Back to Cruising – Dolphin Quest! St Johns River Northbound from Sanford to Jacksonville

We’ve been semi-stationary aboard our boat since March of 2020, making Sanford Florida our pandemic home base.

We haven’t been completely stationary though. We’ve been thoroughly enjoying many camping excursions in our van (we’ve managed to visit every state park with camping in Central Florida!).

And we’ve been taking the boat out anchoring down the river or out on Lake Monroe once or twice a month too.

We’ve certainly not been bored.

It’s been a different style of nomadic life for us this past year, getting to know a place like a local – but yet still living in a mobile capable vessel and enjoying defined ‘trips’.

We’ve honestly been really digging it, and we feel incredibly blessed to have built a lifestyle that was perfectly adaptable to what the last year has thrown at us.

But one thing we’ve been missing about our boat life is dolphins. They just aren’t fresh water lovers, so they don’t tend to come down the river this far south.

And the rare times they do (one was rescued in Lake Monroe in 2009), they’re pretty ill.

So with summer creeping upon us, we decided it was time to embark on a more extended cruise aboard Y-Not before we store our boat for hurricane season.

We called the adventure … Dolphin Quest!

The plan was that we’d go north until we reached salt water again, at last back where the dolphins might frolic and play.

Here’s the video version of this travelogue (it kinda feels weird doing travel posts again… let’s hope we remember how!):

Quick St. Johns River Re-Cap

The St. Johns River is Florida’s longest river at 310 miles, starting inland in Indian River County (Vero Beach area) and ending at the Atlantic Ocean in Jacksonville.

It’s a very unique river for this part of the world, in that it flows north. Thus why we say we’re heading north DOWN the St. Johns River.

Albeit the flow is very slow. The drop in elevation over those 310 miles is just less than 30 feet and the flow is less than .3 mph.

Many lakes are formed along the way, and there are several natural springs.

The river has a long history of commercial and recreational use, and there are many small towns and cities along the way. Today, it’s navigable and maintained from Sanford to Jacksonville, suitable for a vessel of our size and even larger.

Many areas the river flows through are protected by national forests, state parks and wildlife preserves, so much of it is still very natural and undeveloped.

Wildlife is abundant – making this trip a very unique adventure.

It’s about 120-140 miles of twisty winding river from Jacksonville to Sanford, with many creeks, springs and lakes to explore as additional side trips. The only way out of Sanford by boat is by returning down river to Jacksonville.

The cities along the way are quaint and small, with limited opportunity for re-provisioning. There are very few marinas, and there are a few free/cheap docks. Diesel, marine services, and waste pump outs are scarce.

So it definitely takes some pre-planning, comfort with anchoring, and being a bit more self-reliant than you get used to than cruising along the intracoastal.

We’ve done the St. Johns a total of 3 times up until now:

• First Trip – Southbound: Back in 2018 we decided to take a side trip off our Great Loop, and we documented it in 3 parts (North, Middle, South). Intending to stay a week in Sanford and turn right around, we instead fell in love with this little city and stayed four months.
• Return Trip – Northbound: We made our downriver trip back to resume our Great Loop in March 2019.
• Pandemic Return: When the pandemic hit in 2020, there was no doubt where we wanted to ride it out. We made a hasty cruise back to Sanford fearing that lockdowns might trap us elsewhere.

We absolutely adore cruising this river. This trip, we wanted to take it slow again and explore new-to-us anchorages that we didn’t get on prior trips.

Stop 1: Emanuel Bend

Just 9.2 nautical miles north of Sanford, this has been our back-up anchorage for when our favorite nearby spot at Butcher’s Bend is otherwise occupied.

For the past year, this has been the furthest we’ve traveled by boat – so we decided to make it our first stop to do a full systems check before departing ‘home’.

While the anchorage isn’t bad, it lacks the seclusion of many of the other stops we were looking forward to.

But you can get safe holding and scope far enough away from the homes on the bend to feel some privacy. And the anchorage is just across from the entrance to the Wekiva River, which is fun to explore by dinghy or paddle board. There’s also a little beach and a trail just north of the bend to get ashore for a little walk.

Dolphin Report: No dolphins seen here yet. But plenty of alligators!

Stop 2: Hontoon Dead River

This is one of our all time favorite anchorages that we enjoyed on our first two St. Johns River excursions – and we weren’t going to miss it this time.

This little river (which is anything but dead – it’s vibrant with life) twists around Hontoon Island State Park. It’s rather narrow and deep, but there are some spots where you can find that magical mix of shallow enough depth and wide enough width to get a safe scope for anchoring.

We love this anchorage because of the natural beauty and seclusion.

During the day, there’s some boat traffic – tours boats from the park, pleasure boaters and fishers. But it’s light traffic, and while the river is technically in a minimum wake zone – not many honor that.

And just a little over a mile away you can tie up for free at the state park’s docks and explore the island’s hiking trails (we love anchorages with land access!). There’s no day use fee, but a conveniently placed donation box.

We ended up staying two blissful nights enjoying paddleboarding, hiking and hot tubbing. Oh, and of course we got in some work to – I actually filmed a new video on Smartphones vs Hotspots vs Routers at this location if you want to learn more about mobile internet options in a tranquil setting.

For those who prefer not to anchor, they do offer overnight dockage at the state park for just $18/night with power & water (yes, that’s $18 flat.. not per foot!).

Dolphin Report: No dolphins seen here, but lots of alligators and pretty sure we spotted a manatee with our forward scanning sonar!

Stop 3: Shell Island aka ‘Party Poop Island’

We decided to check out a new anchorage to us just south of Astor, FL.

The reviews on Active Captain and Waterway Guide noted that after the fishermen leave, it’s quiet and secluded feeling.

I’m guessing none of the past reviewers had been there on a weekend?

The anchorage is tucked behind Shell Island and right along the St. Johns River. But we should have read the telltale signs – if there’s a rope swing, there will be party boats on a lovely weekend.

Our stay started off pleasant and to ourselves, we were pretty giddy actually to have our own deserted island.

We paddled to the island and explored – noting many dirty butt wipes tossed about on the ground (ewwwww, I’ll spare you the photos). I contemplated bringing back a trash bag to clean it up.

But before I could, around sunset, not one but THREE rental houseboats arrived surrounding the island. One encroaching right on our space to get land access.

We moved further away to give them space and us more privacy to enjoy the hot tub, but one of the boats on the island blared obnoxiously loud karaoke (mixed with amplified cursing) until 3am.

We henceforth shall refer to this anchorage as Party Poop Island’. With not much sleep, we were up at the butt crack of dawn to ensure a smooth crossing of the lake ahead of us.

Dolphin Report: We did see manatees and an adorable baby alligator. No dolphins. So north we continue.

Stop 4: Seven Sisters

We had an early morning departure from Party Poop Island so we could cross Lake George before any winds picked up that would cause fetch. At 9 miles wide, things can get messy in this part of the river.

We had a smooth passage, except that our starboard engine would not get up to full RPM when we accelerated to speed across the lake. The engine was topping out at around 1800 RPM (2800 is more normal).

While we drive Y-Not like a trawler at hull speed most of the time, her engines do need to run at near full RPM every so often to blow the carbon build up out – and Lake George is a perfect place to get a good run in on plane.

Everything seemed fine at our normal cruising RPM of 1200-1300, so we crossed the lake instead at hull speed, making the passage more like an hour and a half than a half hour – and would diagnose what was up at our next stop.

Which would be a return to another favorite anchorage at Seven Sisters.

But along the way we made a lunch stop in Welaka, to grab some take-out from Shrimps R Us. We anchored about a mile away at the mouth of the Ocklawaha River and used the free city dock to get ashore.

We enjoyed a nice long walk to stretch the legs in town, since Seven Sisters has no land access.

With plenty of daylight left, we weighed anchor and continued on to Seven Sisters – a delightful little cove that was tranquil & secluded for a couple nights. So needed after the party poopers!

We enjoyed lots of paddle boarding, hot tubbing and even did an impromptu YouTube Live from the cove to share an amazing sunset.

Ahhh – yes, this is what cruising the river is all about. Small towns and lots of nature.

We also started researching all that could be causing our engine to not get up to full RPM. The first obvious step was a possible fuel restriction, so we changed out all of the fuel filters.  Yup, that’s also what cruising is all about – fixing things in exotic locations.

Dolphin Report: No dolphins yet, but we did see some alligators. We’ll soon be getting into the transition zone where salt meets fresh water, and dolphin sitings are more frequently reported.

Stop 5: Downtown Palatka

On previous passes through, we’ve either bypassed Palatka because the winds were wrong or tied up at Corky Bell’s free dock (they frequently grant permission to overnight if you go for lunch or dinner).

So this time, we wanted to anchor off of the Palatka city docks downtown.

Which gave us shore time to stretch the legs after a couple days on the boat.

Palatka’s city docks are free for two nights, and they even have room for a boat our size. But we opted instead to anchor out for seclusion, and utilize the city docks to dinghy shore.

It was a Monday evening on our arrival, which meant only one restaurant was open – which happened to Mexican. We indulged in take-out for both lunch and dinner.

In the morning before our departure, we took a mile-ish walk to the fascinating Ravine Gardens State Park.

Did you even know Florida has a ravine?? It’s gorgeous to walk around – so many trails to explore, and super fun suspension bridges! Apparently in spring time the park is even more amazing with the azaleas in bloom.

Great stop, and a historic downtown with so much potential for revitalization.

On our way into Palatka we tested our engines again – and unfortunately the starboard still wouldn’t get up to full RPM. So it wasn’t a fuel restriction. We posted to the Bayliner Owner’s Forum for guidance, and also got in touch with our friends at Ask Captain Chris (who was also our training captain) and got a list of things to try next.

Chris tried to dive on the prop to see if we had something wrapped around it with no success (way too murky). But we kept hunting for problems, and did discover that a clamp had failed on the hose connecting our turbo to the aftercooler. We got that fixed right up, and we were back in business! Love it when it’s something easy.

Dolphin Report: While Palatka has had dolphin sitings in the past, we saw none this far south. So further north we’ll go!

Stop 6: Palmo Cove

Making our way into the Jacksonville area, the river gets pretty wide from Palatka on out. Which is pleasant cruising on a calm day with little boat traffic, but there are lots of crab pots to navigate.

There’s not too many anchorage choices in this section beyond some coves off to the side of the river. But with limited traffic, and the width of the river here – fetch is generally the only concern if there are strong winds.

We selected Palmo Cove just before Shands Bridge coming into Green Cove Springs (our domicile address for many years), which connects to Six Mile Creek.

We had not stopped here before, but knew of it because of the legendary long free abandoned dock that many have used in the past.

We opted not to go to the dock, but instead just anchor in the cove. And it’s a good thing we did – we took a dinghy ride past the dock, and it’s in pretty awful shape with really no way to get ashore with several missing sections. It’s also clearly marked no trespassing, and the original restaurant is gone and now the land is under construction.

We had a pleasant evening, using the free neighborhood dock to get ashore for a quick walk to stretch the legs.

Dolphin Report: Still no dolphins

Stop 7: Downtown Jacksonville!

Now onto Jacksonville, where we’re hoping to see some dolphins!

We arrived to Jacksonville after our ~130 mile cruise down the St. Johns River, and set the hook at a favorite anchorage off of the Baptist hospital right downtown.

We’re all set to watch for dolphins and enjoy the sites and sounds of a big city – which we’ve not experienced in over a year now.

We turned on the generator for some AC time as the heat wave was coming upon us after a week of delightful spring like weather.

And within 15 minutes, the generator stalls.

And it stalls again after we restart it. Uh-oh.

Our solar and BattleBorn lithium battery system is fine for most general power needs with just an hour of generator needed here and there to keep ahead of the curve.  But anchoring here won’t be fun with the mid-90s temps predicted for the days ahead, as we can only run the AC off of battery for a few hours and then absolutely need a recharge.

Stay tuned for our next entry in the journal where we’ll continue the story of how we solved the problem, our return trip back to Sanford and of course.. did we ever see any dolphins??

General Update

Whew, I forgot how much work goes into sharing travelogues like these. We’re definitely out of practice after our year long hiatus.

So, what’s up in the forseeable future for us?

After a few days in Jacksonville, we made a several day return to Sanford to attend to Kiki having been recently diagnosed with hyperthyroidism.

We got her a Radioactive Iodine i131 treatment last week, that has very good potential to be a cure. We’re blessed to have had friends before us who have been through this, including Nina & Paul who documented it on their blog. So we knew the treatment was the right choice for Kiki.

Thankfully since their experience, more clinics are doing custom doses and we found BluePearl Hospital in Tampa who offers it, and they could get us right in. We’re now a week past treatment, and aside from not being able to cuddle much yet (she’s still radioactive) and having to store her radioactive cat poop – all is going well.

From here, we’re starting to eye leaving the boat stored in Sanford for hurricane season and taking off in the van for some extended road tripping.

We don’t know where we’re heading, but somewhere cooler if we can find it – maybe the Smokey Mountains? The Northeast? Michigan? Colorado?  We’ll likely end up in the fall passing through Arizona to check in on Zephyr and get some bus time before returning to Sanford.

Depending on the state of the world, we may very well continue on our cruising adventures this winter.

But, if last year taught us anything at all, it’s that intentions are just that. Who knows how things will actually come together.