It was of little help to be located along the return route of the Fleet of the Indies. Once a year the heavily laden galleons sailed northward in convoy just out of sight of land, riding the Gulf Stream up the Bahama Channel to Cape Hatteras to catch the trade winds back to Spain, but the St. Augustine harbor, with its shallow bar which would pass only flat-bottomed or medium portage vessels, was not a place where these great 500- to 1,500-ton ships could anchor, nor would they have interrupted their progress to stop there. AN408 When the Floridians wished to make contact with a vessel in the fleet they had to send a boat to await it at Cape Canaveral, a haunt of pirates. [Note 44: Bartolome de Arguelles 1601; Gov. Rojas y Borja 2/13/1627.] (Bushnell KC)