Friday - April 29, 2011

Lat 29 53 53 Long 81 18 55; fuel 199 gal; eng 734 hrs

Left St Augustine this morning at around 8:15 am. The goal was to get to Fernandina Beach where we thought we would anchor for the night. When I phoned the City marina last night I was told there was no room at the inn because it was a local shrimp festival this weekend. Brenda phoned again this morning and they had a spot so we took it.

One thing I noticed is that the boaters with fast boats are a lot more polite in North Florida, they slow down before passing so that their wake does not almost turn the boat over. Well, that's most boaters. There were a few today that just flew by and unless you turned into the wake quickly, stuff was being thrown all over the place. In one case, an idiot ran by me and I turned quickly into his wake. Unfortunately, he was coming up on the port side where it was shallower water. Since he was on plane, he really was not too concerned about the shallower water. However, as I turned into his wake I noticed the rapidly decreasing depth and almost ran aground. This was one of several boats traveling together, all traveling fast but separated by a half mile. Could tell they were traveling together because they were constantly chattering on channel 16. The last of the boats radioed me that he was passing and I told him I would slow down so that he could do a slow pass. His response was that I didn't to slow down for him. I told him, I wasn't doing it for him. I wanted him to slow down so I wouldn't get waked. he thought I was an old grouch. Too bad.

The area that we traveled through today reminded me of cottage country along the Trent Severn waterway - lots of tress with the cottages set back a bit from the water with their boats out front.

AS we got close to Fernandina Beach, I came around a corner and was in the middle of the channel and ran aground. Thump and there we were - stuck. I really didn't know where the channel was as I was inside the green buoy. There were no red markers showing that there was a shoal there. I decided to wait until the tide rose a bit and I hoped that some boat with some local knowledge would come by and show me where the channel was. Luckily we were on a rising tide and after about 20 minutes a boat did come by and the channel was a lot closer the green side of the channel than I thought. The channel was very wide. I managed to back out once tide raised the water level and we went on our way.

We finally made the marina and settled in. Took a walk around the city and found that the heart of the shrimp festival was right in the marina area and it was not a little festival. They had all sorts of stands selling cooked shrimp and fish. There is music and tomorrow there will be a craft and art show. Towards the end of the day, there must have been about 20,000 people in the direct marina area. The end of the evening was celebrated with a firework show which was one of the best I have seen in a long time and best of all the fireworks were being set off about 1/2 mile behind our boat so we had a prime seat for the show.