We left at first light having set up the pole for a downwind sail the night before so that we were ready to head out. On route down the river we put the mainsail up with 2 reefs in - the forecast is for a decent north wind 20+kts so we know 2 reefs is the right amount of sail even if it's not going to be enough to begin with, its' so much easier to put it in now than underway. 

Nearly all the boats were heading out - most heading along the coast to St Augustine, a day sail away with a few opting for taking the intercostal and only a couple heading further south like us! 

As soon as we were out of St Marys inlet we set the sails up wing on wing with poled out genoa one side and reefed mail the other - it seems we were the only monohull who bothered with a pole - it means we can pretty much sail down wind in a straight line rather than gybe our way - not so quick but actually the tortoise does very well against the hare by sailing a steady shorter distance 😉.

It was a pretty grey rolly trip - we didn't see the sun for the whole 220 miles! We did however see lots of dolphins - early on in the passage I went forward to see them, where as later on it was easier just to watch them from the cockpit, they were very agile with lots of jumping and leaping from the water - i managed to get a few pictures which weren’t very good as they were taken from the cockpit through the spray hood window !

Shame the guard rail is in the way for this leaping dolphin! 

We could see a German boat called Baradal, which had left St Marys on AIS, was also sailing past St Augustine so Steve gave them a call on VHF and had a chat - they too are heading for Fort Pierce, we will have another boat around for the passage.  We were aware there was a Space X launch from Cape Canaveral due during the evening, typically it was put back to midnight - there is an exclusion zone and a larger area they strongly advise sailors to avoid for a period after the launch due to potential falling debris! We were flying along at 7-8 knots sometimes surfing at 10+knots so we reefed the genoa to slow down so we didn't get to the area before it was recommended vessels enter it! -it always feels wrong to slow down though, usually we try to get somewhere as fast as we can! The night was very dark you looked out into the Atlantic it was black as anything, there was however a nice light glow from land which we were about 12-15 miles from.

We sort of managed to see the launch for about a millisecond before it went behind clouds 🙄, the roar of the launch followed about 3 minutes later which was a bit strange, especially when you couldn’t see it! The excitement over we carried on taking turns to get some rest / sleep, nothing much happened during the night the wind continued to be consistent. by morning we were just past Cape Canaveral, we continued to have visits from dolphins periodically which is always fun, we are also travelling along the Right whale migratory path and had hoped to see one but sadly they were probably in deeper water - like most of the east coat it's very shallow a long way off shore, most of the time we were in about 15m of water even 15 miles off shore. 

We were delighted with our progress - but it meant that we got to fort pierce while the current was flowing out of the inlet at 2+ knots still, as we were approaching we realised the tug we had seen for a while actually had 2 barges in tow and was heading to the inlet and was arriving at about the same time as us so a short distance from the inlet it was genoa away engine on to ensure we beat it in, there was another tug in the entrance - we assume he was going to take one of the barges in tow? Trying to negotiate it the currents etc towing 2 would be quite hazardous I imagine and we certainly didn't want to get caught up in the middle of all that. Once in we got the main down and headed round to the anchorage anchoring by 4 pm and feeling rather pleased we made the decision and effort to get here managing to sail all the way from one inlet to the other. Baradal anchored not far away an hour or so later - we didnt meet them in St Marys but will probably meet them while we are here if they stay a few days.