Beaufort SC to St Augustine – Nov 24 (Day 38) to Dec 2 (Day 47) – We are in Florida!!!

 

 

 

 

 

Having gotten Thanksgiving out of the way and with a week of fair winds forecasted, we said good-bye to Beaufort at noon on the 24^th.  We had decided to proceed to the west of Hilton Head Island, anchor for the night, and then go in the morning, through a passage in the shallow waters of Tybee Roads, the open roadstead at the mouth of the Savanah River. This staging allowed us to save 4 hours from the longest leg of the next three days and got us into St. Catherine’s Sound, an infrequently used inlet, before dark.

The trip to the Hilton Head anchorage was mostly uneventful.  We had planned to anchor up a creek near Daufuskie Island.  Daufuskie has some claim to fame as the location for Pat Conroy’s semi-autobiographical novel about teaching in the local Gullah community, “The Water is Wide”.

We were up early for the 40 mile run to our next anchorage in St Catherine’s sound, just inside St. Catherine’s Island, a private, uninhabited island. The attached short video of the raising of the anchor in the early morning cold is a “must see”.

Download to see the video: Raising the anchor in the early morning light

 

 

We were able to raise all sails for about three hours before the wind shifted to West Southwest, close enough to being on the nose with our course South Southwest.  At 1400 (2pm), Elena smelled rubber burning indicating a problem with our drive belt, a frequent problem for us.  We shut down the engine, let it cool a bit, removed the engine cover, and tightened up the belt.  All seemed fine as we motored on to the inlet channel.

For an anchorage, we chose a creek with a narrow entrance but with a wide deep anchorage further upstream. As we were entering the relatively narrow entrance to the creek, the depth began to get shallower and shallower, going from 10 as expected to 9 to 8.  At 7.5, with 18 inches before running aground, I was ready to backdown and try to get out (not a trivial exercise).  But then the depth picked up again and in a few seconds, we were in 10 feet of water and eventually anchored in 14 feet in one of the quietest places we have been, surrounded by marshes.

 

On Sunday, November 26th, our fortieth day, we were up early again for the long run of 48 miles to St. Simon’s Sound near Brunswick Ga, successfully crossing the shallow area at the mouth of the creek.  We would be arriving at night, but the channel is well-marked, used by major shipping.  Again, we had light winds and motored most of the day.  We anchored in open water, just off Jekyll Island, just off the main shipping channel of the Brunswick River.

Our final leg to Florida was a relatively short 30 mile run to the St Mary’s River and Fernandina Beach, Florida, on Amelia Island.

 

We arrived in daylight, going through the wide and deep inlet at 3pm, and tied up to a mooring ball at 4pm.  St Mary’s  is the homeport for the US Navy’s Atlantic nuclear ballistic missile submarines and so the channel is dredged frequently and with really significant depths of over 30 feet.

The next morning, we lowered the dinghy for the first time since leaving Norfolk, checked in with the marina, and toured the town.  Fernandina Beach turned out to be very nice, with lots of shops and restaurants.  I liked the town because while being a bit touristy, it also has paper mills and shrimp boats, giving it a feel of the real world.

 

On the 29^th, “Airbourne” arrived. Jay and Louisa were dockmates of mine at Herrington Harbour back when I first brought Sophia up to the Chesapeake in 2008.  They left for cruising the Bahamas for a couple of years and then went to work in Europe for a couple of years.  Airbourne was left in storage in the yard where I would drive by every once in a while.  She underwent a significant set of upgrade at the contractor’s site in Herrington, during which Jay and I chatted a bit and then Airbourne disappeared.  The next time we crossed paths was in Beaufort NC last year when we just happened to see each other on the street. They were putting the boat up in New Bern for a while.

 

This year, they were heading south again.  Getting a late start, they made the 400 mile run from Beaufort NC to Fernandina Beach FL in one shot over three days.  I caught up with them for a couple of hours while Elena was ashore and they were kind enough to lend us their car for a grocery run (long story on why they had a car, but it was fortunate for us).

While in Fernandina Beach, a shower passed over us and we were able to witness a perfect rainbow, one that started at the horizon on one side and ended at the horizon at the other side,  Amazing!

On of the most interesting thing in cruising is observing “characters”.  While in Fernandina Beach we were near a small sailboat, almost a derelict, upon which a man and a woman were living.  They were definitely living on the cheap, even their dinghy did not have motor and was rowed back and forth from the marina hauling gallons of water.  The bottom had significant growth leading me to assume that they had been there for a while.    I seldom saw either of the couple, but once in a while they would come out, sometimes to run their small generator.   We waved to them a couple of times, but chose to leave them to their privacy.

On December 1^st (Day 46), we were underway at 8am for a quick 20 mile offshore run to Mayport on the St. John’s River and near Jacksonville.  There was little wind as we entered the Atlantic, and we motored all the way to Mayport.

We often see shrimp boats along the coast doing what shrimp boats do.  Obviously, we try to stay out of their way.  Seagulls love to follow in the wake of these boats making a huge racket as seagulls, and looking for an easy meal.

In one interesting scene, I observed a seagull sitting on the back of a pelican, trying to get a free meal as well as a free ride.  Seagulls are such free-loaders!!

An Aside:  On Pelicans. 

We have seen many pelicans as we head south and we have grown in our appreciation of this most interesting bird.  Despite their most ungainly appearance, the pelican is the most perfect glider, skimming inches above the waves with a barely a flap of the wings.  And with great physical courage, they impressively dive straight down into the water to catch fish with a flourish and a splash.  They seem to be a most social of creatures, often gathering in groups of 5 to 20 to fly together or to rest on a sandbar.

Returning to log:  We entered the St. John’s inlet that leads to Mayport in mid-afternoon on an ebb tide (meaning going against us as we were going in) and crawled upstream at 3 knots.  As we entered the St. John’s River, we passed the Mayport Naval Station where I had been stationed in 1977-79 aboard USS Charles F. Adams (DDG-2) and again in 1981-83 on board USS Paul (FF-1083)  Memories (not all of them pleasant) came back and I started telling Elena sea stories about those days.

At about 4pm we moored at Fort George Island Marina, just across the river and within sight of Naval Station.  As is our habit, we took an exploratory walk of the nearby neighborhood, during which Elena befriended a cat, which turned out to be lonely as its owner was in the hospital.

Download this video to see:  Elena finds a friend 

 

 

All through the afternoon and into the evening large ships came and went to Elena’s fascination.

Download to see:   Car carrier on the St Johns River

 

On December 2^nd, we were underway at 0900.  We had waited for the tides to change so we would run with the tide and were rewarded by getting 7 knots as we exited the inlet. We turned south, but the seas were flat calm and there was no wind.  By noon we had 8 knots of wind from the east and we unfurled the genoa and the staysail and raised the mainsail, shutting down the engine.  For two hours we made good time under sail, but the wind shifted to the southeast, forcing us to furl the genoa and start the engine.

At 2:30pm, while motor-sailing, I heard a loud pop and saw the mainsail falling into its storage bag.  A quick inspection revealed that the three webbing straps that attach the sail to its headboard had failed.  The sail was unusable until repaired and the headboard with the halyard line was at the top of the mast and not coming down by itself.

We entered St. Augustine without incident, following the new buoys that had been put in place since our last visit.  We went through the Bridge of Lions at its 4:30 opening and took a mooring ball in the large mooring field at St. Augustine Municipal Marina.  Next to us is “Logistics”, one of our marina mates at Herrington.  They left a week after we did and we have been leapfrogging each other since October. When we were at Beaufort SC, they were a few miles away in Savannah, GA. We got ahead of them until Fernandina Beach where they were a few miles away at Cumberland National Seashore.  They left a couple of days before us and finally we are within 150 feet of one another.

We will try to get our sail repaired here.  We also need to get the halyard down from the mast, change the engine oil and do other routine boat maintenance.  It might take a couple of weeks to get the sail repaired.  Unfortunately, there is a rule that cruisers can only stay on a mooring ball for a week.  As I am writing this, we are not sure of our plans for the next couple of weeks.