2025 November: North Florida

 8 November 2025

Depart: Fernandina Harbor Marina 8:00

Arrive: Fort Matanzas anchorage south of St. Augustine, FL 4:15

Distance: ~ 65 nm

When we parted ways with our friends Deanna and Adam last night, we hoped to get together again this morning to visit the Farmer's Market in town. However, upon looking up the details on times, we saw that it would not open for business until 9:00 a.m. That was too late for us to hang around as we rush south to get away from the cold weather that seems to be chasing us!

Before leaving the dock, we walked up to use the facilities and captured a couple of pictures before climbing on board, pulling in the lines and anchors, and getting on our way south.

Morning sky at Fernandina Beach

Looks real from a distance - it's not!

As we moved away from Fernandina Beach, I took a couple of pictures looking back at the town. The most prominent objects in the view are the paper mills on either side of the town and the cranes for unloading containers.

Clark decided on the inside route today as we would fight current going out and coming in if we chose the ocean option. Thus we passed through Jacksonville and later St. Augustine.

As we passed by the  Sister's Creek free dock, Clark noted that there were no boats tied up there. Then, he noticed that a sailboat was sunk on the inside side of the dock.

Sunken Sailboat at Sister's Creek free dock
(only the white mast is visible)

As we continued by, I took a couple more pictures of the park setting.

Lots of trucks at the parking 
for the boat ramp - it's Saturday!

As we passed through the Jacksonville area, we noticed the BAE facility with numerous big ships present. One caught our eyes in particular - "Sea Fighter" - an experimental US Naval combat ship.

A security boat was docked nearby.

The site looked a bit congested with all the big boats with several of them naval vessels.

As we passed under a 60+' bridge, we noted people fishing under the bridge. The question that came to mind was "how did they get there?" I saw no boat and they were clearly wearing dry clothes. 

People fishing under bridge

While I was down below making lunch, Clark took some pictures.

Open Railroad "Swing" Bridge

 

He did the "down the tracks" shot and nailed it!

Straight down the rails!

A while later he saw what he thought was a pure white beach. As we came closer he realized it was a flock of egrets!

Egret island

He noted the unusual trees along the shore where only the tops seem to have foliage.

Trees naked along the trunks

Yesterday as we traveled, we listened to music. I asked Clark, "Why no music today?" His response was interesting. He said he was busy passing sailboats, fighting whirlpools in the fast-moving current, and avoiding a "gazillion" little boats zipping by or paddling by. On top of all this, we cannot rely on our autopilot, so all of his driving today was manual. 

He told me that he has a new autopilot. We have a steering wheel the size of which is normally found on a sailboat, i.e. huge. Therefore, he has been using his left foot as the autopilot drive to steer the boat which he said it electrically connected to the autopilot computer located above drive. 

He said, "With all the boat traffic, you can easily tell today is a Saturday!" We saw quite a variety of boats - kayaks, speed boats, boats towing kids in water, tow toys behind their boats, sailboats, trawlers, and even a guy water skiing behind a boat.

Meanwhile, due to changing directions as we traveled, we were either putting on jackets or stripping them off depending on how the chilly wind hit us. Water sports and bathing suits were not for us!

St. Augustine always has interesting goings on.

We arrived at the Bridge of Lions about 5 minutes after it closed for its 2:00 opening. Wondering if we would need to fold the antennas and mast, or if we could clear without, Clark tried haling the boats waiting for the 2:00 opening to get data from the tide board. No one responded! He haled on 09 - the bridge channel. He maybe should have tried 16.

As we got nearer to the bridge, he haled the bridge to see if they would give him the data. I knew they would not because in Florida they always refuse. I guess they are worried about liability should a boater hit the bridge after getting navigation data from the bridge tender. The first tender that responded just ignored our question (or misunderstood it) and told us when we could expect the next opening. Gee Thanks!

The second person (it did not sound like the same as the first to me) told us to come up and read the tide board for ourselves! When we finally got close enough to read the board, we saw 21' clearance to which we could add 4' for the center => 25'. No problem for us. Eyeballing it before even knowing the numbers, we figured we were good. 

Bridge of Lions in St. Augustine

We have a friend from Long Island, New York that is traveling south for the winter for the first time. We keep leap-frogging our way south. Sometimes we have gotten close enough to hear each other on the VHF radio. In fact, we heard our friend, Dave, today as he haled the St. Augustine City Marina where he is staying for tonight. 

As we motored by, Clark said, "That looks like Dave's boat!" I grabbed a quick picture! He was just leaving the fuel dock and heading into a slip. We talked on the phone later, and he said that docking here was hair-raising event as the current was wicked.

Dark-hulled boat at center of picture is Dave's

It seems like whenever we pass through St. Augustine, we see the local pirate ship with a pirate on board telling the passengers about a pirate's life.

"Black Raven" Pirate Ship

We normally see a lot of boats moored here as we did today.

We saw a bit of excitement later. A sailboat was being towed with another boat looking on. The tow captain was switching the sailboat to be on his hip so that he could take it in the St Sebastian River to dock it. We wondered if it was currently in use or abandoned. 

Sailboat "on the hip" of a tow boat
(Red light glowing on tow boat)

The fellow in the boat below monitored the tow situation until the sailboat was "on the hip". I could not tell what his role was in the activity.

You never know what you will see on the water. We briefly attended a wedding!

Waterside Wedding underway as we passed by

The tide change in this area is about 6 feet versus the 8 or 9' change in Georgia. I snapped some pictures showing the low tide as we traveled through here.

"Jewel of the Sea" Restaurant

Clark picked the Fort Matanzas anchorage for tonight. We have stayed here once before. After this spot, there is really no where to drop anchor in the number of hours of daylight we had left to us. 

The fort was completed by the Spanish in 1742 as a southern defense for St. Augustine. 

Fort Matanzas - nearing sunset

We were surprised to see a number of boats here when we arrived. Clark decided to drop anchor just before the no wake area. Most boaters when they left as the sun was going down sped up and waked us. Only one boat I saw waited until they were past us to speed up. Clark said not to worry as it would settle down once they all went home. It did.

Directly to our stern!

We had the anchor down at 4:15, but I was a bit nervous of the anchor line going out at a right angle to the bow of the boat. Last time we had that scenario, the anchor line got severed by going under our boat. Clark decided to put a bridle on the anchor line to control the swing of the boat. 

It took 30 minutes as first he could not find the line he likes to use and had to opt for a poor substitute, and then he spent time rigging it up - a complicated grouping of lines and knots.  He positioned me at the helm to move the bow as he directed to facilitate the positioning of the bridle.

Once settled, I relaxed for a while until time for the sun to drop below the horizon. 

Fishing from a kayak

Late-day sun shining on houses in the distance

Finally, the sun dropped below the horizon (or trees in this case).

We watch television on board by scanning the airwaves for Over The Air television stations. Seems like we should be able to find some station from Florida - Jacksonville? Orlando? But no, we are watching TV originating from Savannah, Georgia. WSAV. We would not care if it were not for the fact that the we are particularly interested in upcoming weather. What is happening in Northern Georgia is not very helpful to our travel planning.