Georgia – The Long and Winding Road
The southern part of South Carolina and Georgia is the most winding part of the Intra-Coastal Waterway (ICW). It seems like you travel almost as much east and west as you do north and south. Because of this many people avoid this part of the ICW. Some sailboats go offshore at Charleston, SC and come back into the waterway at Fernandina Beach, the first ICW stop in Florida. This 30-hour trip offshore allows you to avoid about4 days winding down the ICW.
We are not one of these sailboats. We will continue down the “Ditch” all the way to Florida.
Our most recent stops were :
(NOTE: Click on pictures to enlarge)
Mile 583.2 to Mile 630.0 (46.8 miles): On this day the clocks moved back one hour (i.e., Day Light Savings). For people in the work world this means everyone gets an extra hour to sleep that day. For us the time change means nothing. We get up when the sun rises every day, so when the time changed, we got up an hour earlier.
Huge Tanker Passes Us in the Savannah River
We departed the Thunderbolt Marina at 0750 hours and had a very relaxing day motoring to our next stop. We did not see any sailboats today, but we were passed by about a half-dozen very large trawlers. One of the things I wonder when I see these vessels pass us is how couples in their 60s can handle docking these large yachts. Obviously it is possible. But we never see it happen because, being the slowest and thus the last boat in every night, these large vessels are always already docked. In fact, one of the 70-foot yacht owners we talked to at the Thunderbolt Marina told me his wife had flown home and he was taking their 70-foot yacht and their two dogs the rest of the way to Florida himself.
On this day we passed through one of the most infamous “cuts” on the ICW. It is called “Hell’s Gate.” It is at mile marker 603 in Georgia. This cut has a current flow of about 4 knots at mid-tide. In 2003 Hell’s Gate almost did us in, we naively went through it without regard to the tide. At that time we just barely got through it. This time we looked at the tide table and timed our pass through the cut at near high tide and had no trouble.
An ICW marker near High Tide
This evening we anchored out in a very exposed area in Wahoo River at mile marker 630. We had no choice, by 1630 hours we had to pull over before sunset. There are no marinas for 20 miles in any direction. In fact, there is nothing for 20 miles in any direction. It was pitch black at night as there are no lights anywhere to be seen from this anchorage. There is no cell phone coverage in this area. If we got into trouble, the anchorage did have 2 other large trawlers about 100 yards away that we could radio for help. If they were not there, we would have had to wait until the next day when another vessel came down the ICW and radio them.
Fortunately, the anchorage was very quiet and we had no trouble (again we used our “Sentinel Line”).
Mile 630.0 to Mile 670.9 (40.9 miles): Today we departed the Wahoo River anchorage at 0740 hours and motor-sailed to another exposed anchorage just off the ICW about 7 miles before St. Simons Island, GA. This anchorage is in Jove Creek.
When I say exposed anchorage, I mean the anchorage has no wind protection. These anchorages are mostly just large creeks surrounded by marshland. In this particular anchorage we can see for miles in every direction. These anchorages are very scenic with lots of wildlife, but they would not be a good spot if we were in a real blow. We were only expecting winds of about10 knots so we were OK. At 8.6 feet this anchorage had the largest tide change we have seen yet.
Another Trawler that Passed Us
Mile 670.9 to Mile 677.2 (6.3 miles): Departed Jove Creek at 0830 hours and motored about 90 minutes in the rain to the Morningstar Marina at St. Simons Island ($1.80/foot plus electric). We stopped at St. Simons Island because our vessel’s AutoPilot died on us the day before. Replacing the AutoPilot system is an expensive repair, but just 90 minutes without the use of the autopilot convinced us that we should pay the high cost of putting in a new system. Going down the ditch can be very monotonous at times and manual-steering for 8 hours per day just becomes too tedious.
There are all sorts of Vessels Travelling to Florida
St. Simons Island is another very nice area. It is part of Georgia’s Golden Isles. However, in November it is not very populated, so we feared getting an electronics expert to install a new system would be difficult. But fortunately we found a former Navy electronics expert who retired on St. Simons Island. He was the only one in the area with the required knowledge to do this kind of installation, so I was concerned that he would not be available to do the work. But when we spoke with this man, he said once we received the parts (a couple days from RayMarine), he could work on it immediately. That is very fortunate for us. In Annapolis, MD it would likely be 3 or 4 weeks to get a job like this done.
So we will be delayed in St. Simons Island for about week to get the new AutoPilot system installed. There are worst places in the world to be delayed. We will do some sightseeing while we are here.
When we leave St. Simons Island, our next stop will be in Florida.
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