St. Johns River Six Mile Creek.....Gators!

With a new water pump working splendidly, we cruised out of the Ortega River back into the St. Johns River. The river is huge and as large as a lake at this point. I was, of course (!) thrilled to see a sailboat race going on. Perhaps my sailing buddies can respond as to which specific boats are in this class. A red rose (I think) with a stem and leaves is on the sail. About 19 feet long and two crew.....anybody know? Please comment below.

Our mail service is located in Green Cove Springs and since we were passing by we called to see if they could perhaps drive 3 miles or so to the City Dock to deliver our mail. We have not received our mail in perhaps, 6 weeks. If you read the earlier blog, you know that St. Brendan Isle scans the important items at our request, so we know exactly what is in the mail. The items we miss most are our magazines. It is like Christmas when the mail arrives!

St. Brendan's Isle was "crazy" busy on Monday morning and could not deliver the mail to the City Dock, so we agreed to pick up the mail later in the week. Anxious for those boating magazines! Won't see Jim for a week after they arrive! Jim is hoping his favorite magazine is in the pack, Passagemaker. We both read it from cover to cover and Passagemaker will NEVER be thrown away. When we bought Crawdad, the former owner had old copies from years ago that he left on the boat. Those magazines are now in our "collection".

We decided to stay overnight in Six Mile Creek. Fellow Loopers had told us what a pleasant spot it is. Shallow coming in, but deep enough and worth the trip. Outback Crab Shack has a 1000 foot dock with cleats and posts. They only request that you eat a meal in the restaurant. Wow, was it great! The restaurant is all open, with one area "indoors" with screens. More than 1/2 the restaurant is outside under umbrellas. Pool tables, huge pots with fresh, live crabs. Don't want to give you the wrong idea. It is a primitive restaurant, but the NCAA basketball games were on and we enjoyed ourselves eating shrimp, crabs and watching the games. Life is good! So nice to have Adrienne with us to enjoy the fun!

We dropped the dinghy over the side into the and went for a ride.....looking for gators. One gator flipped his tail directly next to us and Adrienne is now in need of a hearing aid in that ear from my scream. We saw two gators swimming across the river and later saw a friendly gator near the dock looking for food. BooBoo wasn't available!

Can't recommend this spot enough. It is delightful!

"They"

say on summer and holiday weekends, the boats are rafted along the 1000 feet 5 deep. You'll see in the picture, we were the only overnight boat that night!