♫ That's A-Mooring ♫

Well, we finally got the chance to take Moitessier out and spend the night on a mooring and it was incredible. After paying for night at St Augustine Marina and preparing the boat with supplies and food, we set out early Saturday morning.  It was a beautiful day, and we couldn't have asked for more from the weather. Bright and sunny, with a little bit of a breeze.  Picking up the mooring ball turned out to be easier than expected.  Truth be told, I had expected it to be a bit of a debacle somehow, with me dropping the boat hook or something, but it turned out perfectly.  I was able to grab the ball with the boat hook first shot.  

After securing the boat, we decided to take a swim.  The water was cool but the current out there was quite strong, so I floated along holding on to our dock lines.  We spent the day just swimming about relaxing, reading, napping, and enjoying a lunch of Caprese salad sandwiches in our cockpit.  The usual afternoon thunderstorm rolled through, which was nice as it afforded me a cold fresh water shower.  Watching the Schooner Freedom getting pummeled with the rain was quite funny too as it was full of tourists….I know, I'm bad for laughing about it.  As evening came around, and the sun was setting with the sky displaying its pinks and blues, we enjoyed a nice, romantic dinner in the cockpit.   I couldn't help but feel an overwhelming sense of happiness and calm.  We were finally seeing St Augustine from the cockpit of Moitessier, something we had been dreaming of for years.  After our dinner, we just sat and watched the moon for a while before deciding to take the dinghy up to the bathrooms and shower as if we were real life cruisers.  It was a perfect end to perfect day. And though it was uneventful, we both felt one baby step closer to our dream.  I couldn't have asked for more.  

Singing in the rain...

Schooner Freedom :P

On a side note, the most serendipitous thing happened when we went up to shower.  As we were approaching the corner to the bathrooms, we bumped into Stephanie and Brian on Rode Trip.  We had met them a few years ago through our friends Matt and Jess, who had traveled extensively with them.  They were on their way taking Rode Trip up north from Panama and had stopped in St Augustine for the night.  They had just finished doing their laundry and were just as surprised to see us.  We stopped and chatted for about an hour and they gave us advice on cruising the Bahamas and Cuba.  It is such a small world and it was crazy that we ran into them at 11pm just as they were about to get in their dinghy with their laundry.  They set sail the next day as we were waking up and we saw them take off from our cockpit.