Fernandina Outside to ...

We left St Augustine at 6:45. It was cold, 58 degrees! We said what's going on, then remembered "global warming".

Castillo De San Marcos

Cross

Bye, St Augustine, till the next cruising season.

 

We had a stressful day traveling toward Fernandina Beach. We went thru a lot of shallow water and had to go very slow lots of times. We knew we would have skinny water but this is ridiculous.

We had a lot of current when we got to St John's Inlet and it was another stressful place. There was a tug and big barge turning around in the middle of the inlet. Guess he wasn't having a great day either.

Glad we weren't trying to do this. Lots of current made his job lots harder.

See the current?

This dry dock usually has a boat in it. Usually a busy place.

 

Working here

We had planned to go all the way to Fernandina or Cumberland Island but decided to stop earlier to avoid more shallow water along the way. Shay said he was tired of the stress.

Its not good when the crabpot is out of the water. Not for the crabbers or us.

We've not stayed at Alligator Pass before but it looks ok. Its low tide so it will only get better. At least we can see what we're going into. We got to the anchorage at 2:30. We traveled 7hr 45minutes at 6.0kts and went about 47nm. We had a windy day and are glad to be here.

Shay and David checked the weather reports and it looks like a good weather window, so it looks good to go outside at St. Mary's Inlet and head north. We have several inlets we can go into depending on how the weather is. We have calculated how long it will take us to get to them and when they have slack tide so we could enter them with little or no current. The farthest we are looking at is Georgetown, SC. That would take us almost 1.5 days with no stop. Of course, we can't stop out in the ocean.

We are anchored at Alligator Pass a little south of Fernandina and it will take us a while to get to the inlet. We left the anchorage at 8:15 and had no problems with skinny water, since it was high tide. It was good to not worry about shallow water.

Easy trip with a high tide.

 We saw several boat victims of Hurricane Matthew still washed ashore. Like I said before, sometimes they are not worth the expense of getting them back in the water and running again.

We passed by Easy Living, a boat we traveled with from Great Sale Cay, Bahamas back to Fl. Fernandina looks like the marina is open again and they are having a Shrimp Festival this weekend.

Easy Living

Shrimp Festival

Shay says we've seen this boat before, I don't remember it.

Fort Clinch at the entrance to St Mary's Inlet

We started out the inlet at 10:00am and it was very calm and easy. We saw lots of shrimp boats outside, I guess they were stocking up on shrimp for the festival. Boy, they will be fresh!

Heading out St Mary's Inlet. Next stop...not sure.

Getting fresh shrimp for the festival!

Looks like a great day for an outside passage!

We had an easy trip and saw 8-10 dolphins off the coast of GA. We usually see a lot of dolphins in this area.

Sunset, we've been traveling about 12 hours and more to go!

He went zoom-zoom by us!

Even the tug boats pass us!

We passed by the Charleston Inlet about 6:00am the next morning.

We are passing Winyah Bay, the inlet at Georgetown, SC. We have decided to go on at least to somewhere in NC. We saw more dolphins, lots of flying fish and finally a sea turtle. When I think about how big the water is, and how small the turtles and us are; I think its amazing that we ever see one. But we usually see at least one on our long passages.

We have decided to go all the way to Beaufort Inlet since the weather is good. They ocean is not dead calm but it is definitely acceptable. We'll keep going as long as it stays like this.

We have seen lots of big cargo boats, fast fishing boats and small fishing boats when we were near major inlets like Charleston; but not a lot of boats like us.

Great travel weather

It's good to have the help of the moon on a night passage.

Shay got a VHF call from Red Head, Jeff and Karen. They were several miles behind us and heading into Beaufort Inlet like we were. After talking to him, Shay decided to change our course a little and go thru Frying Pan Shoals, instead of around them. It will make our trip shorter since we won't have to go so far off shore. Jeff and Karen have gone thru several times and had no problem. The only negative is that the markers are not lighted and we will be going thru about 9:00pm. Shay changed our route and made sure he was very precise when he plotted our course thru them. Red Head caught up and passed us just before we got there, so we followed them, Thanks Red Head. You looked good in the sunset tonight!

We got to the Beaufort Inlet sea buoy at 8:00am. It was a cloudy morning. We were welcomed to the inlet by dolphins and that's always a good thing. There were lots of fishing boats going out and several shrimp boats near the inlet. It was good to see the Cape Lookout Lighthouse off in the distance.

We're getting close!

 

Dredging in the inlet

Pilot boat going out to bring in a big freighter

Our last bridge for a while

We got to the MCYB at 9:10am. We didn't have anyone on the dock to welcome since all our usual greeters were at work or away from the dock. But we had no problem getting Escape into her slip and getting a line on the dock. After that we took our time getting the lines on and getting plugged into power.

We left at 8:10am on 5-7-2017 and got here at 9:10am on 5-9-2017. We traveled for 49 hours at an average speed of 7.5kts for a total of 364.14nm. Yes, we traveled a lot faster than we usually do. We knew the ride would be easier if we used the stabilizers and they work better when we are going a little faster than usual. And we wanted to make sure we traveled in a good weather window and we wanted to get as far as we could while it was good.

Our good Mt Airy friends, George and Pam are coming down tonight to stay a few days and then take us back to get our car. So Shay worked on getting all the salt off the outside and I worked on getting all the dust from the inside of Escape.

They got here around 6:00pm and we visited for a while and then off to dinner at Cox. No, its not fried chicken night, but its always good, Shay and George had chicken stir fry and Pam and I split a filet mignon meal. We were all very pleased with our choices. We stopped by the grocery store to get supplies for breakfast and then back to Escape.

Its been a long trip and we are ready for bed. It's great to be back. We saw some of our dock family that night. It's good to see them.

It was so good of George and Pam to come down and stay for a few nights then take us to Mt Airy to pick up our car and visit. Thanks guys! Come back anytime!

We had a good visit with George and Pam. We took a waterfront walk and had some great meals. We always have a great time with them. We headed back on Thursday and had dinner at our favorite place, Chili Rojo. It was a great meal and one we had been missing since Christmas. Yes, we have not been back since Christmas. That's a long time, every though we have been on FB, talked on the phone and texted back and forth.

We spent time with daddy, Shay's mom, and other family and it was great. Just too short. Well, we'll be back soon. We spent Mother's Day with his mom and got to see lots of family. Good times.

We left Monday morning coming back to boat. We've got lots to do this summer on Escape and need to get started. We'll be back soon!

Bad Bunny, John and Kaye have spent time at our marina several time. This is a special time for them as they are leaving today for the beginning of a whole new adventure. They are heading to Bermuda and then on to Europe for years. Good luck guys and keep us posted!

John in his "Captain Pose"

Bye Kaye! Miss you!

Here's a synopsis of our cruising season. We left Morehead City on October 31, 2016 and got back on May 9, 2017. We were gone over 6 months. We traveled at total of 1697.63nm at an average moving speed of 6.62kts. That's faster than our usual 6.25kts. We used a total of 838.51 gallons of diesel  We got 2.025nm/gal or 2.33sm/gal and used 3.23g/hr.

On the way to Wrightsville Beach we fueled up and bought 244 gallons and paid $1.89. That's the first time we have paid more than the time before since we bought the boat 6.5 years ago. Well, all good things must come to an end and our cheaper than before gas has ended. The first time we bought fuel it was $3.35 and we got a 10% discount so we paid 3.03. We both thought it would only go up. Boy, were we wrong and glad of it!

I'll post a couple of times during the summer so check back!