Fernandina - at anchor

Getting ready to leave, had to take a photo

High tide was at 9;30 am at Jekyll Island and since we wanted every possible advantage in depth, we wanted to go through Jekyll at absolute high tide. That entailed leaving the dock at Hidden Harbor at 7:30 am, not our favorite time for pushing off. However, we did get a great sunrise! The dockmaster even got up early to help us off, good service!

A little later, still good color

So we headed south and entered Jekyll Creek and as we turned the corner heading into the most narrow part of the channel, what do we see headed right at us?! It was a barge taking advantage of the high tide to go north! He took up almost the entire width of the narrow channel. I put Fleetwing in idle and pulled over to one side which was only possible at high tide since the channel is so narrow otherwise. The barge eventually slid by (he was going slow) and we continued onward.

Downtown Fernandina Beach - nice, well kept town

Jekyll Creek has always been shallow but today set a new record. At low tide it was only 2.9 ft! It was certainly the right decision to stop early yesterday at Hidden Harbor, we never would have made it through Jekyll Creek. The rest of the trip was uneventful and we arrived at Fernandina around 1:00 pm, in time for Ann's haircut appointment.

Ann's new haircut

At Fernandina we always anchor. There's no advantage to taking a mooring, you have no more protection and the holding for an anchor is very good. We topped off the day with a dinner at Pepper's, a Mexican restaurant which was pretty good. We'll take another day off at anchor before heading south again on Sunday to Jacksonville to meet up with Lee Fry, a friend from our Air Force days in Colorado.