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Wednesday, 07 April 2004 06:54 |
It is April 3, 2004 and
Mast Confusion is ready to be moved from Whitney's Marine in Orange
Park, Florida to it's new home at the Amelia Island Yacht Basin in
Fernandina Beach. The weather in CT is cold and wet, down here it is
warm and sunny.
The truck ride down from CT was
uneventful, a good thing, and Whitney's has done an excellent job
rigging her and installing a new air conditioning system. It is 7:00 AM
and we slipped the last line, slowly back out of the slip, turning the
boat up the St. John's River.
Our 1st bridge has a vertical
clearance of 65 feet, no problem, Mast Confusion only has a mast height
of 45 feet. As we slip under the bridge, my crew, Larry, Bob & Ron
lean out from under the bimini, look up and and suddenly develop a
worried look on their face. They wince as we go under, and then the
discussion centers on the fact that Mast Confusion clearly has a mast
taller than 45 feet. In unison they explain how little clearance we
had. I explain their fears were unfounded, we had plenty of clearance
and their inexperience passing under bridges was caused by a depth
perception. My crew clearly disagrees with me and open their 1st beer.
It is 8:00 AM.
The remaining bridges are either opening
bridges or their fixed height is much greater that 70 feet, so the
topic of mast height is put aside. I make a note to check the boat
specifications when I get home.*
Beer and chocolate cookies
go well in the early morning air. Passing the Naval Air Station in JAX,
(NAS JAX), I use my cell phone, that's right cell phone, and call the
Main Street Bridge. I explain to the operator that we will need them to
open for us in about an hour. Because the bridge is being repaired for
the upcoming Super Bowl, they require at least a full hours notice.
After
passing through the City of Jacksonville (JAX), and all of it's
bridges without incident, I estimate the trip to the Sisters Creek
Bridge, the entrance to the Inter Coastal Waterway, will take until
about noon.
Much to my surprise, exactly as planned, I call
the bridge tender on the ship's radio, and the span opens at noon.
How's that for piloting?
Passing under the bridge, we enter the Intra-Coastal Waterway, called the "Ditch," by some.
The
scenery changes immediately. The houses and industry which crowd the
river banks along the St. John's River are gone as we enter the
undeveloped marsh of the waterway. Much to my surprise for the 1st
several miles navigation is easy as the waterway is well marked and
there seems to be plenty of depth. Navigation on the waterway is
relatively easy, red day markers on your left going north and on your
right going south (south is considered going home). It gets a little
complicated when you enter or pass through a sound or inlet area where
conventional buoys take precedent. It is pretty easy to remember, if it
is on a pole, it's a day marker follow inter coastal rules. If it is a
floating marker, conventional navigation rules take precedence. There
are however, some minor exceptions.
As we enter Nassau
Sound, no longer a navigable inlet, there was one small red floating
buoy way off in the distance on my starboard side. Nassau Sound used to
have a navigable inlet to the ocean. It has been closed for years and a
new low non-opening bridge with a clearance of maybe 15 feet has been
built across the inlet. Remember, this is a non-navigable inlet and
there is no need for conventional buoys, or so one would think!
As
we enter the sound the Intra-Coastal Waterway day markers are clearly a
little off my port side. Even a prudent skipper would head towards
them. "No, No." I had been warned. Look for the "little" floating Nun
to your starboard and give it a wide berth on your port. The operative
word here is "little." Had I not been warned I would not have seen the
"miniature" buoy and probably would then had the opportunity to check
my new bottom paint. The water to the left of this little buoy is only
2 feet at low tide, and the tide was falling rapidly.
Although
there was some minor issue with the day markers along the next several
miles, we passed under the Amelia Island bridge at about 2:30 PM and
immediately turned right into the channel leading to the Amelia Island
Yacht Basin. By then the tide was well out and we delicately passed
through some soft mud on the way in.
Not bad, we had
traversed about 18 miles of waterway and 17 miles of the St. John's
River and hadn't touched bottom except for a few feet of the last 100
yards. Based on what I have heard, that was a successful 1st trip in
Florida, the shallow water state.
We back into the slip,
secure the lines, as members of the Amelia Island Sailing Club gather
around and we open the bar in earnest.
*Editor's note:
At
the beginning of this report, I stated that the crew was unnecessarily
alarmed by the 65 foot clearance of the 1st bridge we passed under.
Well a subsequent check of the boat specifications revealed that Mast
Confusion's mast is not 45 feet above the water line, but approximately
62 feet. Counting the added height of the antenna, and wind anemometer
we had less that 2 feet clearance!
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Last Updated ( Thursday, 05 July 2007 14:49 )
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