Oh, little did I know what was ahead! The Allegheny River, while swift, is about a quarter mile in width and only gets whitecaps when there’s a strong northwest wind. Marker buoys were plentiful and even night cruising was pretty simple. The most challenging thing we ever had to do was dock the Pure Grace in a hard wind against a strong current. That, as Bill says, is what bow and stern thrusters are for!
Contrast that with the three-mile-wide St. John’s River (which flows north, by the way!) where one is a true fool for boating without understanding how to read a chart or use a chart plotter (GPS for the river). Having been loaned a Garmin chart plotter and armed with a comprehensive river map, we decided to spend New Year’s Day cruising south to visit new friends. The day dawned bright and then the fog rolled in. After delaying our departure by a couple of hours the fog had lifted and we set out. Fifteen minutes and a couple miles later we were stuck in the middle of pea soup! Thank goodness there were very few other boaters on the river but we did have to dodge the crab and eel pots. After feeling our way around in the fog for over an hour, it lifted enough so that we could pick up the speed and continue on our way. I don’t know if I was soaking wet from nervous sweat or the moisture in the air!
By two o’clock we were pulling up in Florence Cove, where our hosts Rex and Jimmie Patton were ready to take us to lunch at the Outback Crabshack, which catches it own crabs for the menu. For decades the Crabshack was a favorite boater’s hangout, casual with great seafood, but the economic downturn and rising fuel prices has really hurt their business. After lunch, Jimmie showed us her covey of peacocks and peahens, feeding them with cat kibble, and Rex gave us some pointers about avoiding crab pots. Steer to the side of the marker with the knot! That means the pot line (usually a chain) is slanting out on the opposite side of the buoy. Definitely not something to get tangled in the props!
We wanted to get back to the marina tonight because the weather tomorrow is supposed to be much cooler with high winds so we declined our friends’ offer to spend the night at their dock and pushed off late afternoon. I was able to get some beautiful shots of the sunset before we lost our light and the final hour of our cruise gave us some night practice. Although it was a bit hairy trying to locate and miss the crab pots in the dark, Bill made a perfect "landing" in Slip B49 and I added six engine hours eight minutes to the log!
