We were booked on a flight out of Jacksonville for December 18 - but first we had to get to the Ortega Yacht Club Marina, where we had reserved a slip for a month. This meant taking the ICW to the St. John’s River, then 22 miles up the river, past downtown Jacksonville, and finally up to the junction of the Ortega River, following the Ortega River to our vessel’s home until 2012. The day’s voyage would be complicated by shallow water on the iCW, strong current on the St. John’s River, a bridge in downtown Jacksonville which does not after 4:30pm, and finally shoaling at the mouth of the Ortega. Since we had 27 miles to go before we even got to the St. John’s River, it was destined to be a long day.

We left Fernandina at 7:40 - it was cold and overcast. Our passage of the ICW was enlivened by missing marker #46, and almost going aground - the bottom finder showed 41/2 feet, so we spun the wheel, did a 180, and were lucky enough to get out without touching bottom. We had planned to hit the St. John on the flood tide, so that we would have the current with us. For some reason, we never caught the flooding current - instead we had an ebb current on the nose all afternoon; at one point 2700 rpms on the engine produced a speed of only 2.6 knots. It became doubtful that we could make the 4:30 bridge opening on time. We pushed the engine up to 3400 rpms, and got to the bridge at 4:20. After it opened our boat tied up traffic for a long time because it took us so long to get through the bridge as a result of the oncoming current. Then, as it got darker and darker, in spite of our wonderful GPS plotter we could not make out the entrance to the Ortega River, and went past it! We finally turned around, and spotted the “large white house with a white roof” that Paul the harbormaster, had told us to look for when we phoned him from Fernandina.

We called Paul on the phone as we headed toward the Ortega River, but were only able to leave a message on his answering machine. As we got onto the Ortega River, we could see marinas, but which one? By now it was almost stone dark, so you can image our joy when Merry’s cell phone rang and it was Paul, who gave us great directions to the marina, and even stood at the end of a dock waving his arms to show us which fairway to pull into! He helped us get into the dock, and to tie up our boat, and told us where we good get a great dinner - which was just a short walk from our boat.

Paul, it turns out, is a wonderful man. The Ortega Yacht Club Marina is clean and secure, and full of friendly people. There is a West Marine, a marine consignment store, a canvas shop, a large grocery store, drug store, department store, and several good restaurants within a short walk of the marina. Right next to the marina is a HUGE used book store - the largest we have ever seen. We attended a Christmas pot luck dinner for all of the boaters at the marina, and many of the boats were decorated with Christmas lights - including ours, after one of the “resident boaters” loaned us a couple of strings! Thus, Ortega Yacht Club Marina is a great place to catch the holiday spirit.

We took a bus trip to downtown Jacksonville. We knew we were going to be challenged by this city when Wiley asked fellow bus riders what would be important and interesting to see and they all started laughing. To say it was unimpressive would be to put it mildly. It has no “historic district”, and few stores or restaurants that are open. It was sad walking around downtown Jacksonville, and encounter only a handful of people out and about at noon on a Friday (contrast this to the Chicago Loop!. There was a museum of contemporary art, which (although it mostly exhibited photography, was very interesting and had a restaurant. The huge bookstore by the marina had a “branch” in downtown Jacksonville - which, of course required that we spend some time browsing.