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!