Day 99 to Green Cove Springs Marina

First, let's start with a picture taken very early this morning at Georgetown. The picture was taken from Lucky Us showing the full moon reflecting in the St. Johns River with the dingy at the bottom. Both of us stayed up way too late last night so the day was a really laid back trip enjoying the wonderful scenery. We covered the 61 miles in about 7.5 hours. We made good time partly because we had a 1+ mph down stream current until we got to Palatka, which was the stop on our first night on the way up river. Then below Palatka, the river widened out to about a mile and we "lost" the current so we slowed down from 9.3 to 8.0 mph.

There is a high fixed bridge across the river in Palatka, and it was under going an inspection. There is a truck out of view on top of the bridge. The truck has 3 arms -one out, one down and one in under the bridge. There were 2 men in the bucket at the end of the arm, and one of them was relaxed enough to wave... As for me, I would put this job on my "no way" list. Anyway, I resisted the temptation to blow the horn... Nationally, we hear so much news about unsafe bridges that it was interesting to see one actually being inspected.

This picture shows Lucky Us at the dock at Green Cove Springs (City) at Reynolds Marina. The pier is indeed very high off the water (about 10 feet). Why so high? Well, this city took over an old Navy dockyard. There are eleven 2,000 foot long piers that are about 500 feet apart. They have a lot of room for expansion to perhaps 3,000 boats. Well, somebody is thinking big!

Okay, so these are "trick' pictures with the dock cleat (above) and the bollard (right) in the foreground and Lucky Us in the background looking tine. However, for scale the dock lines are 3/4 inch 3-strand nylon line. These are the biggest lines that we have, and they were purchased mainly to use during hurricanes. They do look small don't they. I don't know about battleships, but the Navy did bring aircraft carriers in here at one point.

   Tomorrow, we plan to go back to Ortega Landing Marina 25 miles downstream where we will complete out 11 day trip up/down the St. Johns River. It has been beautiful and FUN!