Day 54: Port Orange to Orange Park, FL

It was a dark and stormy afternoon in North Florida.  Dense clouds and heavy rains made the car ride to Ponce Inlet from Jacksonville a chore. In the car were Mike Murawsky from the North Florida Cruising Club, Jeff Knight (a client considering one of our Swift Trawlers) and myself, Jeff Knoll from St. Barts Yachts.  Rodger McAloon, from Boating Camping and More, one of our favorite service providers, is riding along to take the car back to our Orange Park office. 

The roads were flooded enough on the barrier island to cause concern about the car.  We arrived at Inlet Harbor Marina about 6:30PM to pick the boat up from the Denison Yachts crew.  They had been delayed by the severe weather and had to slow down as it passed.  They arrived about 8:00PM.  We quickly fueled the boat, shook hands and loaded our gear.  Roger would drop the Denison crew off for a rental car to get home.  We did a quick check out of the boat and tossed the lines to try and take advantage of the last bit of fading daylight.  It was still raining lightly. 

There is a narrow channel along the back side of the barrier island to the North of the inlet.  The falling tide had land appearing on both sides of us and it was quickly getting very dark.  I was not familiar enough with the new Raymarine equipment in the boat to be confident of where I was so decided to stop and back up to a large floating dock behind a restaurant.  It only took a few minutes to sort out the controls on the chart plotter and dim the screen.  We were on our way.  Once we cleared Ponce Inlet.  The clouds parted, the stars came out, and we had a fantastic night run up the coast in two foot following seas and maybe a ten knot following breeze making it very comfortable on the flybridge.  We ran at 16 knots at about 2800 rpm.  We entered the Mayport jetties around 03:30AM and cruised South up the St. Johns River to our office at Fleming Island Marina in Orange Park.  We were unloaded and on our way home by 05:30AM.