Saturday, April 3, 2021.
Weather: Temp: 60/40, Humidity: 88/33%, Top Wind: NE13 mph, Precip: None, Miles Traveled: 42
**********************
Can you even believe all the salt that we have everywhere from all of the wind and waves that last few days? When I walk up the side of the boat and my legs brush against the side, my pants turn white with salt. Just add tequila and lime, I guess!! 🥴. This barely even starts to show how everything is coated in white.
One thing that the wind did for us was make enough noise that we couldn’t hear what was going on under the water. What, you ask? When it quieted down, we could hear an entire army of a gazillion little sea creatures wearing teeny tiny tap dancing shoes, and they were extremely busy marching around on the hull. Or they could have been clogging? I have no idea what they were, but it was a different sound than the construction crew that was pounding with the teeny tiny ball-peen hammers from last week. 🤷♀️ Just weird.
There was just a bit of wind, but it seemed so minor after what we’ve had the last couple of days. There was no dew on the windows, so it was a real easy prep for departure today! We didn’t leave super early, because we needed to time the tide for a shallow area that we would pass through today. So, away from the dock without any problems at 8:30am. The wind had actually shifted a bit and was pushing us slightly off the dock. Nice! Although …. it was only about 48 degrees outside, so our poor fenders that have been saving Island Girl from the dock are squished down like pancakes. They did a fine job, but they are used to being fluffed up in hot weather. This cold weather makes everything shrink!
Toodaloo Fernandina! I wonder where we’ll see the cruise ship next?
Windows closed, fuzzies on, this is our mode of operation this morning.
There are some large industrial sites on Amelia Island, including a paper mill! This was the mooring field in front of the marina. Boats can anchor, or grab a mooring ball and pay the marina something like $20/night. Not a bad deal to be fairly certain you won’t drag anchor in big wind. I do wonder how these folks fared through the waves and wind the last few days. It wasn’t an easy proposition to take the dinghy ashore, that’s for sure!
This is just a few miles out as we reached the end of Amelia Island and crossed the St Mary’s River. There is an old fort there that would have been cool to ride the bikes to. Oh well – maybe another time.
Just up St Mary’s River is King’s Bay Naval Submarine Base. There were some big ships there, and we didn’t get too close.
Then I realized that we were in Georgia! This map shows our location just as we were passing Kings Bay.
Somewhere along the line, we saw a bald eagle sitting on a navigation post, and realized it was watching another one that was busily eating breakfast on shore.
The next big water was north of Cumberland Island, called St Andrews Sound. This was a little sporty! The wind and waves were coming from the northeast. This picture does no justice to the fun we had. We could see breakers in the distance, and it feels like you’re going out to sea to stay in the navigation channel.
Here is how the channel goes, and there are a lot of caution symbols on the chart out where you make the turn. As we were headed out to sea, we were bobbing up and down in the waves coming straight at us. I went downstairs to secure everything, because we sure didn’t want our new little red rocket fuel maker to take a nose dive. About the time I was ready to go back upstairs, Captain had made the turn, and the big waves were hitting us smack dead in the starboard side from the northeast. Nope – this clutz was not going to try to go back upstairs in this! The last thing the Captain needed was a dork going overboard in this mess. So I stayed downstairs until we got closer to land and it calmed down a bit.
We survived that, and then we entered the reason for today’s timing. The channel along Jekyll Island is known for being very shallow, so we timed our day so that we would transit this area at about an hour before high tide. It worked out really well between our timing, and using all of our chart software! We have a Garmin chartplotter, and both Aquamaps and Navionics on Gladys the ipad. We always run Gladys side by side with Garmin. Navionics has good sonar charting. Aquamaps has US Army Corp Engineers (USACE) surveys overlaying the nautical charts, so you can see the latest dredged depths. Today we were able to navigate the deepest part of the channel by watching this very carefully! (Red/orange water is bad, and there was a lot of it!)
As we went past Jekyll Island, we saw this building and grounds. Apparently there is a big golf course and lots of wealthy kinds of houses on the island. Who knew!?
By about 1:30, we had traveled our 42 miles and reached our destination which was Morningstar Marina by St Simons Island. We stayed here last Loop, and were happy to find out that they still have a courtesy car. So Kenny set about washing the boat to get a whole salt mine of white powder washed off, and I took the car to a nearby grocery store for a few things. And for my birthday, I treated us both to a Starbucks drink. Yum – we haven’t had one of those for months! I checked with the Island Kitchen surf & turf restaurant right here at the marina, but they were fully reserved for tonight. Well, it is Saturday. Bummer.
So – we got out the instant pot and I cooked up a pork tenderloin that was in the fridge. It needed to be cooked, and it was a yummy meal. And then we had mini pecan pies for dessert. Kenny felt bad that I had to cook on my birthday, but it was good, and we didn’t have many options. And after all, I am the itinerary planner, so it wasn’t his fault!
We enjoyed a pretty sunset over the marina, and beautifully calm water. And the water was quiet… no busy little creatures stomping or pounding on our hull.
Here was our track today. It’s a squiggly adventure going through Georgia!
We’re thankful that the weather has calmed down, and it’s going to warm up a little. I was blessed with lots of facebook messages, texts, and phone calls for my birthday. What a wonderful feeling to receive love and joy from so many special people in my life. 🥰. I am seriously blessed.