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| Anchoring at MM 735 in the early afternoon on Sat. gave us time to dinghy up to Ft. George Island to visit Kingsley Plantation. Zephaniah Kingsley established the plantation in 1814 bringing his wife and three children from Africa. Kingsley's family was unusual in that he purchased his wife, Anna, as a slave and she grew to also be his business partner on the plantation. |
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| Kingsley Plantation produced Sea Island cotton as shown in the basket. The black seeds in the white basket had to be removed from the cotton buds by hand. Indigo was also grown in the gardens to produce the blue blocks of powder used as a coloring dye. You can see a sample weaving of the Sea Island cotton using white and indigo blue dyed cotton. It felt very soft. |
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| On Sunday we took a detour from the ICW to travel up the St. John's River to visit downtown Jacksonville and visit Norma's cousin Charles and his wife, Fran. The City of Jacksonville offers free dockage for boaters at their Metropolitan Park Marina near the Jaguars Football Stadium. As you can see, we had our choice of floating dock slips. That is Priority's mast you see in the marina. |
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| There is no dock master; no one answers phone messages or answers calls on the VHF radio. You only need a reservation if the Jaguars have a home game or there is a concert in the arena next door. So we made ourselves comfortable in a boat slip, slid our credit card in the machine to pay for electric power to our slip and explored the park and stadium area across the field. It is a beautiful facility but is located a little too far from the downtown waterfront area and shops and it is also 15 miles up the river which is a little too far for most cruisers to travel. | . |
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| Charles & Fran were very kind to show us how far and wide the City of Jacksonville really does go as they helped us complete our list of errands. Being boaters themselves and having traveled the ICW, they knew all the things we needed such as a visit to the hardware store, groceries and dinner out. It was a fun visit! |
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| On Mon. morning we used the fresh water and extra time as we waited for the tide to change to take us back down the river to clean off the accumulated salt spray that covered the boat. Priority left downtown Jacksonville looking shiny and clean. St. John's River is wide, deep and interesting as we saw ships being loaded and worked on in shipyards all along the shores. |
