Northern Phoenix blog

St Augustine
Mile Marker 780

                We got up early this morning. Definition of early is 6 in the morning. But, I guess it was necessary to get to the marina before dark. Maybe.  Anyway, the morning was pretty uneventful, consisting of breakfast, school work, and reading. Oh yes, and we got to Florida sometime around 10:30 or so, and celebrated by eating an orange… or three...  It was raining during the morning and was really yucky and humid and why am I going on about the boring part of the day???

Well, after lunch, mom decided – with some persuasion from her amazing daughter- that we needed to properly celebrate Florida with some ice cream and homemade chocolate sauce. All rights of chocolate sauce reserved for dad.

Then, sometime in the afternoon, we were the victims of the coastguard’s random safety checks. They just go up to random boats and make sure they are properly following the rules. After a mad rush to get lifejackets on, the coast guard decided that we were a very safe little boat and quickly moved on. And, we did get our daily dolphin sighting just before getting into the marina.
 

 When we had gotten into said marina-very uneventful docking- we rushed to take showers. Except for mom who deemed herself sparkly enough to forgo the showers and do stuff on wifi.  Now, this may be a very nice marina, but they need to do better job on the showers. My shower had a giant wad of hair on the wall. I tried to refrain thinking how and why it was there. Then we went to a restaurant right beside the marina, Santa Maria or something like that. It was right over the water- something I discovered after very careful observations-, and had hatches right beside the tables in the wall that opened right up to the water below.  And in the water below, they had massive schooled of channel catfish that would just swim around the building.  And you could feed them. They would actually bring out a specific bread basket for the little fishies. Now, these schools would get so thick it looked like you could walk on them.  And believe me, it’s very disturbing to look down the hatch and see a gazillion little- big actually- mouths complete with whickers swimming around.

(sahara looking down the Trap Door)                                  (hundreds of Catfish looking at you)
 


Close up of one fish.  About12-15 inches long                            Close up of Catfish looking at you.  See whiskers!
   
Now for food; dad got blackened mahi mahi, Devon got a burger, mom got a never ending skewer of shrimpies, and I got coconut shrimp. And it was all very tasty, but it was also just as entertaining to throw stuff down the hatches and watch the catfish go crazy as a coconut. Or should I say coconuts.  Anyway, my curiosity was piqued on to what the catfish would actually eat. The conclusion is anything and everything, from the French fry and lettuce sandwich to the lemon slice stolen from the other table behind us. As it turns out, lemon skin is not poisonous, as Detective Saharas discovered. I admit, I was not completely awake during diner.

  The annoying thing was- at least with my hatch- was that there was a pole right up against the opening, complete with barnacles and oysters. So when someone was not careful, or did not look where they were dropping stuff, the food would get caught on the pole. Now, remember I said I was not completely awake? Well, by the end of diner I still had my bowl of coleslaw, and I didn’t want it to get wasted or appear rude. So I unobtrusively dumped it down the hatch, without looking at what I was doing… And well, it just so happens that I robbed the catfish of a great meal while simultaneously making it appear that a pterodactyl  took a poo on the pole…. Good thing it’s raining now! Maybe tomorrow we will kayak over to the water by the restaurant and stick our fingers in the water. Then the catfish will decide of little kids fingers are tasty.