I have been walking the beach most days here is St. Augustine and today was an interesting walk.  Check this out.

It’s made of pallets and styrofoam. Immigration has been in the news quite a bit lately with the upcoming election, but this was my first experience with it.  How bad would your life have to be to give up everything you know and travel 2,000 miles+ (the distance from Haiti) to a new country to seek asylum on a styrofoam boat?  The two largest groups of asylum seekers coming to the US currently are from Haiti and Venezuela due to political environments and natural disasters.  Most come by boat but others attempt to travel through Central America’s Darien Gap to Mexico then cross the border to the US. 

Early in our sailing career, Ron and I got posed with a question from one of the other captain’s…” What would you do if you ran into a raft of refugees?”  This isn’t the same thing as piracy but has the potential to be.  Thus far we have not gone far enough for this to be an issue and have not run into any issues.  Most incidents of piracy in the happen in the Gulf of Aden (Venezuela), the Philippines, or off the coast of Africa.  Sailing in general is very safe, especially when you consider the increasing gun violence in the US. 

The walk wasn’t all bad though since I ran into the turtle ladies!  They were checking one of the recently hatched nests and found this little guy!

Apparently, there were about 9 unhatched eggs they reburied and this little guy who got stuck in all the other hatched shells and couldn’t climb out.  They tried to release him but since he didn’t take off, they were going to take him to the turtle hospital for a check up and some hydration.  It was my first baby turtle after all the nests we have seen.  So cool!!