We arrived in St. Augustine about 3 pm, shortly before a massive thunderstorm - dolphins were abundant, and once we'd anchored, just north of Bridge of Lions, I watched them play, jumping out of the water, rolling over, really having a whale of a time (no pun intended). Phillip got to work on the dingy engine, but still no luck. It's such a simple engine - fuel, compression and spark are the three things that make a dingy work, and all three were peachy - so it was obviously something more serious. Not having a dingy is pretty serious as you can't go ashore anywhere without paying to dock in a marina. The following morning we went through Bridge of Lions, and anchored just south of the bridge where P found an engine repair guy who hauled the motor away (we had to dock at the Municipal Downtown Marina and Fuel Dock to fill up with diesel and water) and $180 later, returned the sad verdict that the powerhead had cracked, it would cost almost $1000 plus labour for a new one (not worth it - you can get a new one for that price), so we docked at the Marina again (they were very kind to let us do this), picked up the dead engine and decided to leave St. Augustine. There really was no point in staying - we couldn't go ashore, although it looked like one of the loveliest towns on the trip, and no point in getting a new motor/engine there because they are few and far between and very expensive.
So we left, escorted away by dolphins again. Funny that - we've seen tons more dolphins on the ICW than we did in the Caribbean! AND we also saw an alligator - probably about 5 foot long, we motored right past him, he didn't try to swim away or anything - just lay there looking at us - like he was waiting to cross the road and was pausing to let the traffic go by - and once we'd gone by him, he swam to the other side of the river. Amazing!
