Sunday, November 22nd to Thursday, November 25th (Thanksgiving!)
I'm changing the format of our blog to stop the gory details from each day and make it more of a summary. I will post the interesting things that happen to us along the way plus, of course, the beautiful pictures. Please leave a comment if you like the old format better.
Sunday morning we motored out of our pretty Crescent River anchorage for another day on the Georgia ICW. We would typically try to bypass all or part of this section but the off-shore weather was not cooperating. But, the high tide was near noon (and getting a little later each day - that's how tides work) so we had plenty of water to get through the low spots.
My goal was to get passed Jekyll Island and anchor near Cumberland Island tonight. Then we would have a short trip tomorrow to Fernandina where we hoped to pick up a mooring and walk around the town.
Our day progressed well as we motored up and down the rivers and bays. The NE wind on our Jib helped us along the spots were we were fighting tidal currents so we made pretty good time.
In the early afternoon we motored across St. Simons Sound and could see the recovery work on the wrecked car carrier Golden Ray. I posted a picture last year of this huge car carrier that had become unstable, flipped on it's side and sank to the bottom. As it was in shallow water, most of the ship was visible. This year they had decided to cut the ship into pieces (along with the 4,000 cars inside) and barge it away. This picture is from today as we motored past There is a huge gantry above the wreck that you can see from 15 miles away. It has cranes and cables to take the ship apart. It is such an unusual sight, I need to explain what you are looking at.
The red part of the ship facing us is the bottom. The blue part off to the left is the stern. The boat is laying on it's port side and the gantry / crane is taking apart the bow. Wow!
Here is a closeup of the work on the bow.
Laura also took this picture of a nice looking schooner that was sailing around this harbor.
Just before sunset we anchored in Brickhill Creek near Cumberland Island. 47 nautical miles today.
Monday we were underway early to catch the tide down the St. Marys River. Around 11am we picked up a mooring at Fernandina Beach Marina. We were in Florida!
We dropped the dinghy and motored into the marina. Fernandina Harbor Marina has been rebuilt after a hurricane destroyed it 3 years ago. The docks are new and very nice. The dinghy dock is huge and actually not attached to the marina so I guess anchored boats can dingy in for free.
We had a nice walk around town which seemed to be pretty busy with people. Maybe because this was Thanksgiving week? This picture of Laura shows a little of the downtown. There were lots of people around which is why we were wearing masks. Don't know where they all went when we took this picture?
A while later we went back to the boat and spent a quiet evening onboard.
Before we tied up to the mooring, I had called St. Augustine Municipal Marina to see if they had a mooring available for tomorrow night and the next couple nights. They were full tomorrow but I did make a reservation for Wednesday and Thursday. Plans are to leave tomorrow morning and anchor near St. Augustine.
Start of week 9. Tuesday morning we were underway at 7:30am on a falling tide for a couple hours. The high tide had moved into the afternoon and the low tide was now around 9am. This section has been a problem area in the past for shallow spots but I had no problems navigating through today using AquaMaps charts on my iPad which display the Army Corps of Engineer depth survey data. It made it all look easy.
We had been seeing white and grey pelicans for the past couple weeks. Later in the morning we saw a whole bunch of them on an island next to the ICW. White pelicans with grey pelicans.
There was a warm front coming through tonight with higher winds from the NE to East. I remembers a good anchorage just before St. Augustine that had trees off to the east. We dropped our anchor at 3:15pm and spent a quiet night with the winds cranking our wind generator.
Wednesday we lounged around a bit since it was only about 2 hours to St. Augustine. Before 9:30am we had the anchor up and were again motoring south.
It was just before 10:30 when we pulled into St. Augustine. The marina has moorings on both the north and south sides of the Bridge of Lions Bridge which only opens every 1/2 hour. I called the marina and they said our mooring was on the south side so we went through the bridge at 10:30am. The marina also told us the mooring was currently occupied and would be available at 11am which is the "check out" time. We cruises around the river for 1/2 hour and tied up to the mooring right at 11am. We would be here for 2 nights. Nice!
We dropped the dinghy just after the tide had changed to flood. This meant the tidal current was against the 15-20 mph south winds in the mooring field which caused about a 1-2 foot chop on the water. I don't think we got wet motoring into the marina but it was close.
I walked to the marina office and paid for 2 nights - $50. We've been coming here for 14 years and it never seems like the gents in the marina office are very nice. I sometimes wonder if being a City marina they don't care much about customer service. Oh well....
Laura and I walked through town and down US1 on our normal trek to Winn Dixie. We needed a few things for tomorrow's Thanksgiving dinner and the next week or so down the ICW. The walk was nice but there was lots of traffic and people walking through town.
What a difference from when we were here in May. Now it seemed like "what COVID?" The city was almost back to normal and maybe it was a little busier because of Thanksgiving week.
We found all the groceries we needed and took an Uber back to the marina. We did get a little wet on the dinghy ride back to the boat but we had everything downstairs and stowed away a little while later. I had mentioned maybe going into town for dinner but we were both tired so Laura made Shrimp and Broccoli Alfredo over Linguini for dinner. One of my favorites!
It was a pretty sunset last night and I took this picture from the boat of an American flag right in the brightest part.
HAPPY THANKSGIVING!
Laura had pulled the turkey out of the freezer last night and put it in water to thaw. She was going to make a full Thanksgiving dinner for just the two of us. What a woman!
When we got up this morning, she said the ice had fallen from the top of our big freezer which doesn't usually happen unless we are defrosting it. I was thinking it was maybe pulling out the turkey and putting in a bunch of stuff we had bought at the store. A little while later she said the refrigerator wasn't very cold. Oh oh. Now we had a real problem.
It turns out that both freezers and the refrigerator had stopped working but their power lights were on. Time to troubleshoot!
I turned on the inverter and switched the refrigeration over to 110v AC. We could hear the three compressors turn on. I then checked our battery monitor and it showed "low voltage". That's a problem. The engine had been off only 24 hours and we had good wind and solar yesterday. We should not have have drained our batteries in one day. I turned on our Honda generator and started charging the batteries. Everything started working.
Seems like our 4 1/2 year old house batteries are not holding much of a charge anymore. I will continue to troubleshoot over the next few days and see if I can isolate a bad battery. If just one battery is pulling down the rest, I will just disconnect it from the group. I have been researching Lithium batteries which are about twice as expensive but last 3-4 times longer. This job should wait until we get to Marathon in a couple weeks.
Also today we performed the somewhat-major job of repacking our propeller shaft log. I really don't like doing this because you have to take the nut completely off the shaft and water comes pouring into the boat. Our bilge pumps can keep up with it but it's not a pretty sight and a great motivator to get the nut repacked and back on as quick as possible.
This is the 4th or 5th time we done this but about 1/2 were when we had the boat hauled for bottom paint. Then the water isn't gushing in....
The job went pretty quick and we had 3 new strands of packing in the nut and screwed it back on in about 1/2 hour. The shaft log on this boat is pretty easy to get to (compared to other boats) but it's still working like standing on your head. Here I am working on the shaft nut and putting in the last strand. You can see the propeller shaft down near my hand.
Ok. Enough boat work! Laura had Thanksgiving dinner ready around 1pm. I opened the canvas in the cockpit and we ate "upstairs" like a picnic in the Sun and warm, light breeze. It was awesome as you might expect if you know Laura's cooking. We can fit about an 11 pound turkey in our oven. This one just made it....
We both talked about the things we were thankful for - mostly our health and our families and friends. I am very thankful to be able to sail and cruise with Laura. Not everyone gets to do the thing they love with a great partner.
Later in the afternoon I practice my flute in the cockpit. Somewhere during my practice a dinghy had been passing by and stopped to listen. They were right behind me and as I finished a song they said, "You're playing a flute?" I about jumped out of my skin because I was so concentrating on the music I didn't hear them pull over to the boat. I showed them the flute (yes, I was playing a flute) and continued my practice while watching the setting Sun spray red rays onto the clouds.
There is a big cold front coming down into Florida next Sunday night and Monday. We are going to head to Daytona tomorrow and maybe get a dock at New Smyrna Beach on Saturday. We've spent 3 Decembers at that marina and it would be nice to see our old friends. Then we will head to Titusville on Sunday where we will sit out the storm on a mooring or at anchor. That should be an excellent place to be with the high south and west winds predicted. I'll let you know how it all works out!
I know you can see from the pictures we've been posting how nice the weather had been but we are very grateful. Last year around this time we had on our winter coats in Brunswick Landing Marina - only about 100 miles north of here. We like this much better but next week's cold front may bring colder temps - especially at night. Forecast for next Tuesday is a high of 55 and low of 42. Brrrrr. We need to get to The Keys!
1,202 nautical miles traveled since leaving Catskill. Water temp here is still only 68. It will get warmer as we move south!
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