{"id":796,"date":"2026-05-03T19:14:34","date_gmt":"2026-05-03T19:14:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/justplanesailing.com\/?p=796"},"modified":"2026-05-03T19:14:34","modified_gmt":"2026-05-03T19:14:34","slug":"back-in-florida-to-kick-off-festive-season","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/justplanesailing.com\/?p=796","title":{"rendered":"Back in Florida to kick off festive season"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Off to a good start! We arrived in Fernandina Beach, Florida and had a lovely visit from our Flagler Beach neighbour and friend, Lisa. Kata could not contain her excitement at seeing Lisa arrive at the boat and was ready to jump into the dinghy to greet her instead of waiting for her to get on board. We went out for fun afternoon sail in great conditions. We spend so much time sailing to get places that it’s so nice to sometimes just sail for the sake of sailing with friends!<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Kata was too excited to pose and wanted to play instead<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

After a very brief stay in Fernandina our friend\/ second time crewmember, Alex arrived to sail to the Bahamas with us and we set out to first head south towards Fort Pierce. As we were heading out of the channel we heard a boat coming up behind us very fast and looked back to see Coast Guard racing towards us. Having never had an interaction with the US Coast Guard before our last anchorage, we were about to have our second in a week! When they caught up to us they asked how fast was the fastest we could go….not very fast by their standards! They then asked us to motor as fast as we could and turn south out of the channel at the first opportunity because there was a submarine coming out behind us. Well that was a new one! Sure enough, a little while later we had a submarine, flanked by two destroyers, following us out of the channel.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Our escort out of the channel<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

On our way south from Fernandina Alex poured out a strange falling light in the distance, towards the shore. It looked very much like a flare so it was time for our third interaction with the USCG! They asked if we could head towards the location we saw the flare coming from so we about turned and started heading that way. About 40 minutes later a USCG vessel in the area had reached the location and told us to resume our course. We were still fairly far away. Poor old Avion is no match in speed for their speedy vessels. We never did find out what the flare was about. Hopefully everything was ok!
During our travel south through Florida our refurbished autopilot finally arrived in Charleston, having taken a lot longer than expected. Kevin’s parents very kindly picked it up and brought it all the way to Fort Pierce for us, battling serious Christmas traffic to do so. We were finally going to be able to sail without the noisy chain drive autopilot! Bonus: we got to have Christmas Eve dinner with them and spend Christmas morning with them before heading off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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What’s a trip to Ft Pierce without a flight of cider<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
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A sunny, happy Christmas morning before departure<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

After eggs and coffee on board it was time to set sail across the Gulfstream and head to the Bahamas. Freeport, here we come!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Off to a good start! We arrived in Fernandina Beach, Florida and had a lovely visit from our Flagler Beach neighbour and friend, Lisa. Kata could not contain her excitement at seeing Lisa arrive at the boat and was ready to jump into the dinghy to greet her instead of waiting for her to get […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-796","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/justplanesailing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/796","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/justplanesailing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/justplanesailing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justplanesailing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justplanesailing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=796"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/justplanesailing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/796\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":824,"href":"https:\/\/justplanesailing.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/796\/revisions\/824"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/justplanesailing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=796"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justplanesailing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=796"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/justplanesailing.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=796"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}