St. Augustine to Beaufort SC

--Blogpost written by Bob

On Sunday evening, April 15, we had a nice happy hour ending in, believe it or not, frozen apple sauce daiquiris.  They were delicious.  However, our favorite that we’ve made to date, is our frozen strawberry-mango daiquiris.

We made these frozen applesauce daiquiris with apple,
applesauce, cinnamon, ice, lemon juice, rum,
and a little sprite soda.

We met with John & Bobbie of s/v Satisfaction yesterday. They were on an adjacent mooring buoy and they rented the slip next to us in Baltimore last summer. 

Layover Day in St. Augustine

We planned this layover day, Monday, April 16, in St. Augustine so that we could provision for the next week and get rested so that we could hit it hard getting through Georgia. Even though the sun is shining brightly this morning, a cold front moved in, drastically reducing the temperature. The outside temperature was down to 47 degrees F early this morning! A 10-knot breeze (with occasional gusts to 13 knots) is coming from the northwest. I never expected it to be this cold in northern Florida in mid-April!

The Monday morning traffic on San Marcos Avenue
adjacent to the northern mooring field
was moving along briskly.

My first job of the day is to bail all the rainwater out of the dinghy—it is several inches deep. Because of the cold outside temperature the dinghy’s tubes are a little deflated. Second effort is to get breakfast before taking a cab to the local PUBLIX grocery store for provisions.

We had a nice breakfast at La Herencia Cafe, a little Cuban restaurant on Aviles Street, the oldest street in the U.S.  The we got a Uber ride to PUBLIX for provisions.

When we came back to the boat after getting provisions, a dolphin was casually swimming very close to our boat. Also, close by was a crab pot buoy. The dolphin swam toward the crab pot buoy and pulled them under the surface of the water. They reappeared a few moments later about 50 yards further away from our boat. Could this be simple playfulness or was there some purposeful reason behind it?

We put the side windows for our cockpit enclosure in place to allow the cockpit to warm up—it makes a big difference!

Later in the afternoon, we took showers, got ice, and prepped the dinghy for the trip ahead. We intend to leave St. Augustine at first light tomorrow morning. This is the shortest stay we’ve ever had in St. Augustine.

St. Augustine to Stafford Island GA  

We left our mooring in St. Augustine behind at 6:45 AM on Tuesday, April 16. An orange glow occupied the eastern sky before the day’s appearance of the sun. It was very cool, 51 degrees F to be exact. We wore jeans, sweatshirts, and foul weather jackets to keep warm. Two sailboats were ahead of us as we left St. Augustine—they proceeded out into the ocean as we turned north up the ICW on the Tolomato River. There was a dredge working in the ocean inlet when we came by. Also, the red buoy #60 in the inlet that we use as a turning point was missing. (It always causes a bit of consternation for the helmsman when a buoy is not where it is supposed to be.) We quickly located green buoy #59 which had to stay on our starboard, which was reassuring.

The ICW in northern Florida is very similar to the ICW in Georgia, except for the area around Palm Valley and Jacksonville. During most of today’s trip we found ourselves surrounded by swampland and the tree line was about 1/4-mile beyond the swamp. Near the infrequent settlements, the swamp disappears and the tree line gets closer to the ICW. The forest is a mixture of palm trees, live oaks, and others that I don’t recognize.

Some Florida residents take the design of their boat
piers very seriously. This one was near
Palm Valley FL.

There is an area of the ICW just south of Fernandina Beach where the channel is very shallow at low tide. Leaving as early as we did today allows our arrival at Fernandina Beach about an hour’s time before low tide.

We kept going past Fernandina Beach into Georgia and stopped and anchored for the night along the ICW near MM 707 at 4:45 PM. The closest piece of land to our anchorage is a barren, uninhabited island called Stafford Island. The highest point on the island appears to be about 10 feet above water level at low tide (like it is now). With the 6-feet tidal range, it would only be about 4 feet above the water level at high tide. We’re pretty much in the middle of nowhere so to speak. We have a breeze from the west varying between 10 and 18 knots.

This is an image from our chart plotter showing
our anchorage just off the ICW.

Today we traveled 70 statute miles in 10 hours, averaging 7 mph (or 6.09 knots). Tomorrow, we intend to leave early again and go through Jekyll Creek (one of Georgia’s ICW problem areas) before high tide.

Stafford Island to Sapelo River

It was another very cool morning. There was very little wind. We were up before the sun this morning (Wednesday, April 17). I was warming the engine up for the day’s travels and went forward to pull the anchor up with the windlass. The anchor came up fine until it reached the surface of the water and then the windlass just spun, not pulling up the chain. It was easy to manually pull up the last three or four feet and get underway but I have to figure out the problem and fix it. In the meantime, I hooked up our secondary anchor, a lightweight FORTRESS (model F-37) to our secondary anchor line, a 5/8-inch nylon braided rope with about 30 feet of 5/16-inch chain attached. We’ll use our secondary anchor until we can figure out what happened to our windlass.

As we came past the northern end of Cumberland Island,
we could see the lighthouse.  Note the
buoy washed up on the sand.

About 10:30 AM we stopped at Jekyll Island Marina for fuel (11 gallons used since St. Augustine which equates to 8.45 mpg) and ice cubes (we go through them as fast as fuel). Our timing was perfect for entering the first of Georgia’s ICW obstacles, Jekyll Creek which is very prone to shoaling. High tide is at 11:30 AM in Jekyll Creek.

After leaving Jekyll Creek we proceeded to motor across St. Simon Sound and up the Mackey River. The wind was very light and the water pretty smooth coming through this area and it finally warmed up (to near 80 degrees F). 

After lunch we tackled the second of the three major obstacles in Georgia, Little Mud River—the name alone is indicative of the problem area. We made it safely through Little Mud River at 3 PM, two and a half hours before low tide. We also hit some shallow spots on the Front River—some of the daymarkers were actually on dry banks.

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As we were traveling on the Front River a small wave maybe 3 inches high was coming toward us. As we went through it we noticed a lot of small fish jumping out of the water. Then birds circled to try and catch the fish. It was pretty wild. I’ve never seen anything like that before.

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About 1/2 mile before our evening’s anchorage we went hard aground and the chart showed 13 feet of water at low tide!  This is the kind of shoaling you find along Georgia’s ICW. After a few minutes I was able to turn the bow toward deeper water. At one point, the depth sounder was reading 15 feet (the transducer is in the bow) and our keel was still stuck on the bottom.  Maggie went forward to rock the boat and this allowed us to motor off the sand bar.

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We anchored around 4:30 PM along the ICW on the Sapelo River, which IS in the middle of nowhere. There was no land within 3/4 mile of our anchorage and I really doubt that there was a house within 1-1/2 miles. A 15 knot breeze is blowing from the east southeast, keeping us cool.

Just one more major obstacle to go in Georgia (Hell Gate) but that will have to wait until tomorrow.  I reworked our travel plan so that we slow down a bit and spend a couple of nights in marinas. These 70-mile days have been a bit too much for me.

Sapelo River GA to New River SC

Again, we were up and underway early—today by 7 AM.  It was awful sleeping last night because we had almost no protection from the west wind (or from any other direction for that matter).  The anchor windlass worked flawlessly with no sign of the problem from yesterday.

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We tried to make a slip reservation at Thunderbolt Marine for tonight but they were full, so were the other marinas in the Thunderbolt area. So, we decided to get out of Georgia today and anchor in South Carolina tonight.  A dolphin spent some time accompanying us this morning—it swam along beside our cockpit like it wanted to socialize. They are so graceful (and powerful swimmers)!

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At the change in our watch, we noticed that the bilge was very full. I used the manual pump in the cockpit at first and then the electric bilge pump by depressing the bilge pump switch. I believe the problem is a failure of the automatic bilge pump switch—they only last about a year. I have a spare switch on board, so we’ll change it out at our next major stop, which will be Beaufort SC. (We decided to make our next major stop in Beaufort SC as opposed to our normal stop in Isle of Palms.)

Isle of Hope is the nicest looking area of Georgia' s
entire ICW.  We have to stop here
on one of our seasonal  trips.

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We had 15 to 20 knots of westerly wind all day. When we crossed the Savannah River we had to dodge a big ship that was coming up the river and battle a strong outgoing tidal flow, besides the effects of the strong wind.

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We anchored in New River SC (near MM 570, just off the southern part of Dafuskie Island) at 4 PM. We traveled 67 statute miles today in 9 hours, averaging 7.44 mph (6.47 knots). It was another long day on the water and we are both beat but tomorrow will be easier—only 30 statute miles and then three consecutive nights in a marina.

Dusk as seen from our New River SC
anchorage on April 19.  You can 
see the remoteness of our 
anchorage was.

New River SC to Beaufort SC

Pulling up anchor @ 7:30 AM on Friday, April 20, we tackled what we thought was the most challenging part of today’s trip right away. It was about 3 hours before low tide—Ramshorn Creek would have been very challenging at low tide!  In fact, we saw a tug get stuck in this creek last evening—it had to turn around, anchor, and wait for the tide to rise.

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The wind was blowing 20 knots out of the north and we proceeded in Calibogue Sound near Hilton Head Island. There were white caps on the 5 foot seas that had developed in the Sound.  As we got further north on this stretch of water the wind has less of an effect since there was much less fetch.  It was cold all morning, down as low as 53 degrees F.  It had warmed up only a couple degrees when we changed watches at 9:30 AM, even though it was sunny.

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Our bilge was full of water again at mid-morning. We pumped it dry and then had to pump it again.  We arrived at Beaufort’s Downtown Marina a little after noon.  As soon as we got into a slip, I changed out the faulty bilge pump switch which is always a nice chore. Then I looked for the leaks.  There was a trail of water coming from the stern where the rudder is located. The dripless seal near the engine did not leak in neutral but it leaked a little bit under power. Apparently, the problem seems to be the combination of both leaks that only occur while underway and applying high power load.

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More on our 3-night stay in Beaufort SC in our next blogpost...

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