Beaufort, SC outside to St. Augustine

Well, we are provisioned, we have our life jackets (4), ditch bag,  goodie bag, sleeping bag, night vision red flashlights, seasick meds, routes in the chart plotter, heavy jackets, and several layers of clothes out. I guess we’re ready!!?? Hope so.

We left Beaufort, SC at 7:30 Tuesday morning for an approximate 25 hour trip. Our caravan includes SeaSalt, Escape, and Meriden.

Not where this boat is supposed to be.

As I've said before, Parrish Island Marine base looks like a prison.

Since the weather is so good, there are lots of boats leaving the area heading south. Some are like us and will take advantage of this exceptional weather and head outside to avoid shallow places, no wake zones, the twisty ICW, and all the other problems you can encounter along the way.  Others are staying inside to see things they have or haven’t seen before, to meet obligations they have, or because they are just not ready to go outside or do an overnighter or both. That’s ok, to each his own.  But for us, this weather is too good to miss. Shay keeps saying these outside conditions only happen about once every other month. Don’t know if that’s true, but it’s not an everyday thing.

We started out Port Royal and 9:10. Our first overnighter was from here with Rocking B, Ken and Margaret. I texted them and told them we missed them. He said they wished they were there with us again. They have sold their boat, but we hope they travel with us some. We followed the buoys out to the last one and made our right turn. We will skirt the sea buoys along several inlets. We could take a more direct route but we decided to do this so we are not so far off land at any one time. We have taken the more direct route, but we feel better being closer to land.

Izzy R heading out Port Royal. Richard and Connie, used to own this boat. The new owners are doing a daytrip.

We passed thru the buoys at Tybee Inlet which leads to Savannah at 11:45am. There were about 8 boats crossing in front of us, some heading in others heading out. These are huge cargo ships sometimes traveling at 20kts others at anchor waiting for a harbor pilot to take them in. We have to respect these monsters. We can tell by our AIS how fast they are going, if we are on a collision course with them, and how long until we collide. No problems this time. The fact that it was daylight helps a LOT.

This angle shows how far away this boat is. He's anchored, waiting for harbor pilot.

At 5pm we were passing by Sapelo Inlet. We have anchored on the Wahoo River just inside this inlet. We have never used it but know shrimp boats use it a lot.

At 9:30 we had a ¾ moon and were passing by the inlet leading to Brunswick, GA. There were several boats coming out the harbor as we were trying to pass by. It’s very hard to see the lights on a boat when there are lights on the shore too. We could see the boats on AIS and radar, but not with our eyes. SeaSalt called one of the boats on VHF radio and asked if he could see us. He said no, he wasn’t looking for us. SeaSalt said I guess we’d better slow down and the captain said he reckoned so. We actually circled around a few times until we could finally pick out his lights. As soon as he passed by we hurried past. The other boat was far enough away that he was no problem.

We passed by St. John’s Inlet which leads to Jacksonville, FL at 4am. There were boats coming and going there, but I slept thru it. 

The rest of the trip was uneventful and all in all it was a great trip. As we were traveling down the coast we found out that Jim and Meryl on Kokomo were doing an outside passage from Charleston and would catch up with us in St. Augustine. We met them in the Bahamas last year.

Sunrise

St. Augustine Lighthouse

Castillo De San Marcos 

We got to our mooring at 8:55am on Wednesday November 1.Happy Anniversary to us. We have owned Escape for 7 years today. Yeah!  There were lots of crab pots in the mooring field again this year. They are such a bother and more important such a hazard to navigation. When the current is swift, they are pulled under the water and you can’t see them. If you run over one and get it hung on a prop or something, you lose control of the boat and can run into another boat. 

We avoided the crab pots and Shay put us in exactly the right spot for me to pick up the mooring with no problem. It’s not always easy. If the wind is blowing, or the current is swift, it’s hard to stay put long enough to get hold of the thick dirty line and get one of your lines thru it. Sometime the line is wrapped around the top of the buoy and is hard to get lose. Sometimes it is so thick that it gets hung on the boat hook and you can’t do anything. Sometimes the line is actually tie-wrapped in a coil and attached to the buoy. This happened to Kokomo today. We put our dingy in the water and Shay went over to help them. He said he’d never seen a line look like that. We think it had been stored like that for bad weather and not been used since. There was no way Jim could have gotten it undone from Kokomo. Shay cut the ties and helped get the rope thru the eye of the mooring.

Bridge of Lions

St Augustine Coast Guard Station

We have traveled 165nm, at 6.6kts for a little over 25 hours nonstop. Hey, you can’t drop anchor out there. Because, as Captain Ron says, “if it’s gonna happen, it’s gonna happen out there!”

We went to shore and met Kokomo. They have never been to St. Augustine and we showed them around a little. We had lunch at a Cuban restaurant. Then Kokomo fed his ice cream monster. They bought huge ice cream sandwiches with homemade cookies. They looked great but Shay and I were full.

Jim realized that St. Augustine must be the ice cream/gelato capital of the world. We had not realized there were so many places to indulge the fetish. Jim was amazed that there were 2 Kelwins ??? only a few blocks apart. He decided he'd need to get an early start tomorrow to be able to eat at all these places!

Since Shay was up most of last night, we came back to the boat and had a lazy evening, on the internet or "netting" as we call it, reading, and watching tv. We plan to go for a serious walk tomorrow.

Today I called our friends, Jim and Pam Neff from Palm Coast to see if they were available to visit us. They have recently bought a different boat and are getting it ready to head south. We are planning to have dinner with them tonight along with SeaSalt and Kokomo, if they want. Heading out now for my serious walk.

My Facebook popped up a memory picture of us on this very beach years ago. So here's a new one.

Today's walkers--Kokomo and Escape

We have a big group of boaters going to Pizza Alley tonight to eat, drink, and tell boating lies. We had a great time. SeaSalt, Escape, Amici, Exuberant, Kokomo, Izzy R and Evermore. We enjoyed happy hour and our time together. We got reacquainted with old friends and met new ones. After dinner several boaters came to Escape for Key Lime pie. Not I did not make a pie. Why make a pie when Edwards makes a terrific one? Glad we had our time together.

SeaSalt and Kokomo left on Friday heading to Daytona. Shay and I went for a walk and got to meet some DeFever newbies. Kurt and Beth on Tide Hiker. They have had the boat about a week and so far its been a good experience for them. We knew the previous owners of Tide Hiker and are sure they miss the boat. Hope we see Kurt and Beth as they continue their travels.

Shay and I went for two walks today and then visited Amici for a while. They are staying until Sunday and we are leaving tomorrow. We hope to get an early start since it might be a long day, depending on where we stop. SeaSalt told us they got a good push from the current and we hope to take advantage of it also.

We had a big moon tonight, it would be great for an overnight passage.