Wednesday, October 31, 2018

St Augustine - at a dock

Sunrise at the Jacksonville free docks, we're still the only boat there
We started the day off with a  beautiful sunrise! I must have taken a dozen photos but only chose one to show in the blog. It was another perfect day for traveling with flat water and very little wind. Unfortunately, the perfect day was not to be. After crossing the St Johns River just after leaving the Jacksonville free docks, I saw completely different buoyage than I was used to. The channel was on the right going south and not on the left as it was in the past. I entered hesitantly and that was a mistake. I was paying great attention to the buoys and not enough attention to the depth sounder. We came to a sudden halt in what SonarChart said was 10 ft of water at MLW but I found 4.5 ft! I had cut the green buoys too closely. To pass in deep water, you had to favor the red side through the first three red buoys. For that reason, there's no track uploaded tonight until I can edit it to show a passage free of shallow water. It reinforces my motto, "I make all the mistakes first so you don't have to!"

There's the pesky piling that's barely above water G23
in Pablo Creek
So beware of the entrance to Pablo Creek after crossing the St Johns River going south. The buoys placements will not match your charts and don't cut the greens. SonarChart will help you find the deep water here. We backed off and by looking at SonarChart, continued onward to deeper water and back to the ICW.

One of Ann's favorite places to shop in St Augustine, the table cloth shop
In addition to that piece of trouble, there was an old post barely showing above water opposite G23 in the channel. Go slow to see it. Otherwise, everything was fine. We're at a dock in the St Augustine Marina for the night. We will take off for Daytona in the morning and then it's on to Titusville on 11/2!

6 comments:

SV Puffin said...

Bob,
Glad you made it down safe so far. I am very interested in the next part of your journey as we will be making the trip from Titusville to St. Augustine in December.
Pat and Kathy A9

Bob423 said...

I will have a track for you by end of day 11/1 for downloading, plus comments.

Unknown said...

Where do I find the track?

Bob423 said...

Unknown, all the tracks from New York to Titusville, FL are available at
http://bobicw.blogspot.com/

Unknown said...

OK, I see that site, but not the track coming south from St Johns River to St Augustine. Is that perhaps the "T-10_31_18.kmz TBD" listed in the descriptions?

Bob423 said...

Unknown, yes it is. I messed up that track so I didn’t post it yet. I need to edit T_10_31_18.kmz and it’s taking more time than I thought. I’m still working on it. I’m finding that a good track editor is hard to find.