050: The St. Johns River Part 1: Nature Calls

 

We left St. Augustine on February 21st, but not before first attending to one of the “marina cats” with the required-tribute of pets and scratches:

 

We had an uneventful thirty-seven mile trip up to the floating docks on the northside of “Jim King Park and Boat Ramp at Sister Creek” on Pine Island just off the ICW (Navionics refers to these as “Jacksonville Free City Docks”).   The docks are free with a seventy-two-hour limit and have no electricity but do have two water spigots at either end of the floating docks.  There are designated kayak trails throughout the marshes and if we had brought our kayaks, we would have stayed for our full allotted seventy-two hours.  Beautiful spot, you can almost imagine you were a Seminole Indian circa 1600’s from some vantage points.

Northern White Pelicans:

 

 Sunrise:

  

We left on the ebb (outgoing) tide which meant that combined with the north/outbound flow of the river (like the Tennessee, the SJR flows north) we had about a three-knot current against us.  Nothing Hygge couldn’t handle.  For the first few miles, the shoreline was dotted with beautiful waterfront homes.   The next part of the river is dotted with freighter docks until you hit downtown Jacksonville.   We encountered one freighter doing a relatively fast eleven knots and two tugboats pulling/pushing a very large barge.   Luckily the channel is wide and deep enough to stay out the “big boy’s” way.   That said, the tugboat pulling the barge sounded five blasts (“danger”) when he saw us even though we were pretty-far away.  (I can only think that he thought we were a typical Florida-ICW-boater ignorant of the rules of the road).   I gave him two blasts on my horn to let him know that we would steer to port and give him a wide berth, that seemed to satisfy him.

Wonder how all your “shit” (as George Carlin would say) gets here from overseas?  This is how.

 Freighter and "star wars walkers:"

 

 Freighter offloading:

 

We bypassed downtown Jacksonville and headed to a marina which has a courtesy car (no charge, just replace the gas you used) so that we could run to a nearby grocery store and stock up the pantry in time for a quiet night of streaming.

The SJR is a big river north of Palatka.   The next morning, we had hoped to get to Palmo Cove to anchor and go up either Trout Creek or Six Mile Creek, but it was overcast with high winds, and we had three footers with short periods on the nose.  After three hours of pounding, we decided we’d had enough, and we got a slip at a marina just south of Green Cove Springs.  We caught a ride into Green Cove Springs which didn’t have much to see besides the park with a natural spring that feeds into the public pool (closed for the season) and thence into a small stream.   Our plan to walk back to the marina was thwarted by a rainstorm and we waited for our Uber at the lovely Spring Park Coffee Shop.

The spring that caused the area to be settled here: 

 The next day we made it over to Palm Cove and anchored just in Six Mile Creek and took the dinghy up the creek approximately 1.5 miles.   It was exactly what we came for on this trip.  A cathedral of nature.   The gators, or as the boys fishing on the dock called them, “Swamp Puppies” (“Don’t bother them and they won’t bother you.”) proved shy but we saw lots of birds and turtles.  

Hygge at anchor:

Nature's Cathedral:

Could have been Mayberry RFD:

Next stop was Palatka and the southernmost of the two free docks (no power, but water) and a stroll through the riverside park and the car show being held that day.  

 

We ended the day watching this solo sailor anchor his seventeen foot yawl.  He put up a canvas tent and spent the night on the boat.  More on him tomorrow:

Dave

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