Surprise Surprise

Today was just a surprise for traveling. We left Fort George anchorage at 7am. I expected a very slow passage towards Pine Island today because the current would be against us most of the way. Wow with just an hour and half past high tide I still had one spot with only 6.2'. Once in the channel we had a favorable current to the St Johns River. AS we crossed it the current changed and was against us and we were only doing 4.4 kts. The entry back into the ICW has changed completely from 2 years ago. Nothing like I remembered so I just followed the marks and we were in -- easy peezy. However -- we were only doing about 4 knots against the strong ebb tide.

When we got to the Pablo Creek Bridge the current went up to nearly 4kts against us. A sport fisher came in from the side at the last minute and went through the bridge first. That terrific current and his wake raised a 3 - 4 standing wave directly under the bridge. I was losing fine steering control so I spun around and waited for the wave to die down to 2' then tried again. I crawled through at 2.7kts. This current was bad for another 10 miles to the McCormick bridge and then it went above 5kts. A little later we were doing 7.7 - 8.0kts!! We were flying now. We reached Pine Island anchorage right at noon. The current was still favorable so we decided to push on to St Augustine for a mooring ball. Expected arrival around 3 - 4pm.

Wow that current was with us until about the last bridge before the inlet and then we slowed down to 5.7kts. Once across the inlet we went back up to 7+kts and made the 1:30pm opening of the bridge of lions!! Unbelievable.

We got our mooring assignment and Karen handled the boat like a pro to allow an easy pickup of the mooring. All done and it was only 1:45pm.

We went 43 miles in 6.5 hours which gave us an average speed of an incredible (for Temptation)f 6.7kts. All that 4kts stuff was soon forgotten.

The mooring field is almost fully occupied which surprises us. We will stay for the high winds expected tomorrow then push on to Daytona Sunday. If it is not too rough tomorrow we will go to town for lunch.