3-26 thru 4-1
We left St. Augustine to travel to Cumberland Island. We had a long day. The weather was good, and the current was swift. Most of the time the current was running against us, but sometimes we got a little boost from it.
The first thing we passed by was the St. Augustine Inlet, at sunrise.
Another shot of the inlet, showing the swift current around the buoy.
At the Pablo Creek Bridge, north of the St. Augustine Inlet the water on the north side of the bridge was at least a foot higher than the water south of the bridge. This was caused by an island north of the bridge that narrowed the channel, holding the water back during the rising tide. It like driving a slow boat up a small waterfall. It was actually scary. If we got sideways in that current, we probably would not have had enough power to straighten the boat out and there wasn’t enough width under the bridge to go thru sideways. Shay said he wished we could have made a picture of it, but we had our hands full throttling the engines up and holding the boat straight.
Below are a few pictures of sights we saw leaving Florida and entering Georgia.
We saw more dolphins coming toward the boat, so I went down to get a picture off the bow. When I got to the back deck I looked over and the dolphins were right beside me. I got very excited and started yelling that they were close. I got a good picture.
Cumberland Island is a park, with wild horses, and is supposed to be a great place to go ashore and spent time. We did see wild horses as we were leaving the anchorage.
We passed by a submarine base on our way out of the anchorage.
As we were leaving the anchorage, we noticed a very unusual sailboat going north on the ICW. Shay called the sailboat on the radio and asked where they were coming from and where they were going to. We wanted to find out if they had a good anchorage in mind for the bad weather. They said they were just going to pull into a creek and anchor when the wind got up. They weren’t nearly as concerned about the weather as we were. The sailboat traveled just slightly slower than we did, so it took a while for us to pass them. We ended up spending several hours talking to them on the radio. Ann said she didn’t usually talk this long on the radio. I guess we just hit it off. We found out they had built their boat themselves in England in 2002 and then sailed it across the Atlantic. Their boat was a catamaran approximately 45 feet long and 25 feet wide. It sounds like a huge boat, but it was basically 2 narrow pontoons tied together with a steering station in the middle. The couple on the boat were named Ann and Neville. Ann was very well spoken and interesting to talk to. They were an older couple and lived on their boat fulltime. Ann said they never go into a marina. They anchor just off from the marina and go in to get fuel, water, dump trash, and empty their porta-potty. They live frugally and don’t waste money staying in marinas. Ann had made 3 trans-Atlantic crossing. One of them she made alone in a small sailboat. It makes you wonder why anyone would want to do that. They decided to follow into our anchorage and hide from the storm.
We passed by beautiful Jekyll Island. Thinking about Jekyll Island made me sad. We have some good friends from back home, David and Betty York that come here very spring and fall. This year we had made tentative plans to meet for my birthday. Because of the weather, we decided we’d better skip Jekyll Island. We called them to tell them we wouldn’t be able to meet them and found out that they had brought me a cake and a gift. So they had to sacrifice and eat the cake themselves. I know it was delicious. That’s the only kind of cake Betty makes.
In trying to decide where to anchor, we circled by Fort Fredricia.
It started thundering and lightening and looked like rain so Ann took us back to our boat. She said that was her rule, if it thundered, you needed to be back on your boat. That was ok with us. The rain lasted a short time so we called them on the radio and invited them for dinner. We told them it would be simple. I made chicken salad sandwiches and got some key lime pie out of the freezer. They accepted and came over after the rain. We started off with a tour of our boat. Ann kept telling us what a nice boat we had and how much we would enjoy living on it. Ann brought some dried fruit and chocolate which we enjoyed with our meal. After we ate, we sat around and they told us old boating stories about the places they had been and things they had done. They were a very interesting couple and we enjoyed their visit. We weren’t paying enough attention to the weather and another thunderstorm came up before we realized it. They rushed to get in their dinghy but got soaked before they got back to their boat.
Early the next morning at what they called “dark thirty”, they took off for their next anchorage. We haven’t seen them since, although later we met another couple, John and Sue on “Debrief” that had spent quite a bit of time talking to Ann, who again doesn’t spend much time talking on the radio. It was interesting, that the boat John and Sue were on was a boat we had previously been on and considered buying. We actually made two trips to look at the boat. It was a 42’ North Pacific.
The weather man was calling for more bad weather so we decided to stay put in Frederica River. We had more storms all around us. We did get some wind and rain but nothing too serious. We wanted to go ashore and tour the fort, but stayed on board because of the weather. We’ll be coming this way again and maybe the weather will be more cooperative the next time.
We worked on started making entries to our blog. When we were at Vero Beach, Lauren helped me set-up the blog but we didn’t do any entries. So Shay and I worked on doing our first entry. It took a lot of time. We had to do the write-up first and then add the pictures. First we moved the text to the blog site and next we moved the pictures. That’s when the problems started. Things didn’t line up like we wanted so we had to add spaces or take away spaces and it’s not easy. Finally a blog we can post.
John and Connie from “Riverdance” came in around 5:00 pm.
Shay worked on plotting our next few travel days, so when the weather finally gets better, we will be ready to go. The weather is not so great today. It has been overcast and drizzly all day. It thundered all night and Shay was up and down all night checking the weather.
We finally left on March 29th. It was windy but the forecast had called for fog and they were wrong about that. It was 51 degrees and with the wind it was cold.
We talked about driving from the inside, but decided we want to be able to see everything especially the crab pots. We knew we had to leave today or be stuck here 4 more days, if the weatherman knows what he’s talking about.
Even though the day started out not so great it could have been a lot worse. We got to the Wahoo River about 2:00 pm, to anchor with a sailboat. We are out in the middle of nowhere. No internet and the cell phone is “iffy”. I sent a text to my sister, Chelle, to have her let my daddy and Shay’s mom know we were safe and might not be able to talk to them for a few days. We did find out if we went up to the fly bridge we could make calls but we might loose them.
Sharks??
The forecast was for 90% rain one day and 70% then next and they were right. We had rain both days. Shay worked on figuring out the wiring for the SSB radio.
I worked on the blog, even though I couldn’t post anything since no internet. Shay worked on more trip planning. When the weather breaks we’ll be ready. We had dolphins visit while we were here. Shay was standing near the door and said he heard a noise that sounded like something blowing air he looked around but didn’t see anything. I looked out later and was some dolphins and heard them blowing.
We hope the weather will be better tomorrow so we can travel again.
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