The Great Wander

As we got ready to leave Green Cove for a little while, we knew we wanted to stay on the St. Johns River.  It’s still hurricane season.  We’ve weathered three hurricanes now in Green Cove and have done pretty well, though Helene was really rough even though we were just on the outer edges of it.  In general, Green Cove seems to be a pretty safe place for rough weather.  The important thing for us right now is that we are able to get to Green Cove in an expeditious manner in case a truly nasty storm comes up.

The question for us then was, “Where do we want to hang out?”  We needed to see something other than Green Cove.  We’ve been seeing the two sides of that dock for the past year and needed to know that we could see something different from the boat…but hurricanes…so we don’t want to go too far.

I sat down with the Waterway Cruisers Guide and the chart of the river to see where are some options to be able sail or motor to and still be able to get back quickly, if need be.  But we also wanted to find some other things to see and do from the boat as well.  Julington Creek seemed to check all the boxes.  It’s only a few hours from Green Cove, so we have plenty of time to get back there. One of our favorite restaurants, Julington Creek Fish Camp is there too.  

We pulled away from the dock and headed downriver toward Jacksonville. Unfortunately, there wasn’t enough consistent wind to put the sails up.  Motoring it was. 

Most of the St. Johns river is mud bottom which is great for holding when on anchor and this area is no different.    We found a place to drop anchor, and it took a few tries, but we finally got it.  We really don’t know what we did wrong, but eventually we got it!

Once we got settled and were confident in our anchoring, we hopped in the family truckster (the dinghy) and headed to shore.  Here’s where we found that sometimes cruising guides aren’t always as accurate as you’d hope.  There are no public dinghy docks in the Julington Creek area.  We did find one marina that said we could tie up to the fuel dock for an hour or two to get dinner.  Otherwise…there’s a lot of great stuff on shore and no way to get to it!  

It was incredibly disappointing.  I know that we are going to need to make a grocery run later this week.  There’s a few things that we are low on and we need to restock.  So one of us will drive the dinghy to the dock, drop the other one off and then head back until shopping is done.  It’s not ideal, but it’ll work.

It’s really interesting, because up in Green Cove, there’s easy access to shore.  The city has a nice dock, for a nominal fee, you can be tied up there all day.  Then we can get to a pizza place and a coffee shop, because that’s really all that’s within walking distance.  

Different places are friendlier to boaters than others.  It’s one of the challenges that we are now learning about living on the boat.  There might be a great area with lots to see and do on shore, but if you don’t have a place to tie up your dinghy…well it’s irrelevant.  At the same time, you might have easy access to shore, but if there’s not much to do there…again, does it matter?  At the end of the day, we have enjoyed being away from Green Cove, though we are heading back because of a necessary trip back home and we know the boat will be safe.  After we return from this trip, it will be time to head out..for real.  We will likely need to stop at or before Jacksonsville depending on the day of the week that we are leaving, if we do, I imagine we will stop here again.

Cruising guides, sailing forums, there’s a lot of places to find information, but it’s also hard to determine the veracity of the information until you get there.  Or are you misinterpreting what the guides are saying?  When the guide says it’s a great place to explore by dinghy, does that mean that the waterway is great to explore by dinghy or that there’s easy access to shore and you can explore from your dinghy?

This little side trip of ours has been a good learning experience.  It really seems that probably the best way to find out information ahead of time is to befriend someone online in the area and find out what kinds of things are available in that area. As you know, YouTube, Instagram, TikTok and Facebook are full of sailors all around the world, so it’s not too hard to find someone that can answer your questions…the difficulty there is that if they’ve made it big, then you might have to pay to be a part of Patreon for that channel to get your question answered.  

What we’ve learned is that once we are (very shortly) ready to depart the St. Johns river, we don’t really expect to find too many places to go ashore easily until we are in places that are more frequented by cruisers. There is at least one marina in Jacksonville that is downtown and allows cruisers to dock there, but there’s not really a lot of places to anchor and find easy shore access.

Once you get to places like  Fernandina Beach, St. Augustine, Cape Canaveral, Fort Pierce, all of these places are regularly visited by cruisers.  They all have easy access to shore and lots to do.  Some of this has been confirmed by our own observation and some has been confirmed by what people in online communities have answered, when I’ve directly asked them.  

If you are a cruiser and decide to take a trip down the St. Johns, don’t expect a lot in terms of either places to visit or easy shore access.  It really seems to be one or the other.  Of course, that’s limited by our mast height.  We can’t go further west/south than Green Cove because there’s a fixed bridge that we can’t clear.  So, maybe when you get past Green Cove that changes…but there’s not a lot between Green Cove and Jacksonville.