G3 Lungun Island to Blue Springs, FL

 We spent the night at anchor behind Lungun Island. There was still plenty of traffic on the river….everyone heading back to their homes or marina after the boat parade.
Larry called this morning. They were ready to leave whenever we got there. We upped anchor and headed their way.
Decided to go to Blue Springs and see the Manatees. There is a side creek just past the springs where we can anchor and dingy to the Springs.
The weather has been warm the last few days so there wasn’t a great number of Manatees in today. As the temperatures drop the numbers will increase. It was still fun to see the ones that were in.


The grey along the edge is a clay bank. The Manatees were enjoying rolling around in it. Made the water cloudy…but still beautiful.


The babies are the most popular and get a lot of “ooohs and aaahhs”.


They now show a video explaining why and how they track the Manatees. I only saw the last part but it would be worth watching.
Larry’s dingy motor quit on the way to the Springs so we towed them down and back.
Did I finally get a smile out of Jim? I was holding the tow rope and this is what happens when you zig when you should have zagged.

Diane and Larry enjoying their tow. Turns out it was a faulty spark plug. Once he replaced it ….it ran like a top.

Didn’t see any Manatees on our way back. Several swirls in the water but nothing surfaced.
We closed up against the bugs and watched a movie…..then off to bed.  A nice night. Not cold…not hot..not muggy. It just can’t get much better than this.

Aground

This should have been in the last post. I was going to add it to it…but then everyone who had already read it…wouldn’t see it.

After Larry and Diane left Silver Glen Springs….Jim and I were swinging on our own anchor. One thing never changes when boating…things can always change and you have to be on top of it. We Weren’t.

When we anchored…we were nose to a sand bar…we never gave it a thought after Larry left. The wind swung us around and we were still crossways of the anchorage.  But it wasn’t the wind against the current that was keeping us that way.

Jim was scrubbing the dirt off the boat and I had finished cleaning inside…and decided to go snorkeling…I looked under the boat to check the prop and realized the keel was on the sand bar….we were “aground”.

I was walking in waste deep water…pushing, pulling, tugging…nothing.  Jim put the anchor in the dingy and took it way out into deep water. I pulled on the anchor and he pushed with the dingy…didn’t work.  We could move it sideways…but not forward….let all the anchor rode out and both got on the bow and shoved…It worked!!! We were in the channel…let it drift into deeper water…hauled in the anchor and moved to another spot.

Guess that’s what we get for laughing at Larry and Diane’s “Christmas Wreath”.