North Star on the Great Loop Journey: Crescent City on Crescent Lake

Preparing for the trip

Captain Jerry has been making the final preparations to North Star, our 32 foot Cape Island down east trawler. We are anxious to leave our landlubber lives behind and begin our long awaited journey around the Great Circle. Join us as we travel 10, 000 kilometers: through the historic Trent Severn Waterway; the pristine waters of Georgian Bay; the North Channel of lake Huron; and hop from beach to beach on lake Michigan. We will visit Chicago and begin our trek along the rivers: Illinois; upper Mississippi; Ohio; Cumberland: Tennessee; Tenn-Tom Waterway and the Black Warrior. We will have transited through 68 locks at this juncture. We have chosen the inner route from Mobile Alabama to Tarpon Springs Florida and the shorter Ocheechobee Waterway to reach the East coast of Florida. We will skip over to the Bahamas to wait out the winter before heading North on the Atlantic Inter Coastal Waterway.
The 10 years of researching and planning are finally at an end and we invite you to come along on our adventure.

Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Crescent City on Crescent Lake

We had a leisurely 25 mile cruise from Palatka to Crescent City on the St. Johns River, Dunn's Creek and Crescent Lake. The river is now narrow and Dunn's Creek even more so. There is a lot of slash pines and cypress trees with very little habitation on both shores. There is not much water, we had only 5-7 feet at several places and even a 4 foot depth on the chart. We did plow the muddy bottom at a few spots.

We found yet an other free dock so we are staying an extra day since it is nice and quiet here. We are next to the 3 Bananas Restaurant and Tiki Bar in a city with a population of 1500. We were told that you could stay at the restaurant for free overnight if you have dinner and drinks at the restaurant. They have narrow slips with pilings which we don't like. They do have power and water but we just can't get in there. We ate at the restaurant, it is the usual bar fare with fish sandwich as the specialty. The waitress told us they charge $1.00 per foot for the docks so we are happy to stay where we are at the town dock.
We will explore the town today and perhaps stay one more night.