TwoGether

Sunday 12/18/11.    Our 50^th day we are in FL.  …. The north shore of the St Marys is in GA and the south shore is in FL.  We said good bye to Mr. Wilson and started eastward on the St Marys River.  There is a shoal that comes out past the markers after a turn in the river and guess who touched bottom.  But the GPS was working and showed the error of our ways. (Notice when there is a problem its “our”.)  My trusty navigator had me make a quick turn to starboard and sure enough the water got deeper. 

The ICW skirts along the eastern edge of Duval County so we should not have to deal with the heavy commercial and Navy ship traffic in and out of Jacksonville, except for the ¾ mile crossover of the St. Johns River. 

Studying the charts there are few really good anchorages along the ICW in this stretch.  We have to figure the distance we usually travel and see if there is anything close.  Some days will be short so we don’t end up between suitable anchorages at sundown.  Today will be one of the short days.  Tonight will be spent anchored alongside the ICW, outside the channel, on a wide turn, 1/4 mile north of the St. Johns River in Sisters Creek. Just across the ICW is a county park with large floating docks, a lighted parking lot and restrooms, but you’re not allowed to tie up there overnight.

Sisters Creek:           N30° 23.722  W081° 27.347

Monday 12/19/11     FL is manatee country.  Along with the charts we also have a copy of the county-by-county Manatee Protection Zones.  These are basically speed limits listed as, Idle Speed; Slow Speed Minimum Wake; Slow Speed outside the ICW and 30 MPH in the Channel.  The state does a great job of marking the areas with large signs for boaters.  I’ve not quite figured how the manatees know which is which.

The crossing of the St Johns went easy enough except for a bit of a contradiction.  Sisters Creek meets the St. Johns making a T.  On the one corner there is a large ship building company and the ships obscure the entrance to the river. On the pillar of the draw bridge, just before the entrance, there is a sign warning that there is a dangerous intersection ahead and to give way to large vessels on the St Johns River.  It also tells you to cross the channel without delay.  Then when you come out the other side of the bridge there’s a sign for a slow speed manatee area.

What a difference 50 miles can make. Just taking cursory look at the landscape the savanna lands look much the same.  However I noticed some subtle changes.  The cord grass we saw in much of GA, covered square mile after square mile.  Sometimes there were stretches that went on to the horizon hiding the meandering waterway.  There was almost no visible land.   Clumps of trees were way off in the distance.  The cord grass, that looks almost like skinny bamboo stalks, was six to eight feet tall and grew in extremely dense clumps.  There is no way you could walk through it.  Birds, fish and dolphins were the only wildlife in sight. 

Now, in northern FL, the grass is two to three feet in height. While still dense in places you could walk through or around it on visible land. There are clumps of trees several acres in size and even large wooded areas growing near the water’s edge.

As we neared the place where we had planned to anchor we noticed a large cloud of smoke ahead.  It appeared it might be where we were going.  It turned out to be a grass fire about one mile north of an ox-bow section of the Tolomato River that circled Pine Island, our destination.  After dark we could see the light from the light house at St Augustine.

Pine Island    N30° 03.095  W081° 21.916

Tuesday 12/19/11.   Today is St. Augustine; the oldest city in America.  The channel here is narrow and turns you toward the Atlantic and then doubles back toward the skyline of the beautiful city of St Augustine. 

The first thing you notice is the sun lighting up the Great Cross of the Mission Numbre de Dios.  This cross, which rises 208 feet above the surrounding marshes, was erected and dedicated in 1966 in celebration of the establishment of the mission 400 years earlier in 1565. 

Next sight is the massive Fort Castillo de San Marcus. Construction  started in 1672 and took 23 years to complete. 

Then the city skyline made up mostly of Spanish architecture in the old-town.

This is also the northern end of the Matanzas River.  There are turns in the channel of the Matanzas River that are a constant shoaling problem.  Near Ft. Matanzas, 14 miles south of town, there is a thirty foot high ridge of sand, about a quarter mile long, where the dredged spoils have been laid.  It really stands out in a terrain that is flat and barley above sea level.

We passed through the area known as Palm Valley.  This is a straight man made cut lined with very large homes similar to those we saw in Myrtle Beach SC.  However, there is a strange phenomenon that takes place here.  The people who live here only cook meat on one side! ... It’s true! … Look at the picture and you’ll figure it out .

Okay, if you didn’t get it…All of the houses are on one side of the water way.  So they only cook meat on "one side".  (This was pulled on me by Linda’s Grandmother Mable [we called her Bable] as we drove through Toland, Pa, where all the houses are on one side of the road and the garages are on the other)

Just south of Flagler Beach is the J. B. Knox Bridge.   Linda called and requested a bridge opening and the bridge tender said keep coming Cap’n.  This is one of the bridge tenders who try to time the opening with your arrival.  Just as the bridge started to open I realized I didn’t have any power steering.  Then I saw the port engine had quit. 

Now the bridge is almost fully open we’re only about 200 feet away and the starboard engine quit.  Now we are adrift with an open bridge and the wind blowing us back away from the bridge.  We had run out of gas in the main tanks.  Linda called the bridge tender and apologized and told him what happened.  We dropped anchor in the channel and I’m rushing back to switch the valves to the auxiliary tanks.  In the meantime a Canadian sailboat called for an opening.  The bridge opened again and the sailboat slipped by just 10 feet from our starboard side.  The bridge closed and now I have our engines running and half embarrassed to ask for another opening in less than 10 minutes.  Matter of fact when I called the bridge he refused to answer.  But when Linda called he said “No problem Cap’n bring ‘er through”. 
That’s enough excitement for one day.

It’s now getting late and there is really no place to anchor.  Outside of the channel there is two feet of water.  So we continued another hour to the wide, but shallow, Halifax River.  After several tries we finally found a place at Green Marker 13 where we had five feet at low tide about 100 feet outside the channel.  Splash went the anchor…This is home for tonight.

Halifax River:            N029° 18.750           W81° 03.752