St. John's trip final day

Well it's our final day and we awoke to beautiful morning had breakfast and then again practiced more touching go docking at various locations in Green Cove Springs Marina. Ken met us at the boat and gave us a tour of an N47 as well as a GH 47. Both boats have a lot of great features and we particularly like the fact that they have a very shallow draft and are built very solid. The N47 has a full stand up engine room with two inverters capable of running one of the air conditioners/heaters  without the generator running.

Now we are the Jacksonville airport getting ready to get on the plane.

St. John's trip Day 6

So our night last night was very restful with the water lapping on the front of the boat. We anchored planning on cruising while we made breakfast and in the middle of cooking the sausage the generator stopped. The unit is high-tech with a series of alarm indicators on the unit. We searched for the generator manual with no success but jumped on the Internet and was able to call the distributor here in Florida and get the answer we needed.  I noticed as we were anchored last night there was a more than normal amount of steam coming off exhaust water exiting from the generator which led me to believe that there was something wrong with impeller or strainer. Service manager Carl confirm the alarm light we were getting indicated high exhaust temperature which leads me to believe that the impeller probably needs to be changed. Given that this will be our last night tonight we elected to skip changing the impeller and we will tie up at the dock tonight and use shore power for Air-conditioning. Today is another hot and humid day with many clouds indicating we will likely have some rough weather again sometime during the day.

This is what is referred to as a range marker. You line Up one board with the other board (in the background) and it tells you that you're in a straight line with the channel.

We didn't figure out what these turbines are used for but they appear to be wind turbines but with them located in a water outlet on the river, and it appears to have water running during given periods and maybe they lower these turbines into the water (make power maybe).

Big rain coming that we will run right through...

After we ran through the rain we continued back to Green Cove Springs, Back to where we started. Here in the marina which is an old navy yard you'll notice a large orange canister perched on the side. It is a fuel tank for the space shuttle that is destined to be delivered to a museum somewhere in the US.

We continued back to our original Anchorage and will spend the night here on shore power and continue to practice docking and maneuvering tomorrow.

Again we had another good day. I managed to keep the boat from crashing into any of the docks. We practiced and finished off the evening driving into town and enjoying barbecue and shrimp. :)

St Johns Day 6 cont.

One of the things we wanted to do today was to practice our docking skills so we will be doing some touch-n-goes on various docks in this section of the river.

Where you would typically look for docks that would have people available to help you dock today were looking for ones that are closed so that we can just touch go and practice with the wind currents etc.

This is the entrance to the cross Florida Canal that was originally designed to go from the St. Johns River all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. The canal runs to the west for 96 miles and was intended to join the Gulf of Mexico around Crystal River Florida. Unfortunately before it was completed it got cut in a past recession budget cut. Who know how much economic development would have resulted from its completion but  can't help believe it would have been huge!

The canal is very well protected from a southerly breeze and would be a great place to water ski.

Below is the Henry Holland Buckman lock

The lock operates from 8 AM to 6 PM Thursday through Sunday closed to half hour for lunch (1130-12) each day.

Thousands of elephant ears line the bank here at the lock.

 Below is the St. John's ship building facility in Palatka Florida.

This is a lesser expensive model of cruising boat available in the area.

Amtrak train on its way to the East Coast.

We continued to do touching goes at various docks including Palatka Florida and now are anchored back in Carmen's Cove which was our first Anchorage when we stopped on Sunday night.

Well today's been very good and as the sun sets, we both feel humbled and so fortunate to be able to enjoy each other as much as we do....:)

St Johns Trip Day 5

We start our day five from our Anchorage right north of Lake George. After the thunderstorms rolled through our night was quiet and calm. Both Viv and I are getting used to the sounds of the boat and slept much better and what now we consider to be familiar surroundings.

The galley in the boat is very well appointed with a microwave/convection oven cooktop full-size refrigerator double sink etc.

Today we're going to continue to cruise down stream and check out the Cross Florida canal.

The little balls you see in the water are floats that Mark where crab pots have been placed in the river to harvest blue crabs. They are certainly a nuisance to navigation and apparently the fishermen have won out over the boaters and are able to place the crab pots anywhere they like.

St Johns Day 4

We are starting today from our Anchorage down stream of Lake Dexter. We traveled upstream for many miles and the river really narrows in this section. As we were traveling upstream to air boats pass this one on the left and one on the right running over top of the lily pads. They were really neat to see and they ran a mile or so ahead of us and when we came by they were spraying the lily pads with some kind of weed killer that we could smell in the air. We continued upstream and called for a bridge opening at Astor FL. As Semper Fi requires 25 feet of clearance from the water to the bottom of the bridge deck and the bridge was only 22 feet tall. We could have lowered the VHF  antennas which would lower our required height to 20 feet but the bridge was still only 22 feet in the center and we were not sure that that would be adequate so instead of chancing it we just called on the radio and they opened the bridge. There were numerous fishing camps with rental boats available and many fishermen were making their catch. About noon we decided to turn around and head back downstream to enable us to be sure we would meet our ETA on Saturday afternoon so that we would have time to look at two additional boats that Ken Fickett (Ken owns Mirage Yachts which was the manufacturer of Semper Fi ) has at Green Cove Springs. 

On our way back downstream we caught up with the two air boats we had originally seen and they were joined with four additional boats that were all spraying the overpopulation of lily pads along the sides. It was interesting to see that the air boats could go faster on top Lilly pads they could in the Rivers clear channel.

We again crossed Lake George and I decided that we should again try to check out Silver Glen Springs to see if we could get back to the springs. I jumped in the dinghy and fortunately was able to make it through the Hyacinth given that several other boats were coming out of the Glen ahead of me. I boated all the way back to the springs and the water was amazing so I returned to Semper Fi to pick up the admiral. We motored back to the Glen shooting pictures and videos along the way and were amazed how clean and clear the water was. Several boats had navigated back all the way to the springs and many people were swimming and enjoying the day. 

We headed out into Lake George, and there were numerous thunderstorms in the area. The storms continue to grow in intensity and within 30 to 40 minutes there were 30 - 40 mile an hour winds kicking up 2 to 3 foot seas but Semper Fi handled them with ease.

At the end of the day we enjoyed hard and soft soft shelled tacos and a docktails! 

St Johns Day Three

Day three started out with Carl the diver tightening up the starboard prop on the boat and we exited the Costa Marina at about 9:30 AM. Our plan is to take on $200 worth of diesel fuel at the Georgetown Marina and then the rest of the day is ours to cruise further upstream and enjoy the day. The water is slick as glass and the sky is a deep blue. Alternator belt continues to stretch and need to be tightened 2 to 3 times per day. We will head 12 Miles up stream to Silver Springs to see if we can see the crystal blue water exiting the springs Into the lake.  We had headed across the lake yesterday in hopes of being able to go to Silver Spring and see the crystal blue waters coming from the earth at the rate of millions of gallons per day. But to our disappointment the hyacinth had blown into the Cove at the entrance to the springs and was no way to push through the hyacinths in our small dinghy. The depth of the springs is not adequate to safely navigate Semper Fi ( we thought) so we anchored out ran around in the dingy and Vivian did a great job but was always had fear of alligators jumping in the boat. We managed our little voyage without turning it over or crashing into an alligator or fouling the prop with the sea grass and hyacinths. We were able to beg a half a dozen bluegills from four retired guys cleaning fish at the dock at the Georgetown Marina and we feasted on them for dinner with fresh tomatoes sliced and cottage cheese (very good). We watched the sun go down and the various thunderstorms rolled by none of them affected but providing a spectacular view. It is amazing how fast the day goes by even though you're traveling relatively slow. I could get used to this very quickly!

Wildlife is amazing and with the aid of all of our electronics etc. very little fear of having a navigation mishap or getting lost.

Floating hyacinths everywhere in Lake George!

Fire off in distance!

Exiting Lake George

Elephant ears big time

MG pontoon boat!

Lily pads galore