5 December 2020
Depart: Lambs Yacht Center, Jacksonville FL 9:05
Arrive: St. Augustine Conch House Marina 4:20
Distance: 48.5 nm
Conditions: Chilly a.m., Bright sun in Jax where 44 felt like 38 degrees, 63 in p.m. in St. Augustine
Although we were ready to be on our way before 9:00, Amtrak had other ideas. We had to wait for the railroad bridge to open before we could get underway.
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| Amtrak on the RR Bridge |
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| Train gone; Bridge opening |
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| Almost looks like we are too wide to pass |
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| A little cozy going through |
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| Not much room on either side - certainly with us in there it was one-at-a-time passage only |
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| We made it. Bye bye Ortega River |
After the Ortega River Bridge, the channel markers mysteriously disappear. We got past Green 5 and then we were basically on our own to make it to the St. Johns River without running aground. As we crept along, we saw our depth continuously reducing. When we got to about 8" of water under the hull, we decided we better try a different path. Clark wiggled the boat around to head out the way we had come into the Ortega River a couple weeks back. Slowly but surely we saw more water under the hull and finally got ourselves into deeper water.
About the time we could take deep breath on depth, we encountered another obstacle. Clark was piloting. I was taking some notes for the Blog. He looked down for a second and when he looked up, he saw a proverbial mine field of fish traps. I jumped in to help spot and immediately saw a black one that was close and directly in our path. The black ones are great on dark water - nearly invisible sometimes.
Finally, we got to the marked channel and the relative safety of the St. Johns River. Having just passed through Jacksonville on our way to Lambs Yacht Center Marina, we saw much the same sites on our return trip to rejoin the ICW on our route south. As we passed by the vessel "Kismet" which we had seen previously, we became curious.
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| "Kismet" docked by the CSX building |
As I positioned myself to take the picture of "Kismet", I noticed the "side door" open and a man sitting there sun bathing!
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| Sun bathing on "Kismet" |
I Googled the yacht and got the scoop. The vessel "Kismet" is a 312 foot long Luxury Superyacht built in 2014 and specked to be "better than a five star hotel". Including the normal resort attractions like a cinema and a pool, it also has a heliport. The vessel cost $200 million to build and interested parties can charter this floating hotel for a mere $1.2 million per week. A 28-person crew comes with the vessel. Performers like Jay-Z and Beyoncé have chartered the vessel in the past.
On our way through Jacksonville, we passed the Jaguars' Stadium,
a beautiful mural in an unexpected place,
and a boat on top of a boat!
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| "Spuigracht" |
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| Hitching a ride! |
When I asked Clark if he had decided on our travel plans for today, i.e. where we would spend the night, he said that he planned to pick up a mooring ball in St. Augustine. Remembering that St. Augustine has a special "Nights of Lights" going on until January, I told Clark that with the event going on, and this being a Saturday night, he better call ahead for a reservation.
When he called, the dockmaster said they had a waiting list for mooring balls, and it was "very long". He added our name to the list anyway, and we went about deciding on a Plan B for the night's stay. Clark decided we should try to make Marineland instead of St. Augustine. Unfortunately, when we did the calculations, the distance we needed to travel would put us at Marineland after dark.
We had the current against us as we made our way down the ICW. Poking along at 7 knots, we found ourselves arriving in Marineland well after sunset. Clark decided that when the opportunity arose, he would lean on the throttles, bring the boat up on plane, and make some headway to get us there sooner.
As we poked along, we got to see a bunch of Santas keeping an eye on the river.
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| Waving, Friendly Santa |
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| Roly-Poly Santa |
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| Candy Cane Santa |
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| Riding his boat/sleigh |
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| Herculean, Ho Ho Ho Santa holding up the roof over the boat |
When he got to a spot where he did not have small boats or floating docks, Clark pushed the RPM up from around 1600 to around 2800. Woo Hoo that should have given us a good kick. Working against the current, however, we found ourselves only going 12 knots. Still that was good compared to 7 knots! Clark checked the fuel usage gauges and saw that with the increased speed, we went from about 4 gallons of fuel consumption per hour to about 30 gallons per hour! Expensive to go fast!
After a few minutes of speeding along, all hell broke loose! We got an engine overheat alarm on the port side. Clark rapidly reduced speed, but the alarm kept screaming. He shutdown the engine and left me at the helm to keep us moving in a forward direction using the starboard engine only. Shortly after he ran down to check out the engine room, the smell of something burning reached my nose.
The engine room door has a window in it. When Clark looked in the window, he could see nothing but gray in the air. Assuming this was smoke, he did not enter but instead went and turned on the fan to blow the bad air out of the engine room. After the "smoke" cleared, Clark decided it was mostly steam. Upon entering the engine room, he found antifreeze sprayed all over inside - on the ceiling, the walls, the floor, the shelves, the boxes of boat hardware, etc.
Okay, so with Plan B a fail, we are now on to Plan C! Which way do we go? Having traveled for four hours, we found ourselves closer to St. Augustine than Jacksonville, so going ahead made more sense than reversing direction. Clark started searching for a service-type marina in St. Augustine. Sadly, not one of them answered the phone. Closed on Saturday?
He finally got a spot at the Conch House Marina. When I looked it up to learn more about it, I found a "resort" not a service marina. It appeared to be close to downtown St. Augustine but on the opposite side of the waterway. Google Maps indicated the marina is located 1.6 miles from downtown. Cool!
Shortly after we had finalized our plans, Clark got a phone call - a mooring ball was available for us tonight if we wished. Too late for that! We had to stick with Plan C because we needed to have access to land in case we needed parts or other services. Thanks, but no thanks! We continued to limp towards the Conch House on our single engine.
The marina knew we had engine problems and had us tie up as a side tie on a dock. Thinking they might give us a slip, we were relieved to have a side tie. Clark said that with a single engine pulling into a slip would be "interesting"! As it turned out, just pulling up to the side tie was "interesting". As Clark approached the dock, he said, "It's not coming around". He had to work at it to get us close enough that I could throw lines to the two guys standing on the dock that came to help us tie up. Being experts at their jobs, they had us secured in no time!
We decided that we would start engine room cleanup and port engine diagnostics on Sunday. Tonight we would make the most of a bad situation and enjoy the fact that we found ourselves in St. Augustine. I cooked an early dinner and afterwards, we set off to walk across the bridge into the city.
We walked the deserted, back streets to get to the bridge. As we walked the blocks to the bridge, we took a road parallel to the main street to the bridge. With so many cars trying to get into the city, we walked much faster than the cars moved! Quite by accident, we stumbled upon a very impressive Christmas display at a local's house.
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| Lounging Santa Dog |
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| Busy Christmas Corner |
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| Lions at end of the Bridge of Lions |
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| Surprise Boat Parade at St. Augustine |
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| Nights of Lights in St. Augustine |
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| Lion at opposite end of Bridge of Lions bridge |
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| Cars coming and going |
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| People everywhere |
As we walked over the bridge, we saw the bumper-to-bumper cars slowly creeping into the city. An occasional person passed us on the bridge. We put our masks on as the passing space was minimal. When we reached St. Augustine, we found people people people! Across the way, we saw a long line of folks patiently waiting to see something - we knew not what nor did we care to find out.
I found it disappointing that every light appeared to be white; we like color! It was interesting to see a decorated horse and buggy go by. A woman on a bicycle playing Christmas music passed us looking for passengers who wanted a romantic bike ride. Other than the fact that some folks wore masks, it looked like a typical night in the city. We decided that we had seen as much of the city's Nights of Lights as we needed to.
Together we decided that the best part of the night was the quiet walk through the residential area past the brightly lit up and colorful house on the corner. About an hour after we left for our walk, we found ourselves back at the marina.
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| Pond / Fountain at Conch House Marina and Resort |
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| Small canon at entrance to marina |
Good luck with the engine repair. At least you are in a nice location.
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