St. John River Cruise. Nov 12-21

Well the third attempt did the trick.  After two failed attempts in Nov 2016 and May 2017 our third planned cruise of this awesome river happened.  Yes, mechanical delays thwarted the prior two attempts so that we could do other things on our agenda…it’s a boat.  And this time we did have to wait a few days for an inverter repair and deal with numerous no wake zones due to the flooding still present from Irma in early Sept.  Seems odd that there would still be so much water from over two months ago.  But here is the deal….the St John River flows north from 310 miles south of Jacksonville and drops only 30 feet to sea level.  So, something like an inch per mile, a very slow draining process.  We feel sorry for so many business owners upstream that still have flooded businesses.  

Before we left we had a great dinner in Avondale at the Blue Fish with Randy and Sherry (Priorities)from Holland MI and Rolf and Harriett (Time Out).  A great time was had by all.  Thanks for driving us all Rolf.

On Friday 11-10 we received our repaired inverter back from the authorized factory repair facility in Sanford.  We sent it in from Hilton Head prior to leaving there.  I re installed it by following the wiring diagrams in the owner’s manual. Just some AC, DC and ground connections to make.  The owners manual now has a blood stained page to prove it…nothing serious, just the normal cuts and scrapes as one tries to wrestle a 53 pound unwieldly unit into a cramped space above the generator and re-bolt it to the wall.  With a scrap board used for leverage and a couple borrowed tools, it was back in and running in about three hours. 

Saturday we provisioned the boat and Sunday we departed for the cruise.  The first night we took a dock at Palatka and took a nice walk around the old town.  We visited the St John River Center here which was quite interesting.

A cool mural depicting an era gone by.  We hope to see all this wildlife on our cruise.

As we travelled to the north end of Lake George on Monday, the Raymarine chip no longer covered the river!  Note the lack of detail as we are entering the lake....

But, that is why one comes prepared with an Ipad with SeaIQ installed.  It is now our navigation guide for the rest of the trip to Sanford.

Monday we anchored in Salt Cove in the NW corner of Lake George, the second largest lake in Florida. Large but shallow, it averages only 10 feet deep. 

We took the dinghy up to Salt Springs, about a three mile run.  Lot’s of wildlife but due to high water we could not land the dinghy and explore the Spring up close. 

This first night at anchor Julie went to start the generator to cook dinner and nothing.  No lights on control panel, no power, no nothing.  I went into the engine room and reset all the breakers, etc and started it from the engine room.  I must have inadvertently bumped off one of the breakers when I was re-installing the inverter last week.  All was good for about a half hour and it sputtered and died, just as it had done intermittently last year before we had all the 2000 hour maintenance done on it.  So I looked at the primary fuel filter.  It was not really dirty but I changed it anyway.  I vacuumed out the air intakes too.  (Having the inverter provides power for the vacuum without the genset power thankfully).  Then I tried to restart it but it would not fire.  I looked at the secondary spin on filter on the engine and noted it had over one year and 450 hours on it…owner’s manual says 500 hours or one year.  So I went to change it and the filter wrench broke!  I cobbled the wrench back together with a small sheet metal screw, changed the filter, primed the engine and success!  Our turkey (drumstick) dinner was only an hour and a half late…..

Tuesday we anchored at River Forest, just north of DeLand.  We looked for a spot that would protect us from the strong north wind where the current would not oppose the wind. 

The first spot on the north end of the oxbow did not work, but the south worked great…boat stayed parallel to shore due to the current and wind was stopped by the trees. 

Lots of eagles, egrets, and an owl off in the distance too.  

Also note high the water is here....all still from Irma over 2-1/2 months ago.  Also, note the water stain halfway up the sign showing how high the water was earlier.  By the way, the water is quite clear, it is just a dark brown from the tannins in the water from decaying trees, all part of nature.  This whole area is a wildlife preserve.  Nice.

 

We took a long no wake dinghy ride to the Highland Park fish camp up one of the creeks.  A fish camp it was!

Wednesday we made it to Sanford, 150 miles upstream (south) of Ortega Landing. Lots of high water, going slowly as they are still in flood stage here....

Sanford is about as far south as one can navigate on the river.  We took a mile and a half walk to Winn Dixie to get some fresh groceries.  Nice little old Florida town.  Oh, and for you Hudsonville folks, Sanford was known as the celery capital.  Who knew Hudsonville had a big competitor in the South!!  They had ice plants, a circular railway for loading the crops, packing houses, etc.  “back in the day”. Who knew!? 

They said they had a slip but we might hang out into the fairway a bit....but it was a great spot.

We also spotted the vessel Classic Cyn, but Curt and Cindy were not on board…sorry we missed you two! Maybe we’ll see you in the Bahamas again?

Thursday we travelled only 15 miles north to an anchorage near Blue Springs state park.  Again, our attempt of visiting the springs was stopped by high water.  Even Julie's call to the rangers to see if we could break the rules and land the dinghy was answered with a resounding "no ma'am". But what a great anchorage.  A big gator circled the boat late in the afternoon and a short dinghy ride got us fairly close to many birds along the lilly pads.   Zoom in, center of frame for alligator.  So much wildlife!

The video is of egrets along our dinghy ride.

In the morning we had a hatch of midges (blind mosquitos) to clean off of the boat.  They were literally an inch deep in some area of the boat.  I brushed as many as I could off with a broom and it looked like snow falling as Julie looked out the window. They hatch from the mud and only live three days. The heavy scrubbing will have to wait till we get back to a marina.  Here they are on the fly bridge hatch.

We called ahead to Silver Glen Springs park on the west shore of Lake George to see if we could land our dinghy there.  We got a helpful person on the line that said it would be unlikely that anyone would say anything if we broke the rules and landed.  So we started reading all the reviews of the area and decided it would be worth the trip.  

All the reviews talked about a shallow entrance.  One review said, “I think a four foot draft vessel could make it”.  So given the high water, small waves on Lake George and our four foot draft we proceeded ever so slowly into the entrance.  One engine into and out of gear, ever so slow and with some 4.5 foot sections we did make it into the run up to the spring.  And are we glad we did!  What a spot.  Beautiful clear FRESH water, 73 degrees year around.  I even went swimming in the crystal clear water to set the bow anchor better than it was set.  Only about 6 feet deep, so easy to dive and reset the anchor. 

It was Friday night and only one other boat anchored to spend the night.  There were some moored and unoccupied boats there illegally too...

-Around 5:30, I was going below to take a shower and Julie says come on back here, there is a black bear at the waters edge getting a drink.  Wow, it sure had a black and shiny coat.  The picture does not do it justice.  It is just to the right of the bow of the moored sailboat.

The boiling springs.  They release 65 million gallons per day of 73 degree water.

On Saturday morning we took a 5 mile hike along the Yearling Trail.  This is the area where the characters in the Pulitzer Prize book The Yearling written by Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings lived.  It was published in March 1938. 

Note the whistle on Tom's shoulder.....

 Hmm, wonder what kind of dropping this is...they use the trail too.

We were on our way back to the boat and Julie says “look, a bear”.  I was leading and looked back at her, but the bear was in the trail ahead.  So much for my valor and protection of Julie!  So we blew the whistle we brought along (as we had been warned of bear activity in the area) and yelled but the bear did not move.  We saw a young couple coming up the trail the other way and yelled at them too and they said they saw the bear.  It finally went across the trail and we started moving along the trail after a couple minutes.  Then two cubs ran across the trail too!  We are glad we did not push ahead too quickly as a mother with cubs can be pretty dangerous. But what a beautiful sight.  These bears have such dark black shiny fur. They appear very healthy and vibrant.  One of the trail information stations said there were once 12,000 black bears in the central Florida area and now only about 1,500.

When we got back, there were many boats arriving to enjoy the area.  We too enjoyed the water and floated for a few minutes on our chairs…well at least until Julie’s lost air and it was put in the trash…sorry Julie.  We were told that literally hundreds of boats pack the area on summer weekends so we were happy to be here “off season”.  Still there were about 8 other boats sharing the anchorage on Saturday night, one boat at sunset played God Bless The USA song reminding us of our kids and neighbor kids performing that song back in the summer 1993....so no bears tonight.

Here are the schools of fish migrating into the spring for the evening.

Sunday we pulled anchor early as it was supposed to rain by late morning.  Our destination was only 33 miles away and we hoped to have the rain clear the area as we cruised north.  Love it when a plan works out, we cruised through a little rain and arrived at Murphy Creek around noon. 

It was a very remote setting and we listened to owls, osprey, watched eagles soar and generally enjoyed the quiet.

Monday we departed for our 47 mile run to Black Creek north of Palatka.  It is so true that the real St John starts south of Palatka but this was a really cool anchorage area too.  This creek goes some 40 miles and is really more of a river.  We took a dinghy ride a few miles upstream and decided to turn around as it was just too wide and deep for any real wildlife exploration.  We did dinghy up a small creek and saw lots of turtles, egrets and herons though.  The St John is such a great wildlife habitat.  This was a wonderful cruise, albeit in an off season where the leaves were largely off the trees due to hurricane and season, but perhaps there were a few less bugs too!

No zoom lens needed to see this eagle!

A large heron.

Tuesday we refueled at Doctor’s Lake Marina (thanks Waterway Guide for the fuel prices, saved 38 cents per gallon versus Ortega river area...and needing 425 gallons, it was a great savings) returned to Ortega Landing and washed all the midges (blind mosquitoes) off the boat (they were literally an inch deep on the top of the radar near the anchor light), did laundry and arranged transportation to the airport to go to visit Brett and Natalie on Thanksgiving.

And a big thank you to Larry (Hobo) our next door neighbor at Ortega Landing for the ride to the airport.

We hope everyone had a Happy Thanksgiving!