March 27 - St. Johns river and St.Augustine

Tanker on St.Johns river

Today we crossed the St. John's river, which leads to Jacksonville. We very nearly ran aground, again through confusion with the charts. The ICW route sort of spits you out into these larger waterways, so that from meandering down a narrow, quiet creek we were suddenly thrust out into a big river, with a "secure area" naval vessel on one side, a huge tanker crossing right in front of us and blocking our route, and no room to manouever. So we bobbed about in one spot after clearing out of the secure area and waited for the tanker to move. A SeaTow inflatable came up and asked if we were ok. We thanked him and told him we were just waiting for the tanker to move. Once the tanker had moved out of our path we found it blocked by piles of rocks right where our path should be! So we decided to skirt them to the east and bypass them that way. We hadn't gone too far when the SeaTow vessel came roaring up to us and told us that if we kept going the way we were going we would aground! We thanked him profusely and told him our charts were wrong. With hindsight, I think maybe I read the charts wrong! It was very nice of him. The St.John's is a pretty busy river and Chris counted 5 tankers passing in the time we were there.
We also went through St.Augustine, the oldest European city in North America. There is an old fort, and the old part of the city has a lovely Spanish look to it. We had to wait for the Bridge of Lions to open. It's schedule has been erratic for the last couple of years as they are repairing it, and have a temporary one in place, but it was only half and hour wait, so not too bad.
After anchoring south of St.Augustine we figured out we had done just under 55 miles, so not too shabby.