The St. Johns River is an amazing side trip cruise off the ICW or Great Loop. It starts in Vero Beach and flows north to Jacksonville, with the navigable part by a larger boat starting in Sanford, Florida.
We took our first side trip to Sanford in late 2018, and have cruised the river multiple times since. It's magical - many remote jungle like areas untouched by humans. And so much fun to explore!
Stay tuned as we build out this collection of resources - below are past blog posts and videos from our many trips up and down.
Sanford to Savannah – First Two Weeks Back to Cruising, and Rejoining the Great Loop Route
It’s hard to believe it’s only been a few weeks since we left Sanford in our wake, resuming our active cruising lifestyle. I originally thought I’d do one post wrapping up our segment up to Charleston, our turn around point of our first attempt at the Great Loop. But we were already starting to forget […]
Back to Sanford: Cruising Southbound on the St. Johns River & Exploring New to Us Anchorages (Crescent Lake, Mud Creek Cove)
Our final project at Lamb’s Yacht Center was replacing our front deck hatches. Our original Bomar hatches were now over 20 years old and had several parts failing, and they needed to be re-bedded to fix a leak that had developed. We opted for replacing them instead of trying to rebuild – as it would […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
Evolving COVID Plans – Return to Sanford, FL
In our last update, we shared we were back to cruising after getting our boat out of storage in Savannah and heading to our home state of Florida. We didn’t have plans beyond that, except perhaps anchoring out long term in social isolation. Quick Video Update Version: On our way, marina shuts downs and possible […]
Leaving Sanford and Cruising Down the St. Johns River
Whew.. lots of recent excitement over adding the Travato to our nomadic fleet this month. But we still have lots of cruising travel stuff to catch you up on to get us to Georgia! So lets do the time warp back to March… Last we left you, we were fighting midges in our beloved Sanford. So […]
Oh Sanford – How you Won our Hearts (#sanfording)
I know however this post comes out, it’ll never be able to fully convey our amazing stay in Sanford. How do you summarize four months into one post? We get asked all the time ‘what’s your favorite place’ or ‘if you decide to settle down, where would it be?’ After 13-years of full time travel […]
St. Johns River Cruise – Part 3: Lake George to Sanford (Living in a Wildlife Documentary!)
And now, the final episode on our southbound cruise of the St. Johns River – the final push into Sanford. If you missed the first parts, be sure to check out Part 1 and Part 2 first. And as always, the video version of this segment. This is our very first 4K rendered video – […]
St. Johns River Cruise – Part 2: Deep Creek to Georgetown (Twisty Creeks and Tasty Shrimp)
Time to pick back up the travelogue, this time the second part of our St. Johns River cruise heading into Sanford. If you missed the first part, click on back to get an overview of this little side voyage. First, the video version of this segment with lots of awesome drone & time lapse footage: […]
