April 5 Rockhouse Creek New Smyrna to St Augustine 54 7 Miles

9:45 to 7:45 -- a long day, longer than planned. Our plan had been to go to the anchorage by Fort Matanzas on the Matanzas River, only 42.3 miles to break todays trip into two legs. The various sources we use: Skipper Bob, Doyle and Active Captain, have different ideas about how best to enter this anchorage. They all involve turning east into the Matanzas from the ICW but some are crowd sourced and some say to make the turn just south of green buoy 81A while others said to make the turn north of that buoy, and there is a discussion that the sands shift. We turned in just south and went from 12 feet of water to hitting the sandy bottom within 20 feet. Whump! Naturally, in such chancy circumstances we were going slow, as slow as the current in the ICW would allow. But if we had not been making some speed the current would have pushed us backward when we turned. We were able to back off in perhaps 15 seconds. But now we knew that we did not know how to get in there, though we saw another boat anchored within. So this episode took the bloom off the Matanzas anchorage rose and we motored the remaining miles 12.4 miles that we had planned to do the next day, to the Municipal Marinas mooring field in St. Augustine.

The waters were as vacant during this Easter Sunday passage as they had been crowded with people and boats the day before. This may have had something to do with the weather. It did not rain, but all day the meteorologists predicted rain and the skies looked like they were planning to let loose. It was reasonably warm until late afternoon. In the morning the winds were quite strong, gusting to 20 knots, so we flew the small jib while motoring and made more than seven knots. Later we made such speed when favored by the tide but only 4.8 knots when it flowed against us. Someones idea of an unusual waterside home:

It was a bit foggy, misty lets say,  toward the end, diminishing visibility of "the next buoy" which is our holy grail. This reminded me of how dependent I am on the most primitive navigation device we have: the human eye. But the mild fog in the mooring field is what permitted me to capture the loom of the Saint Augustine Lighthouse (one white flash every 30 seconds) at dusk.

We were visited buy a pack of four Porpoises, which swam against our boat on its mooring, probably seeking to eat seaweed growing on our hull, which reminds me she needs a cleaning.  Ilene believes they sensed our cats and wanted to make friends.

We plan to use our dink to run errands and for sightseeing tomorrow, and the launch, which only runs only once per two hours from 10 a.m to 6 p.m., on Tuesday and Wednesday, when the dink will be repaired. Weather permitting, we will sail, outside, to Cumberland Island by the St. Marys River on Thursday. less than 60 miles and ILENEs first sail since Miami to Fort Lauderdale.

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