Jacksonville, Fl to Fernandina, Fl

Miles Traveled 44.6

Total Miles Traveled 3149

Day 223

Sitting on the boat watching the sunrise at Ortega Landing Marina this morning, I don’t think I’ll ever get tired of these views.

We cooked out with “Chasing 80” last evening, they left about an hour before us this morning, they also started the loop from our home port, Green Turtle Bay.

Our time at the marina was pretty much all work and no play, but we accomplished a lot in a day and a half.  Today we continued our journey back to the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway AICW.  We had to request two bridges to open before entering Jacksonville.  

I believe this is CSX corporate headquarters, the railroad bridge only had 5 foot clearance so we had to wait about 15 min for it to open.  Have you been on this bridge brother Dean?

We saw a lot of big boats when leaving Jacksonville, this is a US Navy cargo ship being loaded.

More big boats.

We could here chatter on the radio of offshore military maneuvers today, the police, coast guard, and military were everywhere.

Once we left Jacksonville and headed north, the scenery made a drastic change.

We spotted this eagle looking for lunch.

We had a few stressful moments with low tide and shallow water but made it to our anchorage on the Amelia River without any problems.  Oyster beds were visible on the north shore when we arrived at 3 p.m, but with a 6 foot tide they were covered with water by 6:30.  Anchoring on top of these at high tide would be disastrous when the tide drops 6 hours later.