Florida ICW: and 40 bridges!

We finally make it to Florida via the ICW. Our plan was originally to go all the way down to Miami, but we are playing with the idea of leaving from West Palm. Before we get there, we stop in St. Augustine, where we finally meet up with some new friends and have way too much fun… From there we stop in Daytona, to briefly catch up with some boater friends from Cobourg, Ontario and luck out on some boat issues we didn’t even know we had.

After our fun adventures on Cumberland Island, we were so glad we stopped there instead of further down the ICW. Once we crossed the St. Mary’s River Inlet into Florida and followed along the Amelia River/ICW through Fernandina Beach, we entered a very industrial part of that area. Although there are a number of anchorages with many boats it’s really not pretty. This map shows the area we travelled along the ICW on the east coast of Florida from just north of Jacksonville (Fernandina Beach) south to Jupiter (Hope Sound).

Plus we did see more and more run down, abandoned or wrecked boats on the way, many run aground along the shore.

It always makes me sad to see this and as we head further down the Florida ICW, we will see more and more of it. Every anchorage seems to have the same problem: boats are left and no one takes responsibility. We even saw local police officers not wanting to step onto these boats as they didn’t want to become responsible. To us, it looked like boats might even get taken over as housing by some who would not have the means to move the boat let alone fix it up. Checking anchorage reviews on Active Captain, we read about boaters being not very kindly received by local residents when anchoring close to their homes. Who can blame them – they are afraid of vessels just being left there!

After digging a little deeper, we found out that it is actually not so easy to take over an abandoned vessel in Florida. There is a lengthy process where proof has to be established that a vessel indeed has no owner anymore. This can take up to 120 days or more. On the other hand, local authorities are trying to deal with the problem, by offering a free to the owner program to safely decommission and destroy a boat. Florida’s Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission appeals to boat owners to take care of disposing their boats instead of abandoning them. The problem: although the disposal is free, owners are still responsible for transporting the vessel to the disposal site and they have to apply for the disposal service. There are also fines and potential prison sentences to scare boat owners into compliance, but obviously this is only a drop in the bucket and it’s costly to the state. Here is an NBC clip from Fall 2023 about the new disposal program called ‘VTIP’:

But back to our travels. On our first day through Florida, we somehow had to fight a head current all day and our progress was slow. We anchored just north of the Sisters Creek bridge after passing the free dock. It looked like a nice long floating dock and it apparently has water but as we were late in the day it didn’t look like there was a lot of room for us to squeeze in. The anchorage was a good alternative though. There were a couple of other boats with us and it felt like we were really close to the channel. We hailed a barge going past on our VHF to ask if our location would cause any problems but a friendly voice assured us we were ok.

The next day was a much easier travel all the way to St. Augustine, despite the 7 bridges we had to pass under (they were all around 65′ high, so no problem for our 61′ air draft). We were even able to sail part of the way and anchored right in front of the fort Castillo de San Marco downtown historic St. Augustine. The town was all a sparkle at night with Christmas lights and a beautiful sight from the boat. We enjoyed the scenery with a nice dinner on the boat and went to bed, ready to explore this fun town the next day.

However, the night was not the most restful. St. Augustine is located at the St. Augustine Inlet, where the Matanzas river flows into the Atlantic. This means there is quite a strong tidal current and the city has a large mooring field. We could hear the current rushing along our hull all night and kept anxiously checking the boat anchored in front of us. He kept getting closer and by morning we could almost touch the dinghy tied behind his boat. This was definitely too close and since he had been there before us we quickly raised our anchor to find a more suitable spot. We motored around the anchored boats, tried a couple of other spots but with the current we always ended up too close to another boat. After a short discussion, we decided to head a little north and anchor just south of the Vilano bridge – lots of space to swing in the current there. But before we got there, when navigating around the stern of another anchored boat, we noticed a crab pot right behind it just a little too late. The current pushed us right over it with our stern. I barely noticed it at the bow, but Dave felt the prop briefly come to a stop. It was only for moment, Dave reversed the engine to clear anything that might be attached to our prop, but nothing appeared behind the boat. Hoping that our line cutter on the prop shaft did its job we continued and found a safe anchorage. Little did we know, we had a surprise coming to us a few days later…

But first we got to enjoy 3 full days in St. Augustine, and I would definitely come back here again. The town boasts to be “the longest continually inhabited European-founded city in the United States” (www.visitflorida.com). Founded in 1565 by Spanish explorers, the Spanish influence can still be felt in many of the historic buildings. And all of this is right at the waterfront and easily accessible from the boat. Well, except the marina owns the dinghy dock and charges a daily fee of US$12.50 (2023; includes shower, coin laundry and lounge St. Augustine Municipal Marina). This marina is located just south of the Bridge of Lions. They do have 2 big mooring fields as well, which is a good alternative to anchoring in this strong current.

We took a leisurely stroll through the downtown area the first day, explored the 450 year old Castillo de San Marco fort, and walking the pedestrian only St. George St. followed some live music to a little court yard. We sat down at the Bin 39 Wine Bar, which features over 70 wines by the glass and indulged in some great wine and a delicious cheese platter, but the best thing was listening to Joshua “Tennesee” Worthy. For us, live music is always a treat and Joshua’s rock and country sound, his great voice and guitar playing just added so much to the feel of the afternoon.

Some of the beautiful residences along the side streets.

When we pulled into the dinghy dock at the municipal marina to check out the dinghy dock we saw a sailboat called ‘African Queen IV’ from Canada.

In the spring of 2023 we had a group of sailing women who were all getting ready to head out the St. Lawrence River that summer, keen to share resources and info on the planned trip. Sandy on “True North” was part of these meetings and when she and her husband Dan left on their trip from Rochester/NY to Maine, they quickly became best friends and buddy boats with Jon and Cheri from African Queen. Sandy and Dan have an excellent blog on their Down East Circle route, (we have their blog link above and also on the bottom of our home page) and they kept telling us we really should meet Cheri and Jon on their buddy boat ‘African Queen’ as they were continuing on down to The Bahamas as well. I had kept my eye out for their boat and first saw them coming into the anchorage in Port Washington where we were stuck during Ophelia. We never got to meet though as they took off before us. Then in Annapolis, we finally ran into Jon and got to have a brief chat and exchanged contacts. In Charleston, they were in the same anchorage, but left the next day. Now, finally, we managed to have a few days in the same place.

We ended up walking through more of the quaint streets together, visited a part of Flagler College, a private 4 year college, housed in the opulent Ponce de Leon hotel. It was built in 1887 and houses one of the largest Tiffany stained glass window collections, with more than 79 windows.

Later, Jon and Cheri introduced us to some of their favourite cocktail bars and I had some of the best margaritas I ever tasted. The city was so pretty with all the Christmas lights, that we lined up at the famous Casa Reina Taqueria and Tequila. A couple more margaritas at the bar made the wait for dinner quite bearable and then we had a fabulous dinner on the roof top overlooking the lit town. What a fun night!

We had made new friends, but unfortunately, we wouldn’t be buddy boating. African Queen being 48′ in length has a much deeper keel than our boat and also a higher mast. So Jon and Cheri were doing longer hops along the Atlantic coast down to South Florida, entering larger inlets for anchorages only, while we were able to take the ICW whenever rough weather made for uncomfortable conditions on the Atlantic. (Jon and Cheri have a great YouTube channel called Wide Eyed Adventures). So we parted ways in hopes to run into each other again further down in Florida or the Bahamas and we got ready to pass through 11 bridges the next day.

We had contacted old friends from Cobourg/ON, where our whole sailing journey had originally started with a sailing course. If you have ever stayed in the Cobourg marina on Lake Ontario, you probably have gone shopping or at least browsing at Dean Marine. Dean helped us both so much when we bought our first boat and we knew so very little about all the different parts that could break. He was there when I had figured out that our impeller had been chewed up and needed replacing, or we needed to replace the head. His store is so close to the docks that it was easier just to talk to him in person than call, when you needed some help. And then there was Rosie, his sweet little Yorkshire, who greeted every shopper. Dean and his wife Liz, both retired teachers became our dock mates for a few years and we were thrilled to see them in their winter abode, the Daytona Halifax Harbor Marina, where they keep their trawler. Both Liz and Dean are such a fun couple. We shared some drinks and a great meal at a local pub, and Dean drove Dave to fill our propane tank and pick up all the cat litter we would need for the rest of the trip, which was much appreciated.

In fact, it was so reasonable and comfortable at this marina that we decided to stay 3 nights at the dock to get some boat projects done and give the boat a good cleaning. On the first morning I had just come back from Liz and Dean’s boat, ready to start the laundry, when I saw a diver working on another boat. Still in his wet suit, dripping wet, he had just come out of the water onto the dock and I asked him if that was his boat he was working on. No, he had been hired to clean the hull and put some new anodes on the prop. (If you are curious, (What is a prop shaft anode?). Since the water had been so cold and murky, we had not been eager to dive under our boat to check if our anodes were still in decent shape. There had been that diver at the Isle of Shoales who had tightened our anode and checked stuff over briefly, but that had been a few months ago. Also, remember we had hit that crab pot line in St. Augustine a few days before. So I asked him if he might have time to look at our boat. Well, he jumped right in and lo and behold, he found the float with line still tightly wrapped around our prop shaft! The line cutter on the shaft had done it’s job of cutting the line of the crab pot so we had been able to motor on and not been totally disabled but if the line had stayed on the shaft it could have caused some damage over the next miles. Phew! How lucky were we to find this diver! We went all through Maine and never picked up a lobster pot – it wasn’t until Florida that we finally hit one! You see the float and line in the picture below. That picture also shows our 2 anodes, one basically gone, while the other had somehow gotten loose again and was actually spinning around the shaft. It had also moved tightly up to the shaft seal and was starting to damage it. We had seen a bit of a black rubber residue on the inside where the dripless sits. He replaced this anode with a proper fitting one and also the one on the end of the prop. Now, we have a fairly uncommon prop – a 3 bladed feathering Variprop from before 2020 – so getting replacement anodes would normally mean ordering them in and having them shipped to you. But when I met our diver he had just been working on a boat that had exactly the same prop – which he had never seen before that day! And the owner of said boat had ordered too many zinc anodes so was able to pass some along our way! They all said we should have bought a lottery ticket that day. So we were all fixed up again in a few hours, even got the barnacles off the boat bottom and the charge was super reasonable! BTW, I thought that our boat hull would stay much cleaner as we were in such fast moving water with the changing tides and currents. Turns out, barnacles love fast moving water, they feed off the stuff that floats by, hence we had so many.

After Daytona it was just more and more bridges every day. In Titusville we anchored just past one and had a beautiful sunset, but the days were long and the water ways were getting busier with more and more motor boats that did not slow down. We did enjoy the anchorage in the Indian River, a wide shallow and slower moving waterway with many spoil Islands. Spoil Islands were by-products of the creation of the many navigable waterways in Florida and created from the dredged material. Today many of these man made islands are nature preserves and parks that can be explored by kayak or canoe and offer campsites. Luckily it was calm, otherwise it would have been difficult to find protection here.

We had more one quiet anchorage in Hobe Sound by before Jupiter Beach and before we would hit the busy area of Lake Worth and West Palm Beach. The waters were calm and it would be a culture shock to enter West Palm the next day. On that last day we did come through Fort Pierce and saw a rather striking vessel. It turned out to be the Trimaran UltimEmotion 2 sitting at anchor just north of the North Fort Pierce Bascule Bridge. It had been damaged in the Newport to Bermuda race (August 2023) and limped back to Charleston in 37hours escorted by the US Coast Guard for 27 of those to make sure the crew was safe. It had been leading the race at the time when its 102′ mast had separated from the carbon fibre hull. The boat was still sitting in the Indian River Lagoon, in its damaged state awaiting repair. A very cool boat – but we didn’t feel so bad just puttering by slowly and taking it safe!

Date	Description	Distance	Travel time
Nov. 21/23	Cumberland Island to Sisters Creek anchorage, Florida; 2 bridges (one usually open swing bridge, the other 65′)	25.04NM	6:28h
Nov. 22/23	Sisters Creek to St. Augustine (anchorage in front of fort); 7 bridges all 65′	32.33NM	6:45h
Nov. 23 to 25/23	stayed in St. Augustine (but moved to the anchorage south of Francis and Mary Usina bridge)		
Nov. 26/23	St. Augustine to Daytona (Halifax Harbor Marina); 11 bridges (4 opening, 3 on demand one on hour and half hour, others listed as 65′ but many lower in HW)	46.80NM	8:27h
Nov. 27 + 28/23	stayed in Daytona, Halifax Habor Marina		
Nov. 29/23	Daytona to Titusville (Titusville south anchorage); 6 bridges (2 opening bridges)	41.07NM	7:57h
Nov. 30/23	Titusville to San Sebastián anchorage (Indian River); 6 bridges	47.64NM	9:09h
Dec. 1/23	San Sebastián to Hobe Sound anchorage; 8 bridges (2 opening)	55.16NM	10:39h
10 days	Total	248.04NM	49:25h
174	Total trip so far	3384.48NM	670:47h