Oldest in the world, or North America, or Continental US, or this city, or the oldest one left...

St. Augustine marks our second port of call in the state Florida. It was really cold and windy, but Florida never gets colder than Beautiful Napanee, Ontario, Canada... so for those of you in Napanee, it's warm in St. Augustine at the time of writing. Following the channel up to River's Edge Marina we passed the old Mainship manufacturing plant where M/V Seamorr was built. (m/v stands for "motor vessel" and just makes it sound more official, like "HMCS Toronto"... speaking of Toronto... checkout cnn.com or any other news agency to see what's happening, it might crack you up). The company went bankrupt in the 2008 recession and never recovered, so no more Mainships have been made.

SeaMorr's birth place - the place is totally abandoned...

One of the coolest attractions was the old Spanish fort: "Castillo De San Marcos". According to the park ranger its home to "the oldest working flush toilet in the new world, in the americas, in Continental United States, that we know of" or something like that. The Castillo itself is the (stated by the ranger and confirmed by wikipedia) oldest masonry fort in the continental US. The fort has changed hands many times in St. Augustine's long history but never by act of force. It was built 1672, defended British attacks in 1702 & 1740, then handed over to the British in 1763 through the Treaty of Paris. In 1783 it was handed back to the Spanish through the Peace of Paris. The United States acquired Florida in 1819 in the signing of the Adam-Onis Treaty. In the civil war, the fort was controlled by 1 confederate solider who was stationed there. He gladly signed the papers when the union showed up in superior force, changing the forts ownership back to the United States.

 

We also ran into the sailing catamaran S/V Cascadura again as we both make our way south. We went to the pirate museum (with a Disney style) and wandered through the old town.  It was nice to see them again and Kyle is highly energetic and reminds me that camp next summer isn't that far away.