St Augustine or bust…Part 1
The Adventure Starts (Slowly)
We set off from our home for the last year and half in the Ortega River. Having no idea what to expect, we planned out the trip as well as we knew how. After watching the weather for a few weeks we picked a weather window that we felt comfortable with. Under motor power our boat can only travel at around 8mph. This means that the 45-minute car ride to St Augustine was going to take us more like 20 hours in our slow boat. Since we picked a low wind weather window it meant motoring the entire time.
Skipper Carolyn!
The Ditch (ICW)
In the interest of being safe, we decided to avoid making the whole trip straight through. We didn’t feel comfortable with traveling at night just yet. Our route did not have us going out into the ocean this time. Instead, we would be following the St Johns river and the ICW (Intercoastal Water Way). This is a winding path that is often narrow and shallow. Making it in the dark seemed like a bad idea for us just starting out.
Ortega River to St Augustine
First Stop
Since we were not going to make the whole trip in one-shot, we found a small marina called Palm Cove just off the ICW in Jacksonville. This place is about halfway between the Ortega River and St Augustine so it seemed like the perfect place to go. It also happened to be the marina we took possession of Rána at so we had an idea of what to expect. We also knew that we could only get in through their channel at high tide or we would run aground.
Palm Cove Marina (Jacksonville FL)
Seeing the Sights
The first half of our trip involved motoring through downtown Jacksonville. It was amazing seeing the high-rise buildings and massive bridges as we crawled past. Going only 8mph really gives you a lot of time to look around and enjoy the view! It sure beats driving at 70mph and missing everything.
Main Street Bridge (Jacksonville FL)
Look, the Ocean!
Eventually, we made it to the Jacksonville ocean inlet. Although we did not need to go out into the ocean, this was where the ICW met up with the St Johns river so we had to get pretty close. All of the inlets where the ocean comes into a river are notorious for being unstable. The water coming and going often has fast currents and causes the silt on the bottom to shift around a lot making shoaling. This meant that even though our charts said we should have plenty of depth under us, we might still run aground on one of these unexpected shoals.
Mayport Inlet (Jacksonville FL)
Running Aground
Just as we started making the turn south toward the ICW we saw a sailboat. I noticed that it had its sails open and also had smoke coming from the back, most likely from their engine. I didn’t think much of it at first but as we got closer, I started to realize that it wasn’t moving. This could only mean that she was grounded.
We were on a course that would put us right through where this sailboat was stopped so we quickly slowed down and turned to get further away. Just as we did, we felt it. Bump! Ever so slightly, we touched the bottom of the river with the bottom of our boat. We quickly reversed and moved away from the shoal. Seeing the stuck sailboat and reacting quickly saved us some possible boat damage and getting stuck. It didn’t help much with the pucker factor though.
Jason Driving
Doing Circles
Despite our nerves being completely wrecked, we made our way down the ICW with very little stress from that point on. We actually went faster than we had expected so we ended up in front of the Palm Cove channel about 3 hours before we could go into it. Since we had not successfully anchored at that point, we decided to just spin circles outside their channel. When the tide got high enough, we made our way into their channel and successfully docked.
Circling Palm Cove Marina
Palm Cove Marina
It was our first real planned trip as sailors and we felt great. We might not have known everything we could have and we made some mistakes but we did it and it was awesome! We would stay for just one night then be on our way to St Augustine in the morning.
