June 7, 2009: Brick Hill

With my 3 days of travel working in NY, and the downpour of rain Saturday afternoon, we are still in Jacksonville at the Metropolitan Park on Sunday morning. So we biked downtown this morning to attend First Baptist Church again, but this time we knew the service began at 10:20 AM so we were on time. The first 30 minutes were filled with such wonderful music and full hearted hymn singing – I think that might be what heaven is like. The minister began with the story of Robert Robinson’s writing of the hymn Come Thou Fount of Every Blessing and then the choir of 300 voices sang it with the full orchestra swelling the music making your heart swell with it.

Riding back through the park Tom reminded me of the Kingston, Ontario, Canada fire boat factory; where in fact, they were building a boat for Jacksonville, Florida. Tom said that the sheriff told him they have ordered a second one, 70 feet long. Although most of the downtown is immediately in reach of a boat for fire protection, the real reason for the fireboats is the oil depots near town. In 1901 there was a great fire that burned 2400 buildings putting 10,000 people out of their homes and businesses. The finally put the fire out with a bucket brigade from the river but had no other fire equipment.

We are retracing our route downstream in the Saint John River towards the ocean. We passed fields of marsh grass along the way, God’s beautiful lawn. And we saw something we have not seen since we were on the Illinois River – a small band of white pelicans.

When we reached the ICW, we turned north and continued our wonderful relaxing ride past Ferdinando Beach. This appears to be a fishing community with docks of large shrimping vessels at rest.

Unfortunately, with the tide out and the water at 7 feet low, we managed to run aground. We worked our way off the sandbar and made it to Brick Hill for tonight’s anchorage, but we have some engine vibration now that we will need to get checked out...