Last year we had such a good time in St. Augustine Florida that we decided to max out our budget and book a full three months at Marker 8 Hotel and Marina in St. Augustine to get back in with the community and also to get some key work done.

We sailed into St. Augustine on a quiet Saturday and anchored north of the draw bridge for the day/night. We always plan on this since the current is strong and so any docking needs to be timed for slack tide. Since you can’t always time it perfect we just plan on a recovery night at anchor to sleep off the trip.

St. Augustine

St. Augustine is famed for being the oldest city in the USA, originally a Spanish colony it’s a city that is wonderfully convenient for cruisers. The current notwithstanding. And even with the current, if you were to be at anchor you’d just need to time your dinghy rides if you had an engine such as ours or were rowing.

The city boasts several marinas but the two that are most significant in our personal travels are the town’s Municipal Marina and Marker 8.

The Municipal Marina boasts two mooring fields which offer an inexpensive alternative to docking that comes with a scheduled launch, they offer waste oil disposal (for the whole anchorage), and a pumpout boat (that for some reason won’t visit other marinas), fuel, and a pumpout.

Our stop of choice though is Marker 8 Hotel and Marina

Marker 8 is a small marina with only X slips on two main docks, right by the bridge the marina is subject to some major current and should only be docked or departed at slack tide which is 45 minutes or so after the posted high/low. The marina itself has limited staff and doesn’t monitor VHF so you’ll want to give them a call on the phone before you arrive. This is another reason we like to anchor the night before north of the bridge. It gives us the opportunity to give them a leisurely call when we’re at anchor.

When arriving the limited staff is apparent. The hotel owner herself is likely to be the one catching your lines or the Dockmaster but it’s more common to find other boaters catching your lines or no one at all. Another reason to be absolutely sure you arrive at slack tide.

Every cruiser knows that a key to a marina is its bathrooms, lets be honest we’ve all seen frightening marina bathrooms that make us glad we have one on the boat, but with the pumpout boat not willing, for still an unknown and in my opinion whatever it is 100% unjustifiable reason, not willing to visit other marinas keeping the holding tank empty is critical. So you’ll be pleased to discover that at Marker 8 the professional hotel staff is in charge of keeping the boaters bathrooms/showers clean and they do so with the skill you’d expect from a hotel cleaning staff. The bathrooms are AMAZING and worth the extended stay just for them.

The next important part of the Marina that might just trap you here is Chef Angie, $7 for a boater’s breakfast (hotel guest have theirs added to their room fee) will keep you coming back for more but that’s not even where Chef Angie shines. Each afternoon at 5pm is “happy hour” or “social hour” and the wildest free houredurves come out.

Night after night you will be sure you’ll want to get yourself up to see what she’s come up with. Now it does ebb and flow, during slow times the appetizers are slow, but on special occasions such as Valentines Day.. WOW. At these evening socials are also where you’ll be able to hang out with other boaters, the hotel staff both groups you’ll get to know well and really appreciate during your stay. And of course hotel guests who always seem interacted and curious about the cruising lifestyle.

I secretly think that the owner keeps the marina so accessible so that there are always boaters there to entertain the hotel guests, and if that isn’t the intent it’s a good side effect for the hotel.

9AM VHF 72

Most mornings the St. Augustine Cruiser’s Net is an excellent wake up call on VHF 72, check-ins a weather report, and updates on the weekly Cruisers Night Out or other events. In addition to the typical cruiser’s net there is a Facebook Group that is essentially mandatory for boaters in the area since it’s the best source of information on just about everything. And also a weekly dinner out at a random restaurant in town. Very worth while to get to know other cruisers. Boat cards fly as freely as stories so you’ll want to make sure you have yours handy.

Practical St. Augustine

A key reason why St. Augustine is such a great stop is the practicality of it. The grocery store, west marine, and a full strip of other stores from Walmart to Home Depot & Lowe’s are all a short run from the dinghy dock, although a scooter or bike is recommended. St. Augustine has everyone you need to provision and get work done.

One key stop to make is Sailor’s Exchange on W King S. It’s an amazing spot for deals since you never know what you’ll find. It’s also an excellent place to bring by your spare gear or old parts since you may just be able to convert them to cash or credit on the spot.

Tourist St. Augustine

As a tourist spot St. Augustine is also great. The town has an abundance of restaurants that are all great and will have you gaining a few pounds if you’re not careful. Some of our favorites ended up being: The Candlelight mostly due to it’s proximity to Marker 8. The Taco Place which had amazing burritos.

The Best Cafe in Town

Just about every day in town we found our way to Relmpago Coffee Lab for a cup of tea and a couple hours of getting work done at the day job. I do my best to check out every cafe in town and pick out our favorite and hands down, in St. Augustine it’s Relampago on Spanish Street. With just two tables inside you’ll be lucky if you get one (mostly because I’m sure I’ve already got one from Mid December through Mid March) but there is ample and fantastic seating outside either on the front porch or on the massive back patio. This is the type of place where you won’t feel out of place cracking open the laptop to get some work done.

A Winter of Projects

Three months seems like a long time but when you add in the time needed for proper procrastination it really is still a tight squeeze for all of the projects we needed to get done . And we had quite a fe.

First was Starlink. There have been several places that we’ve stopped over the past few years where our 4G internet just didn’t work, and this is a bit concerning since I never know when a student will need me and even if I’m 100% caught up on my work if I’m needed then I’m needed. So an upgrade to Starlink was priority #1. It’s currently mounted on the dinghy davis with a rod holder and a flexible plumbing coupling which works well. The long term plan is to integrate a proper mount when we do the solar arch this next summer.

Upgrading to Lithium. The next major project was upgrading to lithium and all that entailed. First was upgrading our solar charge controllers to Victron smart controllers that could talk to each other and coordinate their charging. Next was of course the swapping of the batteries themselves. Next was adding a starting battery, a bit of retiring, adding a DC/DC charger so the alternator could safely charge the lithium, and finally adding a 500watt inverter so we could run starlink at anchor.

Windlass Install. Sadly the windlass install was a victim of procrastination, but a good one since I’ve changed my mind on how to do the install after touring another boat. We have all of what we need other than the wires to connect everything but we can get those at any hardware store making this now a project of convenience once we dock in a place where we can test raising and lowering the anchor. The only real risk with the project will be if we need to cut the chain a bit shorter which is indeed likely.

Winch Upgrade/Replacement. March brought West Marine’s 2 for 1 Lewmar winch sale and so I’ve been grumpy with one winch and wanting to upgrade it’s counterpart so I had no choice even thought it wasn’t really in the budget I was able to swap out the winches.

Magical Icemaker: I also purchased a GE Opal Icemaker with the hopes that it would work at anchor when we had enough solar, I’m hoping that we can make it work but so far we haven’t been able to make it work without our little 500 watt one even if it’s the only thing running on it. But that’s a project for another day since I’m thinking I would need to upgrade to a bigger inverter which will eventually happen when I go to an electric engine and have a massive 48v bank.

Autopilot Repair. Our autopilot has been an issue since day one and at this point we’ve replaced most of the components. The last one was the Fluxgate compass which after 30 years some of the bearings had worn a bit so it was getting stuck. You’d be sailing alone and it would get stuck so the autopilot would then do some really odd things. We replaced the compass theirs winter and are now all set.

Leaving St. Augustine

We left on St. Patrick’s day, pulled out at the slack tide that ended up being about 6pm and slipped under the drawbridge at 6:30. By 7:30 we were sails up, engine off, and on autopilot for a pleasant sail up the coast to Cumberland Island which is always a joy to stay at.

I’m certainly looking forward to returning to St. Augustine next winter. With luck the boys will be on their own, the solar arch will be up and I’ll be looking for someone to build me a custom canvas enclosure to fit the solar arch and of course.. looking for a puppy to join me on my adventures.