October 17, 2015

St Johns River , FL day 2 10.13.15

We wanted to get across Lake George before the wind picked up so we were up early. Jim started the generator and made coffee while I made the bed back into a couch and we hauled up the anchor and headed out.

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As we approached Astor, FL we spotted buoys in the water that said slow speed…no wake…they were not there the last time we were here. Looks like they put plywood across the front of this building to keep wakes out.

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We traveled slowly so we didn’t put water where it shouldn’t be.

Our trip up Blue Creek was beautiful. Lots of trees with color.

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Nice view with your morning coffee..

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We call this “Bubba’s Island”. It is at the N end of Blue Creek. Bubba was a big gator that sunned there. It is under water now.

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You can just see the gates to Lake George…nice and flat…

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The gates are the entrance to the marked channel across.

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The birds had fun flying around us…guess they were hoping we’d get the fish moving.

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Here are a couple pages from Tom Krants “Boating and Cruising Guide to the St Johns River”.  If you plan to spend any time here you should have one…ours was from 1995 and is still pretty accurate. Page on R is Lake George..diagonal line from bottom to top is channel. Page on L is above Lake George.

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Because the lake was flat it took us a little less than 2 hrs. to cross. This can be a bad ride if the wind kicks it up..

Welaka has a city dock that you can tie up to…it’s a short walk to Shrimp R Us. After a nice shrimp lunch we headed back to the boat and are planning to anchor at Salt Springs. On the L page above you can see the Salt River Run to the L of Salt Cove.

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We spotted this marker on the channel of the lake…don’t remember seeing it before..looks like a weather station. Birds like it.

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While we had lunch the wind started roughing up the lake. Trip down Little Lake George was a bit lumpy. But when we turned into the wind heading to Salt Cove and Salt River Springs it got rougher since we were heading into the waves.

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This link will show you part of the ride.   https://youtu.be/502iQaWDj8A   I don’t know why I cannot post the video like I used to.

The entrance to Salt River Run…it’s about 4 miles to the springs where we’ll anchor.

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Once out of the wind it was pretty smooth going.

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There were only 2 fishing boats at the springs…we anchored near the main spring out of the wind. Nice night at anchor.