St. Augustine to Rockhouse Creek Anchorage
We departed
St. Augustine shortly after sunrise. The tide was with us and we needed to get
through the shoal area at the Matanzas Inlet with tidal help. We arrived there
right near high tide and made it through with no difficulty. This inlet is one
of the more challenging to negotiate as the bottom changes enough that the
Corps of Engineers has 6 floating aides which are periodically moved to reflect
changes in the water depths. To make matters worse, the charts are inaccurate
in this particular area. In fact, our boat traveled over land if you believed
the boat image on our chart plotter.
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| Traveling Overland at Fort Matanzas |
We made good
time all day. We were traveling above 6 knots except when we slowed down in
trouble spots. We once hit 7.5 knots with tidal flow. We were doing
exceptionally well until we arrived at the Daytona Beach Memorial Bridge which was
being dismantled. There were a number of barges and cranes alongside the
bridge. The spans had been removed and only the pillars remained. It was a bit
confusing to make out where the center span was located if you had never seen
the bridge before or if you didn’t have a chart to reference.
There was a power
boat just ahead of us who was making a good approach to pass thorough what
remained of the bridge; however, at the last minute she turned hard to port and
made a u-turn away from the bridge. We followed her lead thinking she
identified an obstruction ahead. While making our u-turn, Foreign Affair ran aground at the channel’s edge.
The power
boat drew less water and eventually decided to make another approach at passing
through what remained of the bridge. We asked her to give us soundings as she
went her way knowing we’d be following once we freed ourselves from the
grounding. Fortunately, we were on a rising tide and were able to free
ourselves after about 20 minutes.
We intended
to anchor just south of the bridge. We anchored there before and it was a
tricky place to get into as there was a big shoal between the anchorage and the
ICW. We decided to pass on stopping there after our grounding thinking that the
bottom may have changed due to Hurricane Matthew and the movement of the heavy
equipment engaged in the bridge deconstruction project. There was still enough
daylight for us to reach the Rockhouse Creek anchorage about 12 miles further
down the ICW.
Earlier in
the day we passed a sloop named Pearl.
They caught up with us at the Memorial Bridge due to our delay while grounded. They
were headed for the Rockhouse Creek anchorage. So, we ended up traveling
together. They had been at this anchorage before and drew only 4 feet with
their centerboard up. We let them lead the way into the creek so they could
provide us warning if they passed over water too shallow for our 5’ 6” draft.
We were both soon secure for the night. In the end, it was a good day. We ended
up in a good anchorage and further down the ICW than we had planned.
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