March 12, 2023 Palatka to Black Creek

 SUNDAY !!  March 12, 2023  Palatka to Black Creek - 38 miles

We purposely left Palatka a bit late - it was after 11 by the time we got underway.   Half day cruise would get us to Black Creek by 3 and by then we were hoping the weekend crowd would be thinning down.   Favorable ride for us as we had a strong SW wind blowing at our stern and were riding the falling current.  Winds kicked up at times into 15-20 range putting a chop and occasional whitecaps on the water.  We're in a much wider part of the river now so plenty of fetch for winds to do their thing.  Too far from shore to do much sightseeing so mostly just looking at open water and trying to spot the next daymarker.  

We pass the American Star headed to Palatka from Jacksonville.
7 day river cruises start at $4500pp. We like our cruising better.

The wide open and deeper water gave us an opportunity to run the engines up to WOT and blow any carbon buildup from the turbos. This is a recommended routine since they've been a bit neglected with a lot of low RPM running through the minimum wake areas combined with narrow river areas where we were not wanting to push a big wake.  The boat bottom must be staying fairly clean as we hit our top end speed. It's amazing the difference fresh/brackish water and routinely moving the boat does for preventing bottom growth and barnacles.

Turned into Black Creek coming through an area between shoals on the south side.  Depths never under 7' so a good alternative to the longer northern entrance. Once under the Hiway 17 bridge things got crazy.  Not sure if it was due to the start of daylight savings time and it staying light later, or due to windy/choppy conditions out on the river, or simply lots of new boaters wanting to get out and enjoy the 80 degree weekend, but Black Creek was an absolute zoo.  We cruised up the creek and back for an extra hour hoping things would die off.  Finally, just anchored and hoped the jet skiers, wake boarders, skiers, tubers, pontoon boats, center consoles, go fast boats, etc.  would not hit us or catch our anchor line as they zoomed by.  Thankfully by 5 it started to thin out and got fairly quiet by 6. 

Wakeboarding up and down the creek

No place to go but up and down, so same boats over and over.  
To stay extra legal we even put our black anchor ball on the bow.

Not sure why the hurry, but he threw a big wake our way.

Heavy rain, thunderstorms, potential hail and tornadoes expected tonight.  The forecast has been calling for this front to come through all week.  Put on a good lightning and thunder show with some heavy bands of rain.  Otherwise, nothing too severe for us.  Hardly even much wind. Weather expected to pass by midday Monday.  If so, we'll make a final run back to Port 32 on the Ortega River

Journey for March 12, 20203
Look close for the section of white line
That's our WOT run at 23.4mph