Tuesday, October 30, 2018

Jacksonville - at their free dock on Sisters Creek

We passed the naval base as a submarine was coming in!
The night at Jekyll was dead calm as usual. We had three boats in the anchorage and, for a change, we were the first to leave. There were buoy changes in St Andrews Sound that I haven't sorted out yet but I didn't care since I had the waypoints I've used for the past five years, I just followed them for 9.5 MLW.

We waved, they waved
The Sound was flat as a Mill Pond, the calmest I've ever seen and we even had the tide behind us as we rounded the cut through St Andrews Sound and headed to Fernandina. We had a large powerboat passed us on Cumberland River but came to an abrupt halt by the 90 degree turn by the R60 and R60A buoys. It's where there used to be a  phantom island that is no longer on the charts. You have to stand off the reds and he didn't. He turned and followed me through the channel after that for 15 to 20 MLW.

We are the only boat at the free docks
We went through a ton of shallow water today and all was okay for getting through. If you go, do yourself a favor and load my track for the passage, it will make things much easier. I'll update Facebook and Waterway Guide with the details in a few days.

But we do have friends around
The weather has turned warm again and it's so nice traveling with full sun in the cockpit enclosure. We are due for a repeat tomorrow and the next day but Friday, when we're due to take our last leg to Titusville, has a forecast of rain. We will see if we can duck the rain and make it early into Titusville. Also of note, we had read of giant mosquitos in North Carolina (never saw them) and lots and lots of insects from the flooding (didn't see them either). All of our favorite marinas and anchorages were just fine, no problems. The only delay was in waiting for the Socastee Bridge to reopen but that happened before we got down that far anyway. So really, the hurricanes didn't affect our trip other than a week delay before we could leave New York. There's still a bunch of boaters still holed up in northern harbors waiting for a window to go down the New Jersey coast. However, we're in Florida now and all is good.


0 comments: