. Augustine to Sisters Creek, near Jacksonville, with time to spare which allowed me to meet up with Bobby, from the Receta delivery, for a nice visit. Bobby is planning to retire by the end of the year and is looking forward to more sailing; I'm very happy for him! On April 14th Marcia landed in Jacksonville and got a ride to Sisters Creek where I wa...

Pilgrims, John Smith, Ponce de Leon, the French, the Portuguese, the vikings; who discovered and who settled North America first? Lets start with our oldest city.  Saint Augustine is an anomaly of American history, it is the oldest continuously inhabited city in what we now call the United States, but it was not the first place settled by Europeans nor was it continuously Spanish or English or American, there is much to unravel here. And what about the Fountain of Youth? We'll get to that too. On or about the 2nd of April 1513 Ponce de Leon, while taking a break from being governor of Hispaniola, led a voyage to Florida and landed at or near the sight of current day St. Augustine, claimed it for Spain and left. However, saying he discovered it first is not true.    This Portuguese map from 1502 shows a little bit of Florida in the upper left corner, they knew it existed at least eleven years before Ponce de Leon. This map was literally top secret to the Portuguese so no s...