Wednesday 1 April 2020
When we finally got our act together after breakfast, we got
underway from the bouncy berth alongside the very swiftly flowing St John’s. As we struggled up stream for a couple of
miles to the point where we would turn off the river and reenter the AICW, I
mentioned to Mary that just a few miles up this very river as a child of seven with but one impediment, I first had relatively unimpeded access to a significant body of water and these things
called boats. On more than one occasion,
my harassed mother was required to drive along the road near the apartment
complex we lived in in Green Cove Springs in order to be that single impediment and fetch me from the jaws of
death in an old rotten rowboat several of us had found. Further misadventures afloat continued in
Doctor’s Inlet near Orange Park off the same St Johns River until at age nine we moved to Pensacola. But it was time to pay attention to current
events, and we made the turn into the AICW intending to stop at Saint Augustine
for the night. The marina there is
convenient to food stores and has fuel, but at the moment we needed
neither. The decision was made to press on
another twenty-some miles to Marineland Marina which had neither of these
amenities, but was far cheaper for moorage plus being farther along the way home.
Sometime after we passed Saint Augustine, two significant facts came to
our attention. Firstly, the water level
in Lake Okeechobee has sunk to a level which makes it unsafe to take this boat
through. Secondly, Mary saw on her cell
phone where Florida’s governor will enact a stay-at-home order for all
non-essential persons. I also discussed the
fuel situation with the boat’s owner which before the Okeechobee development had been sufficient to get us the Carrabelle. We
have no real idea how this unprecedented stay-home order will affect the
marinas, but we do know that all marinas in Dade County and the Keys, which we
must now traverse are closed. We called
a car service as soon as we could after mooring at Marineland and got ourselves
to a grocery store and stocked up for the long haul. We also ascertained that a fuel dock 7 miles
south of here will be standing by tomorrow morning to provide us 750 gallons of
diesel to top us off, well before the midnight start of the executive order and
any possible impact it may have on us.
Now if we get stalled along the way we can always anchor and run the
generators for electricity and have plenty to eat. Another interesting fact the owner informed
us of is that the Moorings Marina in Carrabelle, the boat’s intended
destination, will not be allowing any vessels to moor there until the Covid-19
crisis is over. We are so far away from
there right now that the fact we cannot go in there has little impact on
current operations, and the owner has said he may just meet us someplace and
take off from there to wherever he may want to go with the boat. Stay tuned as we are afloat in a sea of
uncertainty.
