Baptist Hospital Anchorage, Jacksonville, to Little Marsh Anchorage, St. John’s River
Distance: 14 nm/Time: 2 hours.
Once again, today’s travel was a careful balance of tides, current, daylight, and weather.
The current in the St. John’s was the first obstacle. It was going to be a flood tide until about 10 am, which meant that it wouldn’t even be worth leaving before then as I’d be heading into a 3-knot current the entire 22 miles (which would result in me moving over the ground at 2.5 knots, which would take almost 10 hours!)
The second limitation was the distance to a suitable anchorage. Had I been able to depart at daybreak with no current, I could have made it to a suitable anchorage miles down the ICW. But, not being able to depart until 10 am killed three hours of daylight. That meant that I’d have to find an anchorage much sooner, and the only appropriate one that I was sure would have room was only 14 miles away along the St. John’s river, about halfway back to the inlet.
If I waited until 10 am, I would have the current with me, but that was right when the cold front was forecast to come through with strong, cold southwesterly winds and rain. It was supposed to be past by 1:00 pm or so, with the winds veering to the northwest. It didn’t seem like there was any way I was going to avoid being in the weather if I were going to make the anchorage in the daylight. As always, I also wanted to leave enough daylight to make it to a secondary (but smaller) anchorage closer to the ICW if for some reason the primary was inadequate or full.
So, I decided to depart at noon, which would give me a following current, but hopefully only expose me to the worst weather for an hour or so, and would allow me to do the anchoring process after the front had passed. Seemed like a good plan…..
And, for the most part it was. The wind was strong and cold, but the rain was thankfully rather sporadic. Weighing anchor required me to motor toward the anchor for the first time since my first experience at Currituck Sound, because the wind and current were both pushing the boat against the anchor. But, it wasn’t an issue. I eventually got into the channel, called the adjacent drawbridge for an opening, then just put the boat in neutral and floated downstream at 3 knots toward the bridge while waiting for it to open. After that, I hauled butt downstream at 7-8 knots with a wonderfully following current. It was definitely windy, by it was mostly at my back.
After only two hours, I was approaching the anchorage. The wind had picked up and was gusting very strong. And this is where it got quite challenging–actually the most challenging anchoring I’ve experienced so far. The turn into Little Marsh Anchorage was to the north/northwest, which by this point is where the winds had veered to, so there was quite a bit of fetch, producing a 2′ chop. At the same time, the current was very strange. I would have predicted it being lined up with the winds based on the topography, but instead it was coming from the main river–the opposite direction of the wind and waves. This was creating havoc with the boat whenever I’d get slow enough for the wind to start blowing the bow around, the keel would be reacting to the current turning the nose quickly out of the wind. I wasn’t sure which way to set the anchor, i.e., which force was stronger, the wind or the current.
I made numerous approaches at different angles and numerous attempts to keep the nose in a steady direction as I dropped the anchor, but it was obvious that the boat wasn’t going to mind; without someone actively at the wheel holding the boat into the wind, I was just going to have to drop the anchor as quickly as possible and hope for the best. I made sure I had plenty of space away from the other boats (both down current and down wind) coasted to a stop into the wind, and ran forward to drop the hook. By the time I got to the bow, the boat had already turned well past 90 degrees from the wind, but I just let loose and started paying out rode as fast as the windlass would do it. And, because the water depth changed very rapidly from 14 feet to 7 feet in the area I was aiming for, and I couldn’t see the depth from the bow, I decided to worse-case it and let out 125 feet of chain. Attaching the snubber was challenging, but when I finally got it on and paid out, the boat stabilized on a heading halfway between the wind and current. Well, the heading was stabilized, but the boat’s position wasn’t at all. It would move quite large distances as the wind gusts came and went and the hull interacted with the current. I kept the engine running for about 15 minutes as using landmarks and GPS, I was finally able to determine that the anchor had set. I’ve never been so happy to have the anchor hold!
And of course, 30 minutes later the winds died down to about 8 knots and everything was relatively calm the rest of the night. lol