12/5
But……things do change, sometimes overnight. We had quite the frantic trip to St. Petersburg the next day. Don’t know whether the heavy fog rolled in or we cruised into it, but it was there and so thick we could see nothing, except for the occasional shoreline that would pop up in front of us. To add to that, most of our navigational systems were down, for whatever reasons. And the hand-held GPS isn’t accurate enough to locate the markers we needed to enter St. John’s River. Our savior came in the form of two sailboats leaving the river (why, in that dense fog we have no idea), so we were able to see where they had come from, and find a marker at the river entrance. But all that turned out to be just the beginning. While heading to our desired dock on the river, we ran aground; again, because of the fog. We called for help, but after several attempts to pull us off, they declared it hopeless. They set our bow anchor and suggested we wait for high tide, which would be around 10:30 pm. By now it was dusk and still dense fog, and guess what? A storm was moving in. So we sat there, very near the channel watching the occasional boat go by, in the thunder and lightening, until 10:00, when we were able to move. The next challenge was getting to an anchorage we had seen earlier, since we had given up the idea of docking for the night. So with the Captain piloting and First Mate on the bow with a hand-held spotlight, we found our way. This was our introduction to those wonderful reflective markers. The anchorage, we decided after the fact, is where we should have stayed in the first place. Too late smart! Leaving the next day we were introduced to a fact of life of Florida boating that we had only heard about until now---shallow water. Now we knew why we ran aground so easily. The channels are extremely narrow and you dare not venture outside them, as these sailors found out the hard way. This was the smallest swing bridge we’ve encountered, this one with a female bridge tender.