Second Wind on the Great Loop and Beyond

Wednesday, March 7. Tonight we are secure in lovely Black Creek anchorage, after a long day heading north on the St. Johns River. Today’s highlight was a return trip to Welaka, where we again “parked the boat” at the well-maintained free town dock. This time the Wooden Boat Museum was open. We were awed by the artistry displayed in both the restored and built-from-scratch full-scale reproductions of classic early 1900’s wooden boats. Some were steam powered and some had vintage gasoline engines. All of the reproductions were built by Richard Speas and were in working order. His son Rand continues the tradition by restoring classic Chris Craft and other wooden runabouts. Rand waved to us as he went by in a newly restored lap-strake runabout. Unfortunately, I don’t have any pictures of these boats. What was I thinking!

As an aside, last week we met the Welaka mayor and his opponent. His “opponent,” now the new mayor, stopped to say hey as we walked to the museum. Again, we had a soup and sandwich special at the friendly Blessings of Welaka café, took the short walk back to the boat, and were soon back on the water. This time we had to wait for 30 minutes at a railroad bridge until the train arrived and crossed over. After the bridge was raised for us, we were on our way.