Jekyll Island to St. Augustine - 2017

--Blogpost written by Bob

Jekyll Island GA to Fort George River FL

We had a restful night last night. It was warm enough that our heater only came on a couple times. It rained quite heavily during the night.

The 2017 ICW Cruising Rally was berthed at Jekyll Harbor Marina last night with us—that’s why we got the last available slip. Some of the rally boats were in slips and others anchored nearby. (I expect their next stop will be at Fernandina Beach, where we are headed today.

Our dinghy painter was starting to abrade where it came through the chock on the boat. We replaced it with another line while in the marina. We also bailed the rainwater from last night's rainstorm out of the dinghy.

The dinghy painter (the line that tows the dinghy) was nearly
abraded through.  We replaced the line this morning.

Expecting a mass exodus of novice ICW travelers within the hour, we left our slip on the face dock—it was 8 AM on November 22. We contemplated staying in the marina another day but our need to get out of Georgia won out over our need for a restful day. 

Our morning hours were easy, motoring down Jekyll Sound and Little Cumberland River. As we passed by Little Cumberland Island at 9:30 AM, the sun was out and it was 64 degrees F and climbing—a beautiful morning to be on the water. We saw three wild horses on Little Cumberland Island as we motored past.

Three wild horses roamed along the beach on the 
west side of Little Cumberland Island.

Just before we got to Fernandina Beach, I realized that I had two November 23’s on my travel plan. Whoops! I had to revise my plan for a longer day today—our day’s destination would not be Fernandina Beach (MM 716), but Fort George River at MM 735, almost 20 miles further.

Our chart plotter shows us going over a small island to stay
on the ICW.  Even though I know there is no small
island in our path, it was still difficult for
me to ignore my instruments.

At noon we crossed the state line into Florida. It immediately felt warmer to me and it was, 73 degrees.  (But it wouldn't last for long!)

Just below Fernandina Beach there is a sunken sailboat in
the center of the ICW channel. All that sticks out of
the water is a small portion if its bow.

Our anchor was dropped in 18 feet of water in the Fort George River at 3 PM . We traveled 51 miles today.

This is the view looking toward the mouth of the Fort George
River from our anchorage.  There are lots
of sand bars in the river.

It was challenging getting into our anchorage (some shallow water on the way in) but once we got into the right spot we had 18 feet of water depth at mid-tide. (There was some yelling and screaming and a little anxiety, but, eventually, we made it to the right spot.)  On our electronic chart, it looks like we are close to land but, in reality, we’re maybe 50 yards away. We are well protected from wind and waves and have good holding for our anchor.  (Our special anchoring spot is on a straight line between day mark #2 and day mark #3 and it about twice as far to #3 as it is to #2--in other words, closer to day mark #2 than day mark #3).

After 26 days underway, one of our two 10-lb propane tanks was empty.  Most likely, our 6-lb propane tank dedicated to the grill is close to being empty as well. We’ll have to get propane in St. Augustine.

We expect rain all day tomorrow but we have all the ingredients for a great Thanksgiving dinner (turkey, sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie) and I’m sure that we will enjoy it at anchor in the Tolomato River, just north of St. Augustine.

Fort George River to Tolomato River

It's Thanksgiving Day and we have a short travel day ahead of us today, about 40 miles.  We pulled up anchor at 9 AM, a little later than normal because the tide is running an hour later each day.

Last night, Maggie made a (low-carb) pumpkin pie and I made cranberry sauce (using Splenda in place of sugar).

It rained all night long and the forecast is rain throughout the day today. Fortunately, it’s warm rain. This was our welcome to the Sunshine State.  (It seems like the last few vacations we took over Thanksgiving, it rained--it rained in Bocas del Toro, Panama and in Bermuda.  It actually snowed on a vacation we took on Cape Cod over Thanksgiving.)

Our welcome to the Sunshine State!

Deliberately leaving a little later (9 AM), we used the top half (6 hours) of the tidal cycle for today’s travels. It was raining when we left our anchorage and it rained the entire day.  (In retrospect, we should have remained in our anchorage this morning.)  We were nice and dry inside our cockpit enclosure but it seemed like everywhere we sat was wet—we have to figure out how to fix this for next season.

This photo gives you an idea of the kind
of visibility we had all day.

We anchored at 2:30 PM just 100 yards off the ICW near MM 772--it is just a spot of deep water next to the ICW.  This anchorage does not have much protection from the wind but it does have good holding for our anchor.

At 3:30 PM we had our (un)conventional Thanksgiving dinner.  We had cheese-stuffed jalapeños as an appetizer, roasted turkey breast, and sweet potato--even pumpkin pie for dessert.  Despite the ugly weather, it was a beautiful Thanksgiving dinner!

Tolomato River to St. Augustine

Last night's wind (close to 30 mph) was the worst I have ever experienced in such an unprotected anchorage. The velocity reached nearly 30 mph as shown on the following graph of wind speed recorded at a NOAA buoy near St. Augustine.  We barely got any sleep last night.  If I had a "do over" I would select an anchorage with better protection.  However, our ROCNA Vulcan anchor with about 100 feet of chain out held superbly!

A graph of the wind velocity recorded at a buoy near
St. Augustine.  Note that the times listed are
GMT (5 hours ahead of our local time).

Since high tide today is at 12:06 PM, we left our anchorage at 9 AM since we are only 5 miles away from our reserved mooring at St. Augustine Municipal Marina.  It was still very windy and raining.  We made the 10 AM opening of the Bridge of the Lions and then settled on to our assigned mooring.

We are on mooring buoy #1 and it is very close to the marina,
making our dinghy trips into town as short as possible.

The Bridge of the Lions opens for another
sailboat in the afternoon.

After checking in at the marina, our first order of business was getting hot showers.  Our second order of business was having pizza for lunch at Pizza Time in town.  Both were outstanding!  The sun finally appeared after we went into town for lunch.  

We'll be here in St. Augustine for five days.  We're looking forward to being dry and having a restful time here.  More on St. Augustine in our next blogpost...


Thanks for following our blog!