A few miles northeast of downtown Jacksonville, Florida, located along the banks of the Ft. George River, is the old Kingsley Plantation. It grew cotton and indigo during the late 18th through the 19th Centuries, and had a slave population that resided in 32 tabby cabins located about 1/8 mile from the plantation's main house…
Some areas of the US East Coast's Intracoastal Waterway regualarly fill up with sand and silt from the small tributary creeks and rivers along its length. Certain sections are actually shallow rivers, themselves. This constant water action builds up sand bars, expands them, and sometimes even causes them to migrate from one point to another.…
[For my story of Days 1 through 3 along a section of the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW), go here.] Day 4: Left Alligator Pass about 2 hrs. before high tide in Fernandina Beach, 10 miles further north. Had trouble finding deep enough water on 1st try; 2d try was able to re-enter ICW and continue north.…
I figured poor GB could use a break after doing a very intensive 11 days of boat work on the hard in Green Cove Springs, Florida, during early January 2013. (That's him on the ground in pic on the right, painting the last of the bottom paint on the underside of the keel just before…
Hope everyone rang in a very Happy New Year. We celebrated 1/1 aboard The Fox and underway.
Charting errors can occur anywhere. There's a running joke among cruisers along Mexico's Pacific coast, about how the charts in certain areas – most recently surveyed in the 1860s by a US Naval vessel – are some 5 miles off. Everybody takes pictures of their chart plotters showing that their boat is on land, when…
Green Cove Springs isn't all about boat yards and marinas. A few decades ago when the Navy had a presence here, I imagine it was a thriving community with all kinds of businesses along the main highway through town. When the Navy left, so did most of the jobs. Like other small cities and towns…
Animals really crack me up. Take Mr. Peacock over here, for instance. He lives in the Fountain of Youth park grounds. Sometimes he flies up to sit on one rooftop or another; other times he tries to impress the ladies, like I caught him doing here. There is nothing funnier than watching the backside of…
It was my sewing machine's fault. Just as we were winding up our projects in preparation to leave Brunswick, Georgia, the last piece of on-board equipment to break down was my trusty Pfaff 1525 sewing machine. It got shaky, couldn't loop thread properly, gave some ominous clicks, and then spat out a couple tiny bits…
In one city block in St. Augustine's Old Town, there is a cluster of historic houses. If memory serves, the structures comprising the Dow Museum of Historic Houses date from the late 18th to the early 20th Century, thus serving as a snapshot of American residential architecture during the whole time the USA has been…