Pretty nice morning with crystal clear skies and temps in the low 60’s. Candy and I did a pretty good walk thru the St Augustine Old Town area. I don’t think she was interested in any of the shops.
I helped Blarney Castle get off the dock because the current was trying to keep them in the slip. We had the tide going out at this time of the morning. The wind was light out of the Northwest but it provided a nice breeze in the cockpit.
Lot of boats headed North and a few cruisers were on plane as they passed us. That set up a pretty good wake that we rolled on. We saw a tow with one barge south of Jacksonville today. That is the first tow we have seen since the Panama City area back in November.
The trip was uneventful until we were about 3 or 4 miles north of the St. John’s River. We had been gaining on a sailboat and they were still about 1/3 mile ahead of us when I noticed they had stopped in the water. As we approached I talked to them on the radio and they were aground. They were in the channel so I tried to go around on their starboard side. Well we got into some shallow water because the wind was trying to blow us to the right. We backed up and then went around on their port side. Fortunately we are on a rising tide for another 3 hours so they will automatically get the help they need. Probably 10 minutes after we passed the sailboat we were passed by a tow headed south. I radioed him and let him know that he was approaching a sailboat aground in the channel. Last we saw he was slowing and almost stopped. I hope the tide was good to them, they were from Montreal (boat name – La Contessa).
The rest of the ride was good but I spent some time on active captain looking at their noted shoaling areas and trying to avoid the spots on the ICW. We also noted 2 Sheriff boats go by us headed north when we were a couple of miles from the sailboat. They must not have stopped to help although both boats were rigged for towing.
John & Deni were on the dock to greet us in Fernandina Beach. They travel a little faster than us and with the sailboat problem they got into Fernandina probably 30 to 45 minutes ahead of us. Always nice to see friends on the dock.
We will be staying here for a couple of days before heading North again.