Day 98 to Georgetown Marina

Here I am walking down the dock at Hontoon State Park as we prepare to leave for Georgetown some 42 miles down river. We took two "detours" on old cut offs of the river channel. Today we managed to pick wider channels than the one yesterday, and on one we saw this lovely house back around the bend of the river.

This house is totally invisible from the main channel, and it has this great view of a totally pristine river. Back out on the main river we also had miles of travel with absolutely no development, except for the occasional channel marker... 

Today's trip was 42 miles, and the last 10 were across Lake George. The lake is fairly large at 10 by 5 miles. About 2 miles out in the lake, we left the main channel to go over to the west side of the lake where another fresh water spring flows out into the lake. We had to anchor about a quarter mile off shore so that we could take the dingy (literally) into the spring. As I was turning the boat around and the Admiral was using the windlass to lower the anchor, we both managed to "forget" that we were towing the dingy and backed into the tow line. Yup! My worst nightmare - getting something caught in a prop... There was lots of good news in all of this. First, it was only one propeller, and we could have gotten safely to a marina on the other engine. Second, we were safely anchored in warm (90F), calm, shallow water. I decided to use my goggles and have a look at the ropes. It took several dives under the stern, but I was some how able to cut the right line and unwrap them without too much trouble. 

The picture show me holding the 3 pieces of rope from the propeller and shaft. The worst part was the St. Johns River and the connecting lakes are all "black water" or very dark red in color with virtually no visibility. This means that I had to do the work by feeling my way around. I do think that next time (and someday there will be one) that I will break out the scuba air hose for this kind of job.

Once again, there were lots of birds. The Admiral managed to get this closeup of a Red-shouldered Hawk. It was on a piling at the head or landward end of the pier where we were docked at Hontoon State Park.

We had our usual collection of "unusual" sights as well, such as this MG parked on a pontoon boat the has been lifted out of the water. They stopped making MGs back in 1980 so this is probably fairly valuable. I guess that if you are going out of town and don't want your car stolen, then this might be a doubly safe way to store it???

Georgetown and the Georgetown Marina are on the St. Johns River right at the north end of Lake George. This picture shows Lucky Us at the dock and was taken from the dingy as we headed off to a restaurant that was recommended by the marina. The restaurant sign on the dock said that they were open from 8:00 am to 8:00 pm so we docked and walked ashore to the restaurant only to find that they were closed on Mondays...

Well, it has been that kind of day... However, we did pass this cabin with grass/weeds growing on the roof. Too bad it was not for sale as it would be a real "fixer upper".

As we arrived back at our dock for dinner aboard Lucky Us, this was the view back toward Lake George with a (small) full moon just over the horizon on the left. Finally, a very pretty ending to a less than perfect day. In spite of the bumps in the road, we are thankful for each and every day on this fantastic trip!