Friday….we are hauling out.

I got up early and rowed the dog in for a walk. I had my camera with me. As soon as I got back in the dingy I noticed a disturbance in the lily pads. A gator had caught a fish and was trying to swallow it by tossing his head in the air.

If you enlarge the picture you can just see the fish’s tail sticking out of the side of his mouth.

I took this last night. A beautiful sky after a long hard afternoon rain.  It turned out beautiful.

We had no problems either launching or loading. Guess we’re getting that part down pretty well. As soon as we have the smoking problem fixed we’ll be back on the water for another trial run.

Thursday…

Well…we had a good day, yesterday, with the improvement in the amount of smoke. It wasn’t bad..but I had to open my mouth and suggest another little “tweak” might make it go away completely… Boy was I ever wrong. We never did get the good combination back. 

We spent the night at G 109. We both watched a couple of gators fight. At least that’s what it looked like. One raised himself up out of the water and bellowed. About 4 more showed up and the next thing we knew…two of them were sure churning up a bunch of water. I grabbed the camera but only got a lot of splashing. Here are 3 of them. You can see the one on the L is still posturing.

On the L of the picture you can see the tail  and then to the R is the head of the same alligator. Pretty good sized. You can just see the back of another on the R and in the center there is another head. He’s a bit smaller. 

Makes you want to go right out and jump on a pair of water skis…..huuuummmmmm

Wednesday a.m. moonlight cruise

We had gone to bed early and I woke up around 1:30 a.m. Decided to make coffee and read for awhile. Jim woke up a bit later and we decided to head S. The moon was bright and the sky fairly clear. A nice night for a cruise. We rolled up the side curtains for better visibility. We had seen the ends of some logs on the outer edges of the river and wanted to be sure we stayed in the middle.

Around 6 a.m. we passed Ron and Karen’s boat and got a call on the cell a few minutes later. They were anchored on the side of the river  only a few miles from G 109 so we continued on down.  After a few hours sleep. Jim made another adjustment. MUCH less smoke, so we cruised back up to visit for awhile. 

After watching all the gators cruising around…you wouldn’t think anyone would want to water ski unless they could stay up.

Tuesday…it still smokes

The engine seems to be running fine…but it smokes. Jim has made several adjustments and we can’t seem to find the right combination. We cruise…then anchor and wait for the engine to cool down….make another adjustment.

The gators near G109 are plentiful. It is our favorite gator watching spot. Jim saw a gator fight or mating. Not sure which. But there was a lot of splashing in the water and loud grunting noises. We’ve seen several that seem to be pairing up.

It is breeding season and you need to be wary. I try not to go too close to an area I think might be a nesting site. Mommas can be pretty nasty if they are guarding a nest.

Monday thru Friday on the St Johns River

We launched the boat on Monday morning. We cruised out onto Lake Monroe, shut down and drifted until we got the dingy inflated and everything stowed. Our vacuum cleaner makes short work of inflating and deflating. The new engine was smoking, but we had expected there to be some. At least until the stuff all the parts were cleaned with etc. had burned off.

The Osprey love to nest on the markers. Here are 2 youngsters.

Look at the face on this little one.

And here comes Momma.

Once every thing was stowed and we’d taken a few minutes for a cool drink of water, we headed N on the river. To our surprise….we spotted a houseboat with a pontoon boat tied along side.  We only know one couple who use a pontoon boat for a dingy…Ron and Karen!! We tied along side and had a pleasant evening visiting with great friends.

It is really a great idea, towing the pontoon boat. They can anchor where they want and explore in comfort.

We spent Monday night at anchor with Ron, Karen and Bob. Tuesday they are  heading S and we are going to go N.  We’ll meet on the return trip.