Isle of Palms

ICW

We decide to stay another day because of the forecast high winds, gusts to 40 knots. We work on the boat, blog, vacuuming. Linda bakes some banana bread which I quickly reduce in size. We take another walk to the beach and watch the impressive waves breaking. Dinner again at the “Islander”. Today with the high winds and cool cloudy weather the restaurant is not very busy. No pleasure boating today in this wind. I fill the water tanks and prepare the boat for leaving tomorrow for a long day. We get our last game of cards with Mark and Karen for this trip. We will be stopping at Osprey to visit Linda’s niece, Karen. Mark and Karen will be sprinting for home in New Bern, NC, over the next couple days.

Ocean

 

 

 

 

Isle of Palms

 

 

 

Passing the Charleston Mega-dock, American Cruise line ship

 

Short day so we don’t leave until 9:00AM, but we have two bridges to time. Wappoo Creek bridge just west of Charleston opens just once and hour. On the other side of Charleston by Island of Palms I screw up and somehow though the Ben Sawyer bridge opened on demand on weekends. When I discover my error that they only open on the hour, I speed up a few miles before. We get lucky and just make the opening with a little curiosity of the bridge operator slightly delaying the opening. A few operators can be real Dicks and will not open unless you are sitting in front of the bridge waiting. 

 

Ben Sawyer Bridge

 

Interesting boat at the dock, Life boat from a tanker

 

We arrive Isle of Palms marina. We first fuel up and pump out before heading to the face dock for the evening. 

 

Islander restaurant busy Saturday afternoon

We go to dinner at “Islander” restaurant for dinner, being a nice Sunday the place has a good crowd. After an early dinner we go for a walk over to the ocean side of the island. Back on the boat I make Mango Daiquiris and bring them to Sea Vu Play for Linda and Karen as we play cards. Started rain in the evening.

 

Church Creek

  Ladies Island to Church Creek Video

(On PC full screen "lower right zoom")
(On phone/tablet full screen "pinch-zoom")

 

In the morning the forecast changes again and thunderstorms are no longer in the forecast. So Mark feels we should leave today. We leave at 9:00AM to another overcast day. Since we had planned on staying two days we were put on an inside dock instead of the facedock. We arrived near slack tide, but leaving now we have some current to deal with. We leave without any incidents. Ladies Island will not reimburse us for the second day we paid for.

 

 

 

Nice temperature today. We have a couple shallow creeks and cuts to navigate, Ashepoo Coosaw cutoff and Watts Cut. Watts Cut we get to do at high tide, but unfortunately a Dredge is waiting west of Watts wait for high tide and a favorable current as we approach. They slowly head into Watt Cut just ahead of us. We do squeeze by them on the far end of the cut.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We anchor in Church Creek, beautiful spot. Linda makes chicken alfredo with mushrooms for dinner, very good.

 

Church Creek anchorage

 

Lady’s Island

  Thunderbolt to Ladies Island Video

(On PC full screen "lower right zoom")
(On phone/tablet full screen "pinch-zoom")

Up at 6:00 AM. I take the boat to the fuel dock just before 7:00AM for a pumpout and to refill the diesel rail cans. Another windy, overcast, dreary day. We get to Lady’s Island around 3:00PM Aaron the dockmaster who we met last Fall has improved the docking information by texting a Google Earth view with our slip marked. He also texts the currents and tides at the time of our arrival. I wish other marinas were this smart. Aaron also makes a reservation at the Dockhouse restaurant next to the Marina for us. Karen had made a reservations for two days before we arrive, we did that too. The forecast had called out Thunderstorms over the next two days. We had originally planned to anchor out in Factory Creek near the marina. 

 

American Cruise Line - American Star docked at Beautfort, SC

 

Lady's Island bridge

Lady's Island Marina

Manana

 

 

 

Savannah

This morning after breakfast Linda, Mark and Karen take the curiosity car to CVS and Krogers. I stay on work on the iPad. At 11:00 am we get ready to head to Savannah for the day. I call and Uber and we are on our way.

We chat with the drive on recommendations for lunch and he recommend at place called the “Treylor Park”. Sounds life “Trailer Park” and my kind of place. We have him drop us off at one of the many “Squares” in Savannah and we walk to the “Treylor Park”, which is towards the River. Interesting place which ordered the chicken nachos which we split and still could not finish. Not something I would order again if we return. We walk around Savannah for the rest of the afternoon and went to the Sea Museum. We took another Uber back to the Marina just ahead of a thunderstorm and showers. We got a little wet walking down the dock to the boat.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Linda and Karen did laundry while we all play dominoes in the adjacent screen porch. After we finished dominoes our friends Michele and Kathy texted us from the St. Johns club back in Burlington, VT. I immediately Face-time them and have a fun “conference” call. We learn that the St’ Johns club finally has a cook after not having one since the start of Covid. Kathy and Keith may take Kathy’s power boat south to the Hudson in the beginning of June to so hopefully we may join up with them on our return north.

 

 

Linda and I take the curiosity car to Krogers for a couple items Linda forgot in the morning, ice cream and protein bars.

Thunderbolt Marina

 

 

 

Crescent River to Thunderbolt Video

(On PC full screen "lower right zoom")
(On phone/tablet full screen "pinch-zoom")

Calm at Crescent River

 

We leave at 7AM for a long run to Thunderbolt Marina just outside of Savannah. The No See Um’s chased us out of the calm anchorage, but as we got moving and exposed to the wind they disappeared. Another overcast, cloudy day. 

 

Not so calm now !

 We get to Thunderbolt at 4:30. I am disappointed to find out that the local Crispy Creme donut shop had closed and Thunderbolt no longer leaves a box of 6 donuts on your boat each morning, bummer.

Our friends Roger and Chrisy (who we met on our first trip to the Bahamas and are now on their power boat nearing the end of finishing the Great Loop) are in the next marina. We met them for dinner at Tubby’s Tankhouse restaurant which is halfway between both marinas. Had a great visit with them. They have not met Mark and Karen before, but have a bunch of mutual friends in the New Bern, NC area that are members of the Black Beard Sail Club and are all past Bahamas sailors.

Karen, Linda, Chrisy, Roger, Nile & Mark

 

Crescent River

After breakfast, Mark suggests that we leave at noontime since the weather forecast has improved somewhat. Thunderstorms are no longer in the immediate forecast, but we still have the north winds which will prevent us from going off shore. We normally leave Jekyll or Fernandina for an overnight passage to the Wacamaw River, which saves us a number of days winding north in the ICW.

 

Getting a slow pass

We leave at 11:30 and manage to get off the slips with help in an adverse current without any mishaps. We have a dreary overcast day and we anchor at Crescent River one of our favorite past anchorages going south on the Georgia ICW. There is a treed island that gives some protection from northern winds so the anchorage is very calm.

Crescent River anchorage

 

Jekyll Island

Leaving Fernandina

 

We leave at 8:00 AM for the relatively short trip to Jekyll Island Marina. It is quite windy out of the northeast and have lots of waves on sections with long fetches in that direction. We take the alternate route on St. Andrews Sound that I “discovered” 4 years ago which avoids the ICW route that takes you out on the ocean which can get very rough in northeast winds.

We plan to stay at Jekyll for a couple days because the weather forecast is not looking to good. Even though we made reservations a couple days ago we are not put on the face dock which is makes it easy dealing with the current here. We first fuel up and pump out on the gas dock on the north end of the long face dock. We are assigned slips behind the face dock which are perpendicular to the current which can make coming and going rather difficult if you are not doing so at slack tide. We get into our slips with a lot of help to prevent whacking the adjacent boats that the current wants to drag us into. 

 

Jekyll Island Marina, backside of face dock

 We have dinner on the boat and go for a walk to get Frozen Yogurt at a self-serve place we had been to last Fall. The winds have strangely drop to almost nothing, which is not forecast.

 

Fernandina

 

 

Bridge of Lions, St. Augustine

We planned to leave at 6:30 in the morning. Since we are on the north side of the bridge we don’t have to wait for the opening, but Mark and Karen do. They need to go through at 6:30, before the bridge stays closed for a couple hours for morning car traffic. I set our alarm for 5:30, but somehow turned it off during the night. I wake up at 6:15. I wake Linda up and we actually do leave at 6:30. Fast scrambling for us. The wind is out of the north, on the nose, so we stay in the ICW instead of sailing off shore to Fernandina, like we normally do. Going out and in the inlets is about the same distance as the ICW, but offshore is much easier. Once on the ocean, set the autopilot straight for 50 miles, much easier day.

 

Mark motored a little faster than us and got a couple miles ahead. We both had to slip by a dredging operations in a tight channel, more like squeeze by between the dredge and the shallows. We crept along with very little water under our keel.

 

 

 

 

A few miles south of Fernandina as we approach the railroad bridge (only lowered when a train is coming) to have it start lowering as we are just getting close to going through. There is no warning on the radio, no warning sounds or lights, is just comes down. We quickly slow down by putting the boat in reverse and turning around. After waiting 30 minutes the train finally shows up loaded with wood chips for the pulp mill at Fernandina.

 

 

We pick up a mooring at the Municipal Marina, which has been totally rebuilt after extensive hurricane damage a couple years ago. After we check in we visit my cousin, Bill, who has a new to him 54 foot Hatteras on the dock there. He is planning on taking it up the east coast to Connecticut for the summer, starting the trip next month. If we weren’t on our own boat we would of crewed for him. We have Happy Hour on his boat with Bill, my other cousin, his sister, Jan, Mark and Karen (who have meet Bill previously) and Linda and I.

 

Bill's Hatteras 54

Our first choice to dinner is a relative new Mexican resturant which we went to last fall and really liked. They had an 1-1/2 wait. I guess we aren’t the only people who like the place. Instead we walk up to “Peppers” an older Mexican restursant and get seating right away. Did not have a very good dinner, which might explain the lack of a wait to get in.

We dinghy back to our boats in the dark.

 

St. Augustine

The dinghy dock

 

Today after breakfast on the boat, we go for a long walk to West Marine and Winn Dixie. I take our folding hand cart, which is fairly well loaded after we get done at Winn Dixie. Stopped for lunch at a Thai restaurant. In the afternoon on the boat I install the accumulator in our water system. It stores water under pressure, so the water pump does not run every time we turn the faucet on for a little bit of water, much quieter.

Floating Bar with an outboard, at least there are rails, they don't bother with them in Fort Lauderdale

 

At 4:30 we head back to town for Dinner at “Harry’s” and walk over to Ben & Jerry’s for dessert. We all take showers at the Marina, before we head back to the boat for the evening and prepare to leave in the morning.

Entrance to "Harry's"

 

St. Augustine, Blue Hen

We start walking to the “Blue Hen” our favorite breakfast place at 7:30, with Mark and Karen. Some locals tipped us off to this place, outside of the tourist areas, on a past trip.

 

 

We walked too fast, had to want for the "Blue Hen" to open

 

After a filling breakfast we need to walk some more, so we head to Marine Supply, a marine store for working boats. They have a lot good hardware that you won’t find in Worst Marine. After a long walk back we chill out on the boat for a few hours and head to “Ancient City” a brew pub that has one of my favor beers, Coconut Porter. We met Mark and Karen there and play cards for a couple hours.

Cards and beer at "Ancient City"

We then walk to the “Floridian” for an early dinner at 5:00 and are back to the boat before sunset

 

 

 

 

St. Augustine

 

Palm Coast Marina

We are up at 6:00 and leave by 8:00, planning on getting to St. Augustine around noontime, so we will have the afternoon to enjoy St. Augustine. After an hour or so Karen calls us to tell us that the boat that just passed them going south radioed them saying that the Crescent City draw bridge was having problems and they are the last boat through for the day. We call the bridge operator and she tells us the are doing bridge maintenance on a fail part and they will not open until 4:00 PM. I feel like telling her maintenance is something you do to avoid failures. After it fails its called a repair.

 

Fort Matanzas

With very few if any anchorages ahead I decide that we should anchor a Fort Matanzas. We have anchored there before over night, just in case the bridge does not open today. We hangout for 5 hours or so before the bridge opens at 4:30. We get to St. Augustine Municipal Marina at 7:00 PM. Mark and Karen get a mooring in the south field, our preference. A few minutes later we call and they put us in the north field. We also have to go through the "Bridge of Lions" to get to the north field. The bridge opens every half hour, so on top of having to wait 20 minutes or so, the bridge operator tells me only one side of the bridge is currently working, but we could wait and hour before both sides will be opening. We go through the bridge with just one side opened.

Bridge of Lions

The north field can be very rough in a northeast wind, but the winds are fairly light for the next few days. Our mooring is very close to the dinghy dock which is very nice since the south field moorings are a much longer dinghy ride.

After we have dinner on the boat we ride in and pay our mooring bill and pickup our packages that we had mailed to the marina.

 

 

Palm Coast Marina

Plan to leave at 8:00am. I start our engine to warm up and help Mark and Karen off the dock. I walk back to our boat and Linda tells me the engine died. SOB! So I spend the next two hours diagnosing the problem, tracing fuel flow. Long story short. It turns out the short fuel line from the engine fuel filter to the injector pump was not on real tight and was sucking air into the injector. When I replace the engine fuel filter I must of bumped into this line. Better to have this problem tight to a dock than out in the middle of ICW. I replace the hose with new hose I have on hand. Run the engine for another 20 minutes, tighten up a couple clamps and filters and we are good to go.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

We finally leave at 10:15 and arrive at Palm Coast marina at 2:30. North wind on our nose most of the day, cool day of motoring. We have stayed at Palm Coast Marina before, a nice little marina and still only $1.25 a foot. We all walk to the “European Village” which has a number of restaurants and bars. Mark and I got a Flight of various beers on tap while we waited for the Italian restaurant we were interested in, to open. Both couples split dinners and it was very good.

 

Palm Coast Marina

 

European Village

 

Meanwhile back home our good friend Michele, is checking on our mail