Stay or Pull Out?

I was in Savannah. It was 6AM. My guests had departed. I had rented the slip till checkout at 11AM. I wanted so bad to spend my morning strolling around Savannah but the currents were already building against the back of the boat. When you are single handed, a strong current like that can pin you to the dock or worse send you smashing into it. Leaving early before the current got too strong was the right choice. As I pulled away from the dock, I reflected for a moment and thought… “I’ll be back”.

As I headed back down the Savannah River I chose a short cut that leads back to the ICW but further south. I had never taken this short cut and it turned out to be a wise move cutting maybe 40 minutes off my day’s leg.

Fuel Conservation and Distance Traveled

From this point on I would plan my routes to only 50NM a day. I would run at only 1400 RPM and burn around 2 gallons of diesel an hour or about $6/hr. Which is much better than the roughly $18/hr I had been running.

Leaving the throttle at this RPM means my speed will change as the currents are either with me 8 kts or against me 4 kts. Taking an average of 6 kts x 10 hours of daylight for these latitudes / season is 60NM in a single day.

Delays! Think about what slows you down.

1. Bad weather – Wind against you.
2. Bad luck hitting currents mostly against you.
3. Shallow areas where you must slow down to prevent running the boat aground at speed.
4. Late starts means not pulling up the anchor right at sunrise.
5. Time spent waiting for bridges to open and let you pass under.
6. No Wake Zones – Near marinas, anchored boats, homes with boats in the water, kayakers, paddle boarders, etc.
7. Arriving at your intended anchorage and it’s full meaning you must push on to the next anchorage. Sometimes this is over an hour away.

I have found that 50NM / day can at times mean arriving at your intended anchorage in the dark if you are not timely.

South of Savannah

One of the first spots you come to is Thunderbolt, GA. Here I pass the Hinkley Yacht Services and their docks. There are always pretty boats to be seen.

I pass many commercial fisherman.

When I arrived at the Crescent River where I intended to anchor, the last bit of light was fading. I snapped a picture but I think the video captured more of its beauty.

Day Two in the Crescent River

I awoke in the AM and just decided I was not going to leave. I thought… why not spend a quiet day on anchor?

Early this morning a commercial fishing boat gently passed by me at around 4AM.

I was relaxing when I thought did I hear a knock on my hull? I opened the back door to find a fellow cruiser in his dinghy asking me if I wanted an shrimp from the local fish market that he was going to. I replied, thanks but I was not in the mood for shrimp (after all you have to cook those things). We chatted for a while about where he was going (Exumas, Bahamas) and he dashed away in his dinghy.

The tides run about 8 feet in these parts of Georgia. You must be careful when you anchor at high tide that six hours later you won’t swing into a shallow and ground yourself. I had circled my chosen anchor drop location to test the depths out to a radius of my intended anchor rode length + boat length to make sure. My notes about this location marked an old dock hidden beneath the waters so I made sure to anchor away from it. In the morning it was low tide and I saw that the location was not where the previous captain had stated but in fact was very close to where I anchored. I updated the hazard location in the database for future captains that might choose to anchor here.

I use an anchor alarm app called “Anchor!” on my iPhone and it showed that while I move with the switching current I stayed parallel to the river bank. That is usually the case when you don’t have a strong crosswind.

Winter 03 Leg #16 had looked something like this…