St Augustine to Ft George Island - May 17

As the saying goes, “Elvis has left the building”.  We are leaving St Augustine.  After a stop at the fuel docks for some gas and water, we headed north.  Even though the forecast was for 10 to 15 knot winds, it is still gusting to almost 20.  With an incoming tide all of the sailboats are doing maybe 4 to 5 knots against the 2 to 3 knot tidal surge.  As soon as we make the turn onto the ICW, we are doing over 7.  

Our destination today is Fort George Island.  There is a small anchorage near the state park, where we hope to spend the night.  After leaving the city and suburbs, we are now in the marsh lands.  With these areas come the bugs.  Our friends warned of the black flies, but what we ran into were the green head files, which just love me.   Before we moved to Florida, Beth and I went to Long Beach Island, NJ.  We walked down to the beach near the end of the developed area and I went surfing.  I had not been in the water 10 minutes, when I was being bitten by these flies.  Ducking under water did not discourage these creatures.  I finally left the water, and literally ran back to the van.  In the meanwhile, Beth is swatting them off me as she is not getting bitten.   Well at least this time, we had weaponry.  One of Beth’s friends recommended these electric fly swatters which zap the flies.   We are whacking these bugs, which take several hits to kill them.  We finally ran into some civilization and the bugs disappear.

Along the way we pass Mayport NAS (Naval Air Station) and part of the surrounding area is a shipyard.  One naval ship is in the drydock and being refitted as we the photo below details that some of the refit is not for our eyes. 

We finally get to Fort George and I look at the anchorage.  It does not look like a good anchorage anymore.  It appears that the channel and surrounding area has filled in.  I look at the charts and there appears to be a small cut that might do.  We start entering the channel and it immediately shallows. We back out and then check the waterway guide and the charts that Jim and Gail gave us.  We see that there is another anchorage about 5 miles away near Amelia Island.  On the way to this anchorage, we spot a boat that is sitting in a cut just off the ICW.  I look and see that we can sneak back into the channel behind him.  We dropped the anchor and get it set, amidst more green head flies.  We have a beautiful sunset and can see that there is a lot of river traffic.  In just 30 minutes, we see two barges go by.   I set the anchor alarm and wake to the beep, beep, beep that we are dragging at 2:30 in the morning.  We weren’t dragging, just the tidal swing that I had not allowed for when I set the drag distance.   Marina and mooring balls make you forget the nuances of anchoring.