| First Day: Little Marsh Anchorage, St. John’s River to Matanzas River Anchorage Distance: 48 nm/Time: 8 hrs |
Second Day: Matanzas River Anchorage to New Smyrna Anchorage. Distance 48 nm/Time 8 hrs
The next two days were all about currents. While doing my route planning at the Little Marsh Island anchorage, I had noticed something rather alarming! About seven miles away–a couple of miles into the ICW–there was a bridge called the San Pablo-Atlantic Boulevard Bridge.
The bridge itself wasn’t an issue–it was a 65′ tall, fixed bridge. It was the bottleneck of the waterway underneath it and the resultant current that was an issue. In fact, the current can be so strong underneath it there that it has its own current forecast. Imagine my shock when checking it out to see that the next morning the current was going to be 6 knots against me! That would be right at 11:00 am, but there would be a head current starting by about 8:30 am building steadily to 6 knots at 11:00 am. And, I was sure that the current didn’t just start right there at the bridge, but to a lesser degree probably existed for a mile or two approaching the bridge, too. This meant that if I didn’t get there early enough, I might get caught in an ever-increasing current that made passage for me impossible. At my cruising speed of 5.5 knots, I might actually be going backwards! I therefore felt that I needed to pass under that bridge by 8:30 am at the latest, or I might have to wait many hours for the current to slacken again. And since there were no anchorages nearby, “waiting” meant motoring in place to keep from going backwards! And that delay would likely prevent me from making that night’s anchorage by nightfall.
However, getting to the bridge by 8:30 was not a simple matter! It was about 7 miles away, so only an hour and 20 minutes assuming no current. With the likely head current approaching the bridge, though, I’d prefer to leave much earlier, like 6:00 or so just to play it safe. (Navigating in the darkness down the huge St. John’s wouldn’t be as hazardous as it typically is in the narrow ICW). The problem was that the St. John’s river also had a strong current that was flooding that morning until just after 7 am, meaning that until then, I would be fighting a 2-knot current to get to the ICW, making my ground speed 3.5 knots!
So, it wouldn’t do me any good to start down the river until 7 am, but that only gave me 90 minutes to go 7 miles, which meant I’d have to average about 4.7 knots the entire way. The unknown in all of this was the current in the initial stretch of the ICW after I turned off the river south into the ICW. If that was flowing north into the St. Johns, I was probably not going to make it. But, there was no way to know, so nothing to do but go for it.
I weighed anchor at 6:45 and entered the river proper right at 7:00 am. Unfortunately, there was still a head current, so I was initially only making about 4.5 knots. But, as predicted, the tide began slacking and my speed slowly increased to 5.5 knots as I approached the south turn into the ICW. I was very pleasantly surprised to see my speed actually increase to about 6 knots for awhile as I turned south. That was good because when I started approaching the bridge in question, my speed started dropping again. The current had started a bit earlier than predicted, but I managed to pass under the bridge at 8:10 with a ground speed of 4.5 knots, thankful to have made it through at all! Even with only a knot current at the time, it was formidable to see the bottlenecked water surging through the small opening beneath the bridge. I couldn’t imagine it at six knots! Crazy.
The rest of the that day and the following day was a sleigh ride. I had a following current with me the entire two days. It was miraculous (and much overdue, I must say)! lol. Completely opposite experience of my journey north back in June. The timing was just right for the various inlets I had to pass by.
Picture a typical inlet coming in from the Atlantic perpendicular to the ICW. When the tide is flooding, water from the sea comes in the inlet, then splits both north and south into the ICW. If you are south of the inlet and heading south, you get a helping current. If you are north of the inlet heading north, same thing. But, if during the flood you are south of the inlet heading north, or north of it heading south, you get the current in your face. The opposite happens on an ebb tide, when the water drains from the ICW into the Atlantic. The tricky part is knowing where the dividing line is between one inlet and the next. Combine that with the flood and ebb tide coming at different times everywhere, and you can see how difficult it becomes to predict a current anywhere other than close to an inlet.
But, for the next two days, I seemed to pass every inlet southbound at exactly the right time. I would approach the inlet on an ebb tide, and as I passed, the tide would change to a flood, so I continuously had a following current, or at least a slack current. I was seeing anywhere from 6.5- to 7.5-knot speeds with occasional peaks past 8. It was awesome!
What it meant in practical terms was that I could go twice as far as I planned both days. Using my 30-miles-per-day ICW rule when I’m doing multiple days in a row, I had planned to anchor the first night at Pine Island. But, I blew past that at 11:00 am and decided to head for the second night’s intended anchorage, Matanzas River, which I made with ease by 3:00 pm! (There was no other anchorage close or I would have kept going for another hour or two.)
The same thing happened the second day when I blew past what was supposed to have been my third night’s anchorage mid-day and pushed past even my fourth night’s intended anchorage all the way to New Smyrna Beach, south of Daytona. I had shaved two whole days off my planned trip! Awesome! The anchorages were easy, the weather sunny and in the 60’s, and the area familiar. I was confident of making it to Titusville the next day, and actually had to call the Titusville marina to see if my slip was available a day early! (It was.)
Alas, however, the following day was not to be so easy. It was time to pay my dues. 🙁