We left our anchorage near Fort Matanzas before daylight to take advantage of the tidal current for after we cleared St. Augustine. On an incoming tide, you are bucking a current from Fort Matanzas up the Matanzas River, through St. Augustine.
We arrived at the Lions bridge as it was making its 0800 opening, which slowed us down a little, because normally we would have been low enough to just slip under the bridge. Since there was a line of boats waiting to get through, we just went through with them at the end of the line.
From the St. Augustine northward, we were riding the current up the Tolomato River. We decided that on the way south, we are going to anchor and explore some of the salt marsh creeks by RIB in the area between statute mile 769 and Pine Island. Later in the day, the USCG reported "possible plane crash" in the Tolomato River, but, evidently that report was false.
The further north, the more "congested" the ICW becomes... that was what the sign on the waterway said... past six miles of houses on the eastern bank. Then the housing turns to pretty extravagant....
We passed under the B. B. McCormick bridge and Beach Marina, where I had picked up Allen for fall break when I was bringing the boat home.
We had the current with us on the ebb tide, flowing north under the bridge at Atlantic Blvd, where the current velocity is notorious. There were a couple of sailboats anchored closer to the St. Johns, waiting for the tide change.
There were also a boat load of young people pulling tandem wakeboarders in the ICW, that were trying to jump wakes and falling down between pretty heavy boat traffic. I suggested to them on the PA that where they were was not a good spot to wake board.
We turned upriver on the St. Johns, and the MERCY made her first trip into Jacksonville. We passed a lot of commercial shipping, a barge ship leaving his pump-out area to return to dredging part of the channel, a container port, and a lot of miscellaneous port traffic. The traffic on one bridge was stopped, or barely moving for as long as we could see it through the binoculars!
There was some event taking place on the right hand bank. It is a little too early for Cinco de Mayo, though that is what it looked like. A little further upstream, we pulled into the free floating dock at Jacksonville Landing, with its restaurants and great smelling food, long enough to wait for a train to pass. After the train passed, we continued on upriver.
Mulberry Cove, the military marina at Jax is located on the western bank, south of the very visible runway and hangars. The ends of the floating docks open to the south, with the easternmost dock being "A" and and the even numbers on the east side of the docks. There is a mooring field to the south. The office is by the NW end, under a flagpole. There is a pumpout, and gasoline on pier E. I imagine this place could get rough in a S to SE wind, but it is great tonight!
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