Jacksonville to the middle of nowhere, Cumberland River

We started out this morning around 8.30am. It was a still, glorious morning at the public dock just outside of Jacksonville. We had debated staying another night, with what looked like a lot of rain coming our way, but we decided to go for it, as far as we could until the rain actually turned up.

 Those white topped poles are the public dock. I was so busy bringing in the ropes and fenders that I almost missed my traditional 'look back' photo!


8.37am, and we are already on the road, after a quick breakfast of scrambled eggs and half a sun kissed tomato each..yum! We had our usual Community Coffee...seriously, this is the BEST coffee!

 It was a gorgeous morning with peeps of sunshine which turned into overcast skies, making photos horrid to take, generally.
The countryside is so flat. This is something we have a hard time getting our heads around. NZ is so mountainous by comparison.
We do love the marshes, without the bugs, of course!

The river banks looked orderly, for the most part, and very green. We were constantly reminded that we were on a river which has tidal fluctuations, being that it runs out to the ocean nearby, and it also floods!

 As you can see...verdant and pretty. Little islands of palm and oak amidst the marshes, dotted all over. I wish the photos showed the gorgeous colors of the marshes, better. They are so varied and lovely. You should hear the ruckus coming from them both morning and night. Some lovely looking birds don't sound too hot!!

See how still the water was this morning. Not a breath of wind! It was Hot, in fact, and I opened all the windows upstairs. We were meandering along here at around 10 knots, with the tide going  our way!

 Every now and then we see signs of life, along the river...some more glamorous than others.

We watched the clouds on the horizon, and after our experience yesterday with a short but sudden rain storm, we decided to stop in the middle of nowhere for the storm to pass and also because we love anchoring out in a creek in the marshes.

It would have been a 7 hr trip all the way to Brunswick, our next destination, but we decided to call it quits after just after 1.30pm today.

We aren't stopping all that often to see 'things' or attractions, right now. We have  a schedule to meet in the short term, being May 9th. I will tell you about that later...when it is all passed, no doubt.

We are officially outside of Florida, so we can basically go anywhere we like now, as the condition of our boat Insurance has been satisfied...we have to be out of Florida between June 1st and November 1st. We needed a month up our sleeves to find a place along the Atlantic coast (inland) where we could be safe in the event of a Tornado/Hurricane etc...large weather event, might have been a better choice of words.

We also need to take our girl out of the water, at some stage and put some antifoul on the props and shalft (I talked about this previously)...so we needed to find a yard where we could live aboard while out of the water. Not every ship yard will allow that.

Anyway...back to progress, today.
Waz joked that some of the docks leading from waterside homes were so far away, that a GPS is needed to find the end!:)

 We call these gulls Dippers, or Paint Pots, coz they look like they have been dipped at the head.

You can see the black dotted line, bottom left, with the boat having just made a right turn. This is the might Nassau River. The arrows indicate that there is a strong current, and this is where we thought we had the tide with us, but didn't! That is the Atlantic Ocean on the far right..the blue strip.

Amelia Island is in Florida, still...I wanted to show you the tortured path of the river.

This is the last bridge we have to go under, in Florida, and the last Rail bridge, a swing bridge, which remains open unless there is a train coming, of course.

We were somewhat surprised to see logging trucks, both full and empty, on the huge bridge...

..and then we spied the wood pulp factories on the horizon.

Just after the bridge was this 'waterside' community. The green building used to be a restaurant called "Down Under'...which I guess makes sense, as it is literally almost under the bridge.

 ...and out the other side...

We just happened to meet this tow on a 90 degree turn...kind of freaked us out, initially, but there was plenty of room to pass...though he worked really hard to straighten his barge for the bridge.

Next up was Old Fernandina Town. This historic town wasn't on our list of places to visit...this time.

 There is a commercial port there, and I was happy as a clam in sand with more than 50 feet of water under us:)

This apparently used to be the original Harbor Master's home...as you can imagine!

There were two guys up on the end of this huge container crane.

 

 On the Cumberland River, this military facility included a Degrausser, which demagnetizes Submarines or ships.
From a distance it looked like a bridge.

 All the wired went underwater across the river...who knows where!

These two submarines were in dock, but closely guarded. There was a female officer on an RIB, steering all civilian boats away from the facility.

 AS I said, like a bridge, from a distance.

 Lots of different boats in the facility

 I believe these are US Coast Guard.

This is the vessel that aggressively herded us up the channel we were taking anyway.

We can still see the building from where we are further up the river.

 More Military boats up a different channel.

There were so many Dolphin out and about today...and so many of them chose to play around us:)

This is the best photo I have yet...The Dolphin was actively watching me!

..and now we are anchored (Parked) up Floyd Creek, while the wet weather washes over us. No wind, just rain, at this stage.

 Pretty marshes are our neighbors tonight.

The sun came out for about and hour, but the humidity was around 80% and the flies eventually found us and made a nuisance of themselves...which meant we had to go inside:(

The only other boat to go past us today!

Since we have been here the tide has gone down some 6-8 feet. We now only have around 5ft under us!:( but we are afloat, lol.

We had another cuppa and a bowl of popcorn. Time to have a short nap, for waz and now some business to do.

Bye for now..onwards north tomorrow!