15 March, 2020 Another calm smooth day on the water

Jacksonville part deux.  43 SM; 6.2 engine hours

Great sleeping in the wilderness surround last night within the confines of Deep creek.  Not a rock of the boat all night and the slight tidal swing was unnoticed.  Bass boats in the creek early, passing slowly abeam Serenity and crew with friendly waves.  Coffee, breakfast and Mending Fences Cowboy church via youtube began our Sunday morning.  Anchor came up relatively clean with no snags at 0920.  Lazy morning for sure.  Back tracking our electronic bread crumbs out of Deep Creek we had no issues returning to the St Johns river.  Clear, nearly calm with rapidly warming temperatures, we pointed the bow of Serenity northward and headed toward Jacksonville, Fl.  Increasing boat traffic as folks began to move about on the water.  Retracing our course made good last week in really terrible conditions.  Today, much more enjoyable and the scenery pleasant.  We passed on our planned anchorage as it was a bit exposed and tomorrow the winds are forecast to pick up to around 10.  So we pressed ahead another 14 miles to the Ortega River which is just south of Jacksonville.  There were no indicated anchorages noted in our boating apps or contained in our hard copy book of East coast anchorages.  But after chart study we figured we could find a place.  Exiting the St Johns river, we proceeded up the narrowing and shallowing Ortega river.  First obstacle was the draw bridge.  Historic bridges  We followed a sail boat through the open bridge.  Closed height seven feet.

Ortega river draw bridge

Charts showed very shallow water either side of the Ortega river channel.  To our surprise once clearing the bridge, sail boats anchoring left and right off the channel.  I am guessing the sail boats need deeper water than Serenity.  We have anchored on the north side of the river in 4'6" at low tide.  Dropped the anchor at 1530, not a lot of scope, but did backdown pretty hard setting the Mantis anchor.  (map) Not a lot of swing room as we are in and among the sail boats.  Heavy wind not forecast tonight.  Splashed the dink, went for a swim/bath in brackish 76 degree water.  Refreshing.  No big water critters spotted.  However, just in front of us about 1/4 mile is two adult eagles and only one juvenile eagle observed; juvenile noted moving around and going to an adjacent big pine and exercising their wings on the limb.  Very cool.  Nice late evening as the wakes began to subside, grilled a couple of burgers, steamed a few veggies and watched the sun fade in high cirrus, altocirrus and cumulocirris.  Marine weather folklore

Evening on the water

1497.3 Hobbs; 2562 SM elasped