Florida: St. Augustine Light House

Day 302
Mother's Day
May 8, 2016
No Boat Travel

High on our St. Augustine "to do" list sat a visit to the lighthouse, so we decided that we would knock that one off the list first thing today.

Since today was Mother's Day, Clark made pancakes for us for breakfast before we set out on our adventure. Given the larger than usual breakfast, we got a late-morning start on our excursion. Always thinking ahead and about food, usually simultaneously, I knew we would need to eat while at the lighthouse. Clark suggested bringing a picnic lunch with us to eat there. I threw some sandwiches together, and we headed on our way.

It is obvious when viewing this city that St. Augustine takes a lot of pride in its appearance. As we rounded the corner to head over the bridge towards the lighthouse we saw a very pretty garden arrangement.

Street Corner Flower Arrangement of
"Spilled Urns"

 We crossed Lion's Bridge to get to the lighthouse side of town.

One of Two Matching Lions Guarding the Lion's Bridge

Lion's Bridge - Drawbridge

We passed the Alligator Museum on the way to the lighthouse. Clark took a picture of the sign, and I peaked in between the slats on the picket fence and saw an alligator sun bathing, but we decided not to spend our money to see yet more alligators since not so long ago we visited the Everglades.

I do not know if the number of people visiting the lighthouse today was abnormally large due to Mother's Day or if it is always popular, but we found the parking lot full and a reasonably large number people milling around the grounds. With "Senior" tickets and a 10% off coupon from the visitor's center, it cost us just about $20 admission. We got a lot for our $20.

A tour had just started about five minutes before we finished paying for our tickets, so we caught up with the group for the presentation. Most lighthouses I have visited in the past allow a climb up the lighthouse and have a few items in a small museum attached to the lighthouse. At this lighthouse a number of rather diverse activities are taking place simultaneously.

Our first place of interest on the tour was the boat-building tent. At any given time a crew of builders is working on as many as three boats. The main attraction that we saw today was a Skip Jack boat in progress of being built.

Boat building on the Lighthouse Grounds - Skip Jack in Progress

We learned that a Skip Jack is a boat originally designed in the St. Augustine area. Sadly no originals still exist. The plans for a Skip Jack were located and work began to build one here on the lighthouse grounds.

Schematic for St. Augustine Skip Jack

The boat building team at the lighthouse recently completed construction of a yawl started in 2009 and built to hold four rowers and a coxswain. This vessel was tested just last Thursday and found to be sea-worthy! Because it is not made of English Oak, the design of the bow of this yawl could not be made to the English Oak yawl specifications. The cypress and native oak to Florida would not allow for the more rounded bow. Consequently this yawl has been given a new classification as a St. Augustine yawl with a more pointed bow.

St. Augustine Yawl

After learning all about the boat building recently completed or in progress on the lighthouse grounds, we learned that the team of non-profit workers there are also involved in an archaeological dive on a sunken ship off the coast of Florida. The ship was found near St. Augustine in 2009, and the team has been bringing items up for examination ever since. The tour guide described the process of keeping objects in saltwater to avoid deterioration of the items until they could be examined in detail, then using x-rays to help identify the objects, and finally cleaning off the built up, rock-like substance to reveal the items.

Through their research the team discovered that the boat they found dated back to 1782 as a privately owned ship used to transport Loyalists out of Charleston, South Carolina to St. Augustine. Given the colonies won the war, these British sympathizers left as they no longer felt welcome in their home towns. Sixteen of the many ships that sailed during the evacuation ran aground on a sandbar near St. Augustine. Some personal items had to be left behind as the ships were abandoned, but amazingly only four people died as a result of the mishaps.

Findings at the site corroborate the records that state that all the money was saved. Only one gold coin has been found thus far, which they expect fell out of someone's pocket in the rush to abandon ship. The findings at the wreck also indicate that major attempts were made to offload the ship of excess weight to float it off the sandbar before giving up the ship to the sea. Evidence shows that heavy items such as canons were pushed overboard to reduce the weight of the ship to no avail.

Artifacts and detailed descriptions of the excavation process for the shipwreck are included in the lighthouse museum housed in the old light-keepers' dwelling. Operation of the lighthouse necessitated the use of three lighthouse keepers when the lighthouse first began operation. Over time, with automation, that number reduced until the 1950s when keepers became no longer necessary to run the lighthouse.

Artifacts from the shipwreck are on display in the museum with descriptions of what they found. An example of one item recovered is the ship's bell found by Dr. Sam Turner, a lighthouse archaeologist. He said, "My absolute favorite artifact is the ship's bell. The reason it is my favorite is because I found it." We met Dr. Sam at the entrance to the lighthouse.

Ship's Bell with No Indication of Ship's Name

We covered every square inch of the exhibits in the museum. Naturally we climbed to the observation deck of the lighthouse. According to the tour guide, the lighthouse is designed with the Victorian woman in mind. In other words the stairwell is wide to allow for bustles and wide skirts on dresses, and every so many steps, a landing has been built into the climb as a rest area. I greatly appreciated both aspects of this design. The last few steps of most lighthouses are narrow, steep, and scary - not so with this lighthouse.

St. Augustine Lighthouse

219 Steps to the Observation Deck

Lighthouse Lens

The view once we got to the top was well worth the effort. The lovely breeze made it even more worthwhile. As I climbed the lighthouse steps, my cellphone rang about 2/3 of the way up. The call dropped before I could answer the phone. Once at the top I discovered that my son Chris and his wife Heather had called to wish me a happy Mother's Day. I called them back from the top of the lighthouse and hung out in the cool breeze while I talked with them.

Doorway to Observation Deck

View from Lighthouse - St. Augustine

View from Lighthouse - towards ocean

Lighthouse Lens as seen from observation deck

I could have stayed on top of that lighthouse for a lot longer, but eventually we had to make our descent.

At bottom now looking up - it's tall!

The original St. Augustine lighthouse fell into the sea, and this replacement lighthouse was built. The original structure dated circa 1586 was built as a wooden lookout tower to help defend against British attacks on the then Spanish colony. In the 1700s that wooden structure was replaced by a stone tower. Then, in 1823, the structure became a lighthouse to protect ships from running aground. Just 50 years later, a new lighthouse had to built further inland as the original lighthouse could not be preserved and eventually tumbled into the sea.

 I had no idea when we set out to visit the lighthouse that we would consume our entire afternoon with the activity, but when it came time to leave I realized that we had been exploring every nook and cranny of the buildings and grounds for over three hours. I don't think we missed anything. We even got to see what remains of both the north and the south privy (outhouse). Much more of the north privy remains standing than the south privy.

North Privy

Clark is naturally curious and hates to leave anything unexplored. Consequently, we even walked a portion of the trails at the grounds just to be sure we hadn’t miss anything interesting while we were there. For sure, we got our $20 worth out of our visit.

Trail at Lighthouse

As we biked back to St. Augustine we passed through a residential area. One house in particular caught Clark's eye.

House with a Figurehead

We got back to St. Augustine proper late afternoon, so we still had daylight and time before dinner to do more exploration around town. When we ate at the Prince of Wales restaurant last night, I had a direct view of a pink house across the street (shown below). We got a chance to get up close to examine its historic value today.

Circa 1807 Triay-Hall House
(original Minorcan House made of Coquina stone)

 On our travels we passed Victoria's Vintage Photo Shop where she had examples of her work posted by her place of business. All of the samples were well done and many were humorous like the two shown below.

Saloon Girl baby

Very unhappy card player with cowgirl

We passed by the "oldest wooden schoolhouse in the U.S.A."

Oldest Wooden Schoolhouse in U.S.A.

I never know what I might see when I follow Clark around. For some unknown reason he went into a store that from the outside looked quite normal. The storefront indicated that it sold glass objects - nothing extraordinary, or so I thought. Wandering through the store and into the courtyard beyond revealed an exotic world of garden-related art objects to explore and admire. Too bad I'm not interested in my garden right now.

Metal Tractor Garden Ornament

Gnome on a Tree

As we stepped out of the store, I noticed their store window had plaques with interesting quotes. I specifically liked the Eleanor Roosevelt quote. 

“Many people will walk in and out of your life. 

But only true friends will leave footprints on your heart.”

 This quote made me think of my dear friends back home as well as the many boaters who have touched our lives along this Great Loop experience.

As the sun started to set on the city, we worked our way back to the boat. Along the way we passed the Lion's Bridge illuminated by the setting sun.

Bridge -- late afternoon

St. Augustine Sunset

Clark and I split dinner duties. Since it was still Mother's Day, I thought it would be nice to get some help with cooking. I gave Clark the steaks to cook on the grill while I prepared the remainder of the meal. I had hoped to get to work on my blog entries since I had two-days worth of material. However, Clark wanted to stream TV shows on my computer, so we did that instead. The blog could wait one more day. After all it was Mother's Day and sometimes the blog feels like homework, so it was nice to play hooky just a little longer.