St. Johns River

Up at a comfortable time for our departure to the St. John's River. The port of Jacksonville is extremely busy; tugs, tankers,  warships, recreational boats, all compete for the same waterway space. gets kinda interesting at times. Some rules to remember; "green right going", "red right returning",  "triangles on the land side", "weight is right", "one whistle pass', or "two whistle pass"; sometimes expressed as"see you on one, cap'n". All this while watching the depth finder, the chart, and the plotter. Anyway, off Scooter went; down Sisters Creek, took a right into the St. Johns River and into the maelstrom of boating traffic. Hard to believe you can get a tingle at 8 kts; but, trust me, it can happen. Finally thru the commercial docks into the city proper, we found that the FEC RR bridge, normally open, was having a problem and was closed to marine traffic. So we milled around for 45 minutes in the current. " FEC bridge, MV Scooter, got any idea when you might open?"" We're working on it, Cap'n; be a few minutes" Funny, that's what he said 30 minutes ago. All of a sudden; up it goes; Great big ol' rusty hunk of iron and gears acting like a jack-in-the-box. Hope whatever the problem is has nothing to do with the mechanism that keeps it open. Past that issue. on down to Dr's Lake Marina for diesel/ice, etc. Out of there, past the Navy Air Base ( under a navy C-130 doing touch and goes):kinda cool. Oh, forgot; we are now stuck in this river until they fix that bridge. Altho' I see in today's CG notams that they may have changed the maintenance dates. Ah, well; press on. On down the river to Black Creek.

This am decided to take a quick side trip, and run up said creek; just to explore a bit, ya know; sort of gives us bragging rights. We did it in fairly good form; came back down the creek, under the bridge, back into the main river. A word about bridges; Most, but not all, bridges over navigable waterways have height boards attached to the bridge fenders ( part you can hit, Chuckie, but not hurt the bridge). the chart will say Horiz cl x# of ft; vert cl x# of ft. Thinking captain will know his/her clearance limits. What sometimes happens is that the board gets so crudded up that it is illegible; Combine that with an unusual tide situation, a non-thinking captain, and .... I gotta tell you, it makes a terrible noise. What is really fun, is when a bull-headed bridge tender tells you that there is x number of ft of clearance, and you can go thru; sometimes they lie; Same horrible noise!

That all said and done, Scooter rumbled down the river to Clarks Creek, our current anchorage for the night. Tomorrow we will move on down to Palatka, FL, docking there 'til the 21st or so. We'd like to explore the river further south, but since there is no fuel available may have to adjust the plan a bit

Hope all is well in your worlds. catch you on the flip side.