December/January - The Archimedes remained at Birkman Plaza Marina in downtown Jacksonville for a month while we were in and out taking care of personal business and holiday visits. It was a nice marina with good security fence on the dock and a nice fenced dog walk area for Radar. But that was about it, as they had no other amenities at all, ie: showers and laundry. We did spend a great deal of the time while we were there walking and exploring old downtown Jacksonville.
The University of Tennessee Volunteers were playing in the TaxSlayer Bowl while we were there. My son along with a few other family members came to town for the game and visited for an evening.
We departed Jacksonville January 25th heading for the ICW on solar power, riding the out-going current. Our first stop was within site of Cable Stay Bridge between Reddie Point and Williams Island putting us in good position to head north, back to Amelia Island to pick up our solar passage where we left off when we kicked in the diesel and booked it to Jacksonville in the rain back before Christmas.
January 26th - It was a cold and windy day (16-20 mph). We waited for the current to turn in our favor and we departed on solar power at 3:10 pm heading toward Mayport and beyond.
The St. Johns River is a very busy commercial highway.
The next day we got a little earlier start and had a good run. All the planets and the moon aligned for a record setting pace down the St. Johns river where we were running up to 8 mph on solar propulsion. That's what happens when the sun, wind and current are all going our way!
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We dropped anchor at sunset at a place called Great Marsh Island.
We continued northward the next morning around noon. It turned out to be a very windy day with us trying to move into the current. It was also seriously cloudy making it hard to keep up any kind of decent speed so we dropped anchor at 4:30 pm in Walker Creek off the South Amelia River. It looked like a nice spot off to the side of the ICW but you just never know....
This is the Arc when we dropped anchor and went to bed.
Now here is what we looked like in the morning! Although we had both a forward and stern hook set in anticipation of the tidal swing, we dragged our stern hook and the wind blew us up onto the bank at high tide.
We were just stuck on the bank with a little incline when we woke up
but this is how we looked at low tide.
but this is how we looked at low tide.
A view looking down from the bow...where's the water? LOL
Obviously, we spent the morning waiting for the tide to come back and float the boat...so to speak. We weighed anchor at 1:00 pm and headed on up the ICW. We had a good day, arriving at Fernandina Beach at 5:30 pm and put ourselves in good position to beach the Arc as planned for the task of painting the freeboard. With the sides of the Arc looking pretty battle weary after two seasons of cruising, we couldn't resist the opportunity to take advantage of such a good beach for this job. A 5' tidal change gave us several high and dry hours to prep and paint.
