Day 2 – Aground on the Matanzas River
Links to Chapters in the Series
Modern navigation is a true wonder. Satellite mapping and imagery, GPS, digital charts, crowd-sourced sonar bathymetry, and the shareability of the internet, all make even detailed local knowledge available to anyone. Even with all that, though, reality still imposes limits.
Doug spends many winter nights carefully plotting courses and stopovers using all available tools for the coming season. But even the best information can become stale and outdated before you have a chance to use it. A single storm can change the location of channels and shift shoals overnight. This is especially true in the shallow waters of the southern coast, where sandbars swept by strong tides can snake offshore for 10 miles, and inlets will open and close suddenly in really big storms.
The spot chosen to anchor for the night is a side creek just outside the ditch, just inside the Princess Place Preserve, where a string of small islands separate the ICW from a broad expanse of open water called Pellicer Creek.
Notes in the chart book from other boaters recommend it as a good anchorage, with 6 feet of water outside the channel. Tidings only draws 2 feet with the board up. Easy peezy. But just to be safe, Doug lowers the motor to idle, reducing our speed to around 1 knot. He has me steer between two islands for the open water while he watches the depthfinder.
Unfortunately, a quirk of this Raymarine sounder causes it to recalibrate when the depth suddenly becomes shallow. Which, of course, is when you most need it to give you quick and accurate readings. As we inch our way forward the sounder begins recalibrating. Holding our breath while we wait for the oracle to regain its wits, I suddenly realize we are no longer moving. We are on the bottom.
Doug quickly cut the engine to keep it from sucking in bottom muck. Then hops into the dingy with the anchor and rows it out into the channel and drops it overboard to kedge us off – me hauling on the anchor line to pull us off. Fortunately, with Doug off the boat and me squatting in the bow, I can heave steadily on the anchor line to ease us free in just a few minutes. No harm no foul. But with a falling tide, if we had been moving faster when we hit bottom, we would have had a long night hoping the next tide would lift us off. Quick thinking all around on Doug’s part. “I’ve been to this rodeo before,” he says.
We regain composure and motor further north another mile or so to Marineland. There’s a small marina at a bend in the river with a rock revetment along shore, making a deep cut in the bank where we can get clear of the channel. We drop anchor again and settle in for dinner and a couple of welcome whiskeys as the sun goes down, to spend the evening telling stories of past mishaps and near misses.
For those who didn’t grow up in the last century vacationing in Florida, Marineland has quite a history. Founded by Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney and Ilya Andreyevich Tolstoy (grandson of Leo Tolstoy), it began in 1938 as an east coast studio for making aquatic movies. This was the era of cheesy monster flicks and staged marine adventure shows.
One epic banger from my youth was actually filmed here – Creature from the Black Lagoon. If you haven’t seen it, you owe it to yourself to watch just for the sheer novelty and low-fi production esthetics. Here’s a taste:
When Marineland Studios first opened to the public, over 20,000 people jammed old Highway A1A to have a look. Not at all what the movie studio people expected. Seizing an opportunity, the owners pivoted to capitalize on the crowds, and the first Florida Theme Park was born.
It was billed as a marine mammal show, an “Oceanarium”, with trained dolphins doing tricks, and all the paraphernalia of souvenir shops and restaurants, etc.. They overcame real problems with this new marine aquarium concept with a number of engineering innovations, and grew and grew.
They did very well for decades, an iconic part of Old Florida. For a time they were the largest employer in the region – until DisneyWorld opened in 1971. Then SeaWorld Orlando opened in 1973. Then Interstate 95 opened and moved all the traffic inland off the coast. The crowds flowed to the new theme parks to spend their money elsewhere. Marineland has been on a downhill slide ever since, going through multiple bankruptcies and forced sales.
But it’s still here! Downsized and dogeared, but still kicking. Maybe we were just meant to be here, instead of anchored in a nature preserve that essentially said, “Nope, not today.”