Depart: Jacksonville Free Dock 8:00
Arrive: Marineland FL 2:30
Distance: 50 NM
We decided to bypass St. Augustine and set Marineland as
today’s destination. St. Augustine was too close and anything else was too far. The sights we saw along the way were mostly
the usual with a couple of optical illusions.
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| Optical illusion: fenders are actually under the bridge |
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| Houses along the canal |
Damaged boats on a barge gave us our first look into the
effects of hurricane Irma.
We heard on the news that today started St. Augustine’s
Night of Lights celebration. That would have been a fun activity; however, the
city had 100s of people there protesting that confederate monuments must be
removed from the city. Given the police were there doing riot control, I am
glad we did not stop there for the night.
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| St. Augustine |
When we arrived at the Bridge of Lions in St. Augustine, we
needed to determine if we would fit without a bridge opening. Clark called the
bridge tender to ask the vertical clearance. The tender told Clark to come up
to the bridge and check the height board. We found the clearance to be very
close to our needs, so Clark called the bridge tender and asked him the
additional clearance between low steel and the height in the center. His
response, “I don’t have that information. You’ll have to make your own
decision.” We need 22’. The height board
showed 20’. We decided to go for it with Clark spotting while I drove through
the bridge holding my breath. We cleared with no problem and later learned from
Active Captain that the additional
clearance is 4’.
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| St. Augustine Bridge of Lions |
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| St. Augustine Lighthouse |
Clark thought he saw a red marker but as we got closer, it
appeared to be moving. A closer look revealed it to be a stand up paddle board
with a woman wearing a red shirt and black pants along with a dog at her feet.
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| Optical illusion: Red marker? |
When we made the reservation at Marineland, the dock master
asked if we had any problems with the new GFI dock breakers. Clark said he didn’t
know but would like to find out. When we
plugged in at the dock, the breaker tripped right away with all the boat
breakers turned off. Clark tried to troubleshoot but was unable to resolve the
problem quickly. Luckily, they had one slip without the GFI breaker installed
so we moved to the slip.
As we moved, I spied two people on the dock looking at our
boat and pointing their fingers our way. I thought to myself, “they must like
our boat.” The couple greeted us as we tied up our lines and reminded us that
they had come to our house to consider purchasing Sea Moss. They said they recognized our boat and then us. They
generously offered to drive me to the store to pick up some much needed
supplies. While I was gone, Clark decided to disassemble an alternator.
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| Marineland Dock: Crane Strutting to attract mate |
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| Sunset in Marineland, FL |
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