Cruising to Jacksonville from Sanford Along the St. Johns River

We intended to depart Sanford sometime back in late January, head up to Jacksonville for some boat projects and then potentially head out on the Great Loop.

But, life had other plans and we just weren’t feeling the call to leave Sanford quite yet.

Winter is prime activity time in Sanford, with non-stop events that kept us occupied. We’ve made local friends who kept us tempted to stick around.

And gosh darn-it, we just love Sanford and weren’t ready to leave.

So, I decided to attend to all my annual doctor stuff, and a couple areas of concern kept us in the area until all follow-up visits were accomplished.

All is done, and all is good there – so it’s time for adventures!

April 15 was set as the date we’d depart and finally get up to Jacksonville. We had haul-out scheduled for April 25, giving us time for a leisurely cruise down river. The day before, our friends Dave & Stacey helped us relocate our van Blooper up to Jax so it would be waiting for us.

Video Version

Earlier this week we hosted an impromptu live on YouTube sharing a recap of this cruise, with some footage if you prefer that format:

And here’s the written version:

Butchers Bend

Located just about 6 miles north of Sanford, this is a frequent quick get-a-away for us. Our friends Dave & Stacey aboard Stinkpot decided to accompany us down river for a bit as we did them last year – so our little Stink-Not floating island rode again.

Sanford is currently experiencing a pretty major midge swarm (for more on these annoying pests, see our Midges of Seminole County post from four years ago) – and they couldn’t let us leave without a proper send-off.

We all arrived covered in these bugs that swarmed us on the lake. That thankfully disappeared once we hit the river.

Dave remembered he had a portable pressure washer with attachments that we filled with soapy water to ‘midgegate’ the situation. His raw water pump was able to adequately wash both our boats as to not end up with a green goo stains.

We love this anchorage, such a quick cruise and you’re transported from urban chaos to absolute sublime nature. Surrounded by alligators, manatees, birds and a cacophony of frogs singing at night.

The four of us converged for a vegan meal – starting with grilled eggplant, topped with a selection of hummus, pesto, micro greens, avocado and roasted olives. It was super yum and super healthy.

In the morning Chris and I took the dinghy to a nearby kayak dock to get ashore at the Black Bear Preserve, and got a morning trail run in.

Hontoon Dead River

Dave and Stacey decided they were up for one more anchorage before heading back, so we all set the course for the Hontoon Dead River behind Hontoon Island State Park – a favorite that wouldn’t be putting too many miles on their journey.

Instead of setting one anchor at this location, we each set one and tie up end to end (’69’ style, if you may). This keeps us from swinging in this narrow river channel.

I made us all a meal of Tofu Tikka Masala in the Instant Pot, and the evening was eerily filled with the sounds of all sorts of bugs, gators and critters that sung us all to sleep.

The anchorage is so peaceful, that we all decided to stay a second evening. Which turned out to be magical when we all dropped our various little boats for some evening rowing exercises.

With Chris on our inflatable SUP, he noticed a manatee in front of him coming to surface a bit too late – and ended up getting knocked off the board into alligator infested waters. As soon as he scrambled back aboard, the manatee came nose to nose with the board – and the two talked it out, apologized and checked in on each other.

And then the manatee went under his board again – this time gently tugging him around the river and bringing him over to my and Dave’s boats. Another manatee joined in the fun too, and hung out with us for a good 30 minutes. Snorting, rolling, playing and just interacting.

It was sheer amazing bliss that kept us all riding the high all evening.

In the morning, Chris and I went ashore to the park for another trail run – this time going through an amazing mist coming off the water.

Welaka

Stink-Not parted ways – with Dave & Stacey heading back to Sanford and us continuing on to Jacksonville.

We allowed ourselves 8 nights of anchoring on this trip before needing to get to the boat yard to prep for haul-out, and we had already spent 3.

And now being semi-retired we have all of our scheduled calls and webinars clumped in one week a month – which happened to be this week. So we had work hours to fit in too.

So we decided to make this day a long cruising day and cruised for 6.5 hours for 42 nm north, anchoring in Welaka. We crossed Lake George on this segment on plane, Florida’s second largest lake.

We have a special fondness for Welaka – well, for Shrimps R Us & More. Where we get the most amazing shrimp and grilled fish! Which we indulged in right at opening for lunch the next day, before returning for an afternoon of calls.

After the calls were done, we cruised on to make a few more miles.

Palatka

Palatka was just a few more miles down river, and we made it in just before sunset. We anchored downtown, where the public docks are still closed after Hurricane Ian’s flooding. But there’s a small boat dock that is operational nearby.

This allowed us to get on shore for some strolling, and stopping at Angel’s classic diner car for an after dinner milkshake.

In the morning, we went ashore again for a run to work off said milkshake – and then got underway to make it to our next anchorage before another afternoon of calls and a webinar.

Solano Cove

North of Palatka the river really opens up wide, and the anchorage opportunities are less. But we found Solano Cove on our last pass through the area and loved it. It offers great protection from winds coming from the east, as they were this day.

It’s secluded and has great cell signal – perfect for our needs.

We got our calls and webinar done, and then enjoyed a lovely sunset in the hot tub (oh how we continue to love this!).

While there, we got an e-mail from our friends Chris & Jim of Geeks on Tour, who were coming back from an RV rally. They were camped at the Elks Lodge in Green Cove Springs. Well hot didggidity, that’s just 10 miles north – so plans were hatched for a lunch rendezvous the next day.

It was so good to catch up!

Black Creek

After our lunch with Chris & Jim, we weighed anchor and headed to nearby Black Creek. It’s a long time favorite. Between passing through on weekends (too much recreational traffic) or being on a quick pace (hello pandemic), we hadn’t been able to stop there for a while.

And it was just as lovely as ever – even though there’s now a washed ashore sailboat.

We enjoyed one last evening in solitude and nature.

In the morning we continued north to Jacksonville, but with a stop at Doctor’s Lake Marina to fuel up. They had the cheapest diesel prices in the area at $4.20/gallon – so we took on 125 gallons to keep us cruising for a bit.

Getting fuel further up the river towards Sanford is quite difficult and pricey otherwise. We’ll fill up fully before we head back.

Downtown Jacksonville

With one night left to indulge in anchoring out before returning to dock – we went to an old favorite, downtown Jacksonville off the Acosta Bridge in front of the Baptist health complex.

It’s such a contrast to the in nature experiences we’ve been having – to be surrounded by city lights and sounds.

As soon as we had the hook down, dolphins appeared! So amazing – it has been three years since we’ve had these amazing creatures swimming off our hull. When we did our Dolphin Quest cruise to Jax two years ago – they did not grace us with a visit.

Jacksonville now has several free public docks open, which makes getting ashore so much easier. We arrived in time to check out the Saturday morning RAM festival (River Arts Market) and grab some fresh produce at Publix. We also treated ourselves to a nice Thai dinner out at Blue Orchid.

In the morning, we went ashore for.. you guessed it.. a run (it’s really become quite the thing for us – words I would not have imagined uttering a year ago!).

This time a 10K around the amazing river trails. We treated it more as site seeing, visiting sculptures and a Peace Treaty Tree (which it really wasn’t, but was preserved many years ago by professing to be so – amazing the power of BS!).

An amazing quick visit back to Jax!

Some cruising stats from Sanford to Jax down the St. Johns River:

• Total nautical miles: 138.2
• Total cruising time: 20.5 hrs
• Nights at anchor: 8
• Anchorages: 7
• Generator time: 5 hrs
• Fresh water used: ~ 75 gallons

All systems awesome. Our electrical usage is nicely dialed in after our Ian forced upgrades to need a minimum of generator time – using solar and lithium. And we wouldn’t have needed nearly as much as the 5 hours we used if we didn’t have a completely cloudy rainy day.

Let the Boat Projects Begin!

On Sunday morning we headed down the Ortega River to Lamb’s Yacht Center for our scheduled haul out on Tuesday.

We needed the time to get everything moved into Blooper first.

Our projects are all mostly routine maintenance stuff like bottom painting, thru-hull inspections, engine maintenance and the like. We’re also getting new Strataglass curtains made for the flybridge, because ours are reaching end of life.

What’s Next?

We’ll be roaming around in the van for likely the next couple of weeks while Lamb’s takes care of all of the projects out of the water.

Weather will be our deciding factor, as there’s a bit of rain in the forecast which delays bottom paint.

When Y-Not is ready to splash, they’ll continue our list in the water – where we can be aboard again.

We have some fun van stops planned that we’re looking forward to.

After all the boat projects are wrapped up, we hope to have time to cruise around a bit before we return to Sanford for peak hurricane season. We’ve kept our slip there while we’re gone, as there’s now a multi-year waitlist due to damage from this past hurricane season.