Monday, April 5, 2021.
Weather: Temp: 80/50, Humidity: 79/21%, Top Wind: S10 mph, Precip: None, Miles Traveled: 38
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Yes, there really is a place in Georgia called Thunderbolt! This was going to be a pretty easy day. There used to be a shallow spot called HellGate that would dictate our timing with the tides, but I checked several sources and found that it has been dredged and is not currently a problem spot. YAY! As a matter of fact, we went through it at low tide, and did just fine. 👍
The humidity was surprisingly low this morning, and there was no dew to clear off the windows. The water was nice and flat with the tiniest breeze, so it wasn’t too chilly! We even stayed warm enough with our extra blankets last night, and had a nice peaceful stay, just floating in the middle of the creek all by ourselves. Thankfully! I thought this as called Wahlburg Creek. But when I looked on the Google to send a screenshot to our kids, it said Blackbeard Creek! 😳. Yikes! We should have been on the lookout for pirates! Argh me maties!
This was at the north end of the creek as we were heading out. Just around the point to the left of this picture was the St Catherine’s inlet to the Atlantic Ocean. This looked like a really nice beach, so if a person wanted to hang out here, this would have been a neat place to explore. But, we always just anchor for the night, then keep moving.
We had a whole gang of seagulls chasing us. I don’t know if they thought we’d stir up some groceries for them, or if they thought we were a fishing boat and might throw some fish scraps overboard. They followed us for quite a while, squawking like seagulls do!
This was HellGate. We were here at low tide, so we could see the sand shoals on both sides, and just followed the channel right down the middle with 9’ of water depth. Whew! When we came through here in 2018, we came at high tide, and couldn’t see the sand flats and what all the fuss was about, but then it was only like 8’ deep at high tide. (And there are 6-7’ tides here in Georgia.)
We got nearer to Savannah, and started to see civilization again! This was quite the boat dock and lift, while going by at low tide.
I really love these Southern homes with the big wrap-around porches on both levels!
We stopped at Thunderbolt Marine for fuel. (It’s the marina with the big building in this picture.). I had called our destination marina for their diesel price, and was told that it was $3.09. We were pleasantly surprised that Thunderbolt’s price was $2.80. But man, oh man, the price is going up weekly! Thunderbolt said that their delivery tomorrow would be .25/gal more, so we picked a good day to get fuel. We were also surprised that it was totally a self-service deal, the guy just turned on the pump and told us where to go pay and left. OK. 🤷♀️. Usually they kind of hang around and help out a little.
We originally were planning to stay about five miles ago, back at Isle of Hope, but they didn’t have two nights available for us. That is where we stayed in 2018. So today, our destination marina was just around the bend in Thunderbolt, at Safe Harbor Bahia Bleu. We only found a couple of reviews for it, and they were positive, so we figured, why not!?
This is a nice small marina, with only a few spots for transients. We saw a little Ranger Tug pull in that we’ve been following for the last two days. They have a white Looper flag, so we met them on the dock this afternoon and found out they were going the same place as us for dinner, so we went together.
Tubby’s Tank House was our destination for seafood. I thought Kenny and I could share a Steamer Platter…. kind of like a low country boil, with corn on the cob, sausage, taters, shrimp and crab. But he wanted a Po-Boy. I went ahead with the platter, and now I have lots of left overs for tomorrow! It was really yummy! We enjoyed dinner with Brian and Karen from TugLife, sharing stories about replacing diesel boat engines. 🥴
This was our route today as we squiggled our way through Georgia. It wasn’t quite as stressful as yesterday. There weren’t quite as many shallow narrow channels. The waterways look really wide, but the actual channel that is deep enough to avoid insurance claims is actually quite narrow enough that you hope you don’t meet another boat in many places! Thank goodness for three different navigation programs! At least today we had some wide chunks of water. We even went fast for about 10 minutes just to exercise the turbos a bit. They’ve been tootling along for over 300 miles without any big exercise.
It was a nice day – warm enough and no big wind. By the afternoon, we were happy to turn on some air conditioning, but with the surprising low humidity, it wasn’t uncomfortable. We did have a lot of little no-seeum bugs at dinner, and they are tiny little air borne piranhas with giant invisible teeth. Thankfully Kenny still had on long sleeves and pants, because he has a severe reaction to the darn things. Tomorrow we’ll find an Uber and go wander Savannah. We don’t have any specific plans… just wander aimlessly and enjoy the Southern charm.