Jan. 30

To complete our rowing the East coast of Florida, all that remained were three short sections of 8 to 10 miles each. But the tides and wind would not allow any two of them to be done in sequence. We chose to row the middle section from Big Talbot Island to the St. John’s River because it could be done in the afternoon.

We left Daytona Beach Shores and drove to Big Talbot Island Park’s Boat ramp northeast of Jacksonville where the tide and wind was moving against us for the first ½ mile getting to the ICW.  But it was worth that struggle. As we turned south joining the tidal current and wind heading south our speed picked up and the next ten miles went quickly.

We stopped once for a wonderful lunch with the boat secured by the reeds on the shore. It was chilly but I had worked up enough heat to last through lunch. 

When we arrived at the boat ramp near the St. John’s River a strong current was carrying us and landing had to be quick to step out of the boat and pull it up before the current pushed it sideways along the ramp.  A very tame white goose we named Aflac was there to meet us. His help was appreciated but I really didn’t need to be reminded of the fact that I will need to find supplemental health insurance soon. After getting the boat up on the grass and putting together Heather’s leanto, I started looking for a ride back to the car.  A group of policemen were loading a fancy new boat on a trailer. I walked up to one of them and asked if they new of a cab company I could call. 

Officer John Tucker thoughtfully looked at our predicament and said that if I waited for them to finish, he would run me up the road since that was the direction he would be going. We started to wait and started to add every layer we had with us because it was getting colder as the sun began to set.  The trailer had to be changed to a different truck. Then the boat was hard to steer onto the trailer but finally they were done and I climbed into his pickup with blue lights on top and laptop table between the seats.  I was impressed at how well equipped the police are in this place. I commented that the boat they had loaded looked like a nice boat. Officer Tucker replied that it should be for $165,000.00 dollars of taxpayer’s money!  I choked and thought about what that could be spent on if this was my town of Thornton, NH! I suspect that these types of equipment are partly funded by Federal tax dollars for Homeland Security.  It was being moved to downtown Jacksonville to help with security during the Super Bowl week.

After getting the car we loaded up and headed to the Morales’s for the night.  They had left the key for us and we arrived before they returned from a birthday party.  We recounted our week since we had left them to move south toward Daytona. Our welcome there was almost like coming home.