April 1 – April 14, 2010
Over the past 13 days, we have traveled 400 miles on the Atlantic Intracoastal Waterway. One of the delights about this Great Loop trip is the chance to meet up with old friends and relatives and to make new friends along the way too. After Stuart, we stopped in Vero Beach and had dinner with the Lassman’s & the Breens (new friends). And then to New Smyrna Beach where we saw my cousins, the Comardo’s. In Fernandina Beach, we had lunch with Ginny & Steve Ardia, friends from the old Goulds’ days.
On our second night out, we anchored in Cocoa, FL and put the dinghy in the water to take Louie to shore. It was a good place to walk the dog and I was getting some practice driving the dinghy. Poor Roger -- he has already taught all 4 kids to drive a dinghy and now he has to teach me! Nicole was around 9 years old, and Brett & Heath were 7 when they learned. And Travis was probably as young, so the kids have always “chauffeured” me around in the dinghy and I never got proficient. So I decided it was time and I only gave Roger a few extra gray hairs – you can’t even notice them. Ha!
In Palm Coast, FL, we saw the 6:21 a.m. launch of the Space Shuttle on April 5th. It is always a thrill to watch a launch on TV, but to see it happen about 100 miles away was a magnificent experience! We had XM Radio on and listened to the Fox News broadcast.
We went on to St. Augustine for a few days. What a quaint old city! Roger talked me into going to 7 a.m. Mass at the Cathedral, which was originally built in 1565. We walked around the city and got a close-up of the holes in the fortress wall, where the executioners’ bullets hit the stone wall. Creepy! St. Augustine is an interesting place, and we stayed for 3 days, but then it was time to move on.
After all the difficulties on the rivers last fall, we thought that navigating the Intracoastal Waterway was supposed to be a cinch. Not so! It takes an enormous amount of planning to prepare for each day of the trip. The water is very shallow at certain places in the waterway, and the range between high tide and low tide can be as much as 8 feet. So far, we have had to carefully time our transit through 3 specific areas for a “rising tide”. In some places, we were told to “hug the red markers” because it was too shallow in the channel closer to the greens.
One day, we decided not to leave our dock at Jekyll Island, GA until 10 a.m. and you know that is late for us – we usually leave at the crack of dawn. Well, we knew we couldn’t arrive at Little Mud River (in GA) at low tide. We made better time than we expected and got there about an hour and a half after low tide. We saw water depths of 4.5 feet. Our boat draws almost 4 feet right now, so we had 6” of water between the bottom of our boat and the bottom of the channel!! That was nerve-wracking! Roger was concentrating on not running us aground. He was successful – so far. We did see several boats sitting on the sand! There is an old sailor’s saying: “There are only 2 kinds of boaters – those who have run aground, and those who lie about not running aground”.
Because we couldn’t get to a marina that particular night, we had to anchor out at a place called “New Teakettle Creek”. We were the only boat there at first, and then one other boat arrived. The biggest drawback that day was that there was no place to take Louie ashore. We were literally in the midst of the swamps in Low Country. Louie refused to go on the potty pads, so he had to wait until the next day. I’m sure that Roger & I were more stressed than Louie was. We enjoyed the solitude for one night and cooked lobster tails on the grill. However, Roger didn’t get much sleep because he did the anchor checks in the middle of the night. He said he could hear the dolphins breathing as they played around the boat, not something we hear in Indianapolis at night, for sure.
Our next stop was Isle of Hope, GA, (8 miles from Savannah) where we stayed for 2 nights. We borrowed the marina loaner car and went to Savannah for drinks and appetizers. We’ve been to Savannah a few times, but it’s always great to visit again. Unfortunately, when we got back, I hit my head on the boat and had a gash on my scalp. I was glad that I didn’t need stitches. I have lots of scars on my shins from boat incidents. Now I have tons of bug bites from those damn no-seeums! I actually put Skin-So-Soft on 1st and then Skinsations, but I still got eaten alive.
The stretch of the Intracoastal from Fernandina Beach, FL to this area near Savannah, GA was very desolate. It was not only shallow in spots, but also winding and swampy. Then all of a sudden, we would cross through these “sounds”, where boats can leave the Intracoastal Waterway and go out to the Atlantic. The wind and the current blowing in from the ocean were fierce! We had water coming up over our bow and splashing the pilothouse windows. Once we crossed the sound, and got back onto the waterway, it was usually calmer. But we were rocking and rolling with the exposure to the Atlantic!
We try to walk whenever we stop, partially to explore and partially for the exercise. In Fernandina Beach, we walked from the marina to the beach (on the ocean), about 5 miles round trip. At Jekyll Island and Isle of Hope, we rode bicycles and did some exploring. Jekyll Island was pretty quiet, and I saw my very first possum there! It was dead and floating in the water by the shore and Roger wouldn’t let me take a picture of it! Isle of Hope is a cute town. It looks like a real southern, upscale community and we have enjoyed our 2 days here. Today it is on to Port Royal, SC (near Beaufort) and the next day on to Charleston, SC!
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