We left St Augustine at 6:10 heading North. We're not sure how far we'll go today, depends. As you can see, we left before daylight. We haven't seen any crabpots in the mooring field at all this year, so it's safe to leave when it's still this dark.
Lighthouse
We had calm water for our trip today
Military ship at the boatyard at St. John's Inlet
This is the free dock off the ICW near the inlet. This is the most boats we've seen here.
Looking toward Jacksonville, FL
Looking toward beautiful downtown Fernandina
Watch out! This is a sunk boat! That's the bow sticking up out of the water!
Pretty sure this boat was here last year.
Shrimp boats lined up along the dock
At least, there are a few boats in the marina, but still not using the face dock so no transients.
Wonder how these boats ended up here? Weather or rescued?
Not a pretty city from the waterfront.
First time we've seen one of the ICW cruise ships here. They are taking people to shore to visit the town. They may have gotten wet, it was windy when we passed by here.
Fort Clinch, on St. Mary's Inlet
Traveling Soul anchored at Cumberland Island. We have left FL and entered GA, y'all!
Our anchorage at Cumberland Island.
Looking across the ICW we can see our neighbors at King's Bay.
Beautiful sunset
Full moon over the island
We got here about 2:45. We traveled about 8.5 hours at 7.2kts and moved over 61nm. We had a good day of travel with a push from the current. We love to anchor here. I wish we had time to go ashore, its a beautiful island and we enjoy walking around. We were invited over to Traveling Soul for drinks and snacks. We had originally met them in Marathon, FL and saw them again in Morehead City, NC. It was good to see them again.
We are up and leaving the anchorage at 7:30. We're heading to the Frederica River today. Soon after leaving the anchorage, we pass by King's Bay Navy base. It was disappointing today, no submarine
Degaussing station.
The US Navy Harbor Patrol is always here. He followed us as we passed by. But if you look closely, you'll see he was waving!
We were heading up the ICW and I glanced at the AIS. I saw we were meeting Escape. When I first looked at it, I thought it was showing us. No, its another boat named Escape from Wilmington, NC. Boy, that was strange.
Brunswick, GA Bridge
We got to Frederica River at about 1:30, after traveling 34nm, at 5.8kts for about 6hrs. We like to anchor here. It's a pretty place.
Beautiful sunset
Up the next morning and heading for our anchorage at Wahoo River. We had a good trip except we were invaded by the GA state bird better known to boaters as the horsefly. They are big and bite. Not fun. We saw several big mud turtles along the way.
We haven't seen many boats heading North. Where are they? Do they know something we don't know?
Birds following us, we must stir up stuff as we go by.
House hidden in the trees along the ICW.
This was a pretty house out in the middle of nowhere. Nothing else around it.
Can you see the mud turtle?
Shrimp boats near Wahoo River. We've seen them anchored in the Wahoo River. They'll come in late at night and then leave early the next morning, out to go shrimping.
Another beautiful sunset.
W
e got to the Wahoo at about 1:30 after a little over 6hrs at 6.4kts traveling 39nm. We are thinking of doing an outside passage tomorrow and are staging here in case the weather is favorable in the morning. We checked the weather and it looks like a good time to go outside. There's a lot to evaluate--weather, tide, current and hours.
If we go out here we can avoid a lot of the shallow water in GA. That's good. We had several "plans" depending on the conditions of the water once we were out there. We could go to in at Winyah Bay and go to Georgetown, SC. We could go to Port Royal and anchor at Beaufort, SC. We could go in at Cape Fear River and anchor there or head to Wrightsville Beach, NC. Decisions, decisions, decisions. We calculate the time it would take to do each of these trips, the speed we'd travel, the tide and current at the inlets when we'd get to them and when we'd get to our anchorage. And all this is based on the weather staying good so the water is calm.
We checked the weather again in the morning and decided we'd go for it and head to Wrightsville Beach. So on May 2nd we left the Sapelo Sound at 6:30.
We've never used this inlet before, so we were pleased to see a boat in front of us. We'll follow him out. But no, he doesn't know what he's doing. He heads this way and then that way looking for deep water. It looked like he didn't even pay attention to his charts. He was just going from one side of the inlet to the other, looking for deep water. Hope he made it to wherever he was going.
The water was calm and we had a good morning of travel. We saw lots of dolphins but none of them stayed with us long enough to get pictures of video. That's unusual, we normally have them follow us for a long time off the coast of GA. We saw a lot of turtles sunning on the top of the water. I heard on the radio that its egg laying time for the turtles and we wondered if sunning on the waters surface was part of the process.
I saw two hammerhead sharks right beside the boat. One was about 6 feet long and the other was about 4. Shay was taking a nap and I just stood there saying "Wow". First time I'd seen hammerheads.
We saw several big groups of rays swimming by. There was probably 50 in one group and about 20 in another. And of course, jumping fish. Lots of animals on this trip.
We had originally planned on going in at the Cape Fear River, but changed our plans and went thru Frying Pan Shoals and then to Masonboro Inlet. We went thru the Shoals last year about 9:00pm. Just before we got to the markers, we saw something that looked like a mooring. It's not on the charts and could really be bad if you ran over it at night.
Heading out Sapelo Sound
The water's great!
Lots of sunning turtles
This boat is anchored out off the coast of Savannah, Ga. He's waiting for the harbor pilot to come out and take him in the inlet.
See, I told you there were a lot of rays!
We saw this sail boat just before sunset.
Sunset on the ocean
We had a good day of travel and now we're getting ready for our night travel. We've got our ditch bag ready, our flares out, our life jackets, our sleeping bag, our goody bag, and our instruments ready for nighttime travel with the lights dimmed so we can use them in the dark.
And here comes the sun!
We had a good night water stayed calm and no problems.
But we did have a stowaway while I took a nap. Shay said he stayed around for a while. I guess we were his rest area.
Yeah, getting lined up to head in Masonboro Inlet. Soon this part of the trip will be over and we'll be back in NC!
We got into Wrightsville Beach anchorage at 4:15. We traveled almost 34hrs, at 7.5kts, for 256nm. We plan to spend several days here, so we can see Lauren, Chris and Joaquin. Can't wait to spend time with them.
And our guests arrive.
