Southbound Cruise on the St. Johns River: Return to Sanford (Dolphin Quest, Part 2)

Thanks for joining along in our return to travelogues! Where we last left you, we had just arrived to Jacksonville after a marvelous cruise down the St. Johns River from our pandemic home base of Sanford.

It’s our first extended trip in over a year, and we’re on a mission to find dolphins!

So, let’s jump right back in and continue the journey. First, the video version:

Stop 1: Metropolotian Park Marina – Jacksonville

Upon arriving to Jacksonville, we set the hook in a favorite anchorage downtown and then our generator stalled out. With a heat wave coming, air conditioning was going to be appreciated.

So opted to weigh anchor and putter over to the nearby Metropolitan Park Marina, which is an amazingly FREE marina for 72-hours. Technically you’re supposed to pay for power at about $8.50/day – but the machine that takes the payment has been inoperable for quite some time.

We had never been, so we were excited to check it out – and it was perfect. We had power while we diagnosed the generator issue, which was an impeller that had shredded. We got the all the bits carefully picked out, and replaced it with a spare.

And then used the time to explore downtown on the e-Bikes – hitting up the Saturday morning market on the way. We enjoyed evening fireworks on deck from the nearby stadium. We got to visit with a high school friend of Chris’ who lives nearby, who also hooked us up with a friend who is with the Coast Guard Auxiliary who performed our annual vessel safety check for us (we passed with flying colors).

We also discovered the Jacksonville Symphony was just one of a handful live orchestras that had been performing during the pandemic nationwide – and their last performance would be Saturday evening. And there were just a couple of tickets left.

We decided it was time to attend our first in person indoor event, and bought balcony tickets. We rode the bikes over, scored rockstar parking on the steps of Jacoby center (there are no bike racks in the area!) – and it was oh so wonderful

Our return to the marina on bike coincided pretty much precisely with slack tide AND the end of our free 72-hours. While there was no one overseeing our stay and no one else in the marina (we had the whole place to ourselves all weekend) – we didn’t want to overstay our welcome of this generosity.

Under the blackness of night, we undocked, re-docked at the free pump-out and then moved back to our downtown anchorage to enjoy an evening in the city lights.

Dolphin Report: No dolphins???

Stop 2: Governor’s Creek – Green Cove Springs, FL

Have I mentioned that our departure from Jacksonville was also over Memorial Day weekend? Which means recreational boat traffic was a little higher than normal.

As the tidal flood started (it’s been kinda fun dealing with tidal currents again), we weighed anchor to make some miles south. We only encountered bits of boat traffic along the way, as the river is nice and wide in this area and most were heading towards the beaches.

We thought we might actually have a chance of anchoring at favorite spot down Black Creek, which we had skipped on our northbound trip.

But as soon as we turned up the creek, we knew this was not a good idea – there were jet skiers and small boats zooming all around. This wouldn’t be fun to anchor in.

So we turned right around and headed to Green Cove Springs, and decided to anchor off of Governor’s Creek instead of ‘downtown’ – just to mix it up.

It wasn’t a bad little stop at all, and certainly got us away from a lot of weekend boat traffic. There’s a boat ramp right here, with easy shore access to a strip mall with several restaurants and shops.

And you can take the dinghy up Governor’s Creek for some exploring, and access to a park with walking.

In the morning, there quite a bit of fetch – so we opted to motor on in hopes of finding something more protected to ride out Memorial Day.

Dolphin Report: No dolphins seen here either, and we’re moving out of prime dolphin areas now.

Stop 3: Solano Cove, Nowheresville, FL

We set intentions to head to Deep Creek, a stop we’ve made before. But it was nothing spectacular last time.

I was at the helm for this shift, and was noting several little coves to our port that would be in good wind protection.

I checked the depth charts and found one with 7-8′ depths and decided… let’s go for it.

We set the hook, and enjoyed a delightful evening in this little secluded spot with almost no one around. No holiday boat traffic, and no fetch.

A lovely chill evening, gorgeous sunset and we were treated to Memorial Day fireworks being shot from Green Cove Springs 10 miles away.

Stop 4: Murphy’s Creek

On our way north, we stopped at a favorite anchorage at Sister’s Creek – so we decided it was time for a return to Murphy’s Creek.

This little side creek runs parallel to the St. Johns River, but much more twisty. It’s a great little side diversion that doesn’t require turning around as it re-enters the river more like a really really long oxbow.

There are several places with decent depth and scope to set the hook, which is what we did for the evening.

We love this little creek, it reminds us much of what like the St. Johns River is like south of Astor with the tighter shores and twists & turns. So if you’re contemplating the river cruise but don’t have time to go south of Lake George, make sure to include this little side trip.

We had a relaxing evening aboard, as there’s no land access here. And we even filmed some footage to share more about the hot tub we have onboard that you might have noticed.

Stop 5: Black Point & Lake George

Anchoring off of Black Point in Georgetown has become our default stopping point for the night before crossing Lake George.

It’s a lovely little stop with options for wind protection by anchoring on either side of the point.

And puts you right where you need to be for an early morning departure to cross the lake – which can get a lot of fetch as the winds pick up during the day.

Since we didn’t manage any photos of this location, we’ll include some of us crossing Lake George in the morning for this stop.

Our turbo repair held fine this time, and we were able to cross the lake in about 30 minutes. It is fun to go zooooom!

Stop 6: Butcher’s Bend

This anchorage is only about 6 nautical miles north of Sanford, and has been our regular escape this past year. We’ve fallen quite in love with it.

Just an hour cruise away, and it’s like escaping to a different world – from the hustle and bustle of living downtown, to the quiet seclusion of nature.

So we naturally saved the best for last and made a stop after a very long (for us) cruising day. We did the entirely of the lower river from Black Point in one day, which is very relaxing south of Astor.

We did try to anchor off of Blue Spring State Park to catch a swim (also a frequent van excursion for us from Sanford, it’s only about a 30m drive away) – but a big storm started blowing through.

Since this area of the river is so peaceful and quite secluded, we each took a turn at testing out the hot tub while underway.

Hot tubbing while enjoying amazing views in motion? Yeah, nothing quite like it.

Trip Wrap-Up

We totally failed to meet our goal of finding dolphins on this trip. But it was amazing nonetheless and just what we needed.

We ended up spending 18 days in total cruising down and up the St. Johns River, for a total of 263.8 nm and 42.6 hours. We also got our fuels tanks down to closer to empty than we ever have, which was part of our goal to burn up some older fuel before it might become a problem.

It was fabulous to return to a life of no plans, no reservation and just going at our own pace. And it was fabulous to get back to our cruising lifestyle, instead of being mainly docked.

We wish we could have extended the trip for another few weeks, but alas – we had things to attend to.

And this completes 5 trips up or down the river for us. We may at some point compile our trips into one spot for those seeking information on stops along the way.

For now, here’s our other trips if you want to look back.

• 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.
• Dolphin Quest – Part 1 (Northbound) – Our return to extended cruising after a year+ stay in Sanford, the first part of this adventure.

General Update

We mentioned last post that Kiki had Radioactive Iodine i131 treatment upon our return for her recently diagnosed hyperthyroidism.

She just had her 30-day check-up and her thyroid levels are back to normal – as are her kidney and liver panels.

She’ll have another check-up in a couple of months to confirm… but we’re super excited that the treatment seems to have been a success!

We’re now shifting focus to storing the boat for peak hurricane season and setting off in the van for some extended land adventures. We’ve so far narrowed our potential route to somewhere north of Florida and south of Canada.