Geo-Rida

We were on our way to Southport, NC to see our friends Jim & Wende. We had to slow down to no wake speed to keep from swamping this fella who was motoring a small work barge down the ICW.

We arrived at St. James Plantation Marina just before sundown. The homes along the harbor are beautiful.

Jim and Wende let us use their truck to reprovision which was perfect as it was the day before Thanksgiving and we needed TURKEY!

Later that night Jim & Wende took us to dinner at a Joseph’s Italian Bistro @ Safe Harbor Marina. We had dinner with some good local IPAs & lots of laughs. I wish we had taken a photo but I think we were just having too much fun. Jim and Wende told us all about their trip back from Buzzards Bay, MA to Southport, NC in their new Pursuit OS 355. The weather was a bit ruff off the RI coast but they made great time with stops in places like Atlantic City.

In the AM we were off and Capt T was at the helm.

We passed a boat dock that was more boat than dock. Capt T thought she recognized a casino boat as we passed and sure enough the “Big M” hailed from Fort Myers, FL.

As we made our way into the Waccamaw River preserve we had to get through the Socastee swing bridge but we were staring straight into the sun. The best we could do was go slow and use the radar to see in front of the boat.

Camera may see the swing bridge on the right but we only saw a bright spot looking out the pilothouse

We anchored in what I call the Waccamaw River (ie. swamp) and it’s beautiful. We had a great night on anchor as the high trees provide protection from everything but the cold.

It was COLD.

We weighed anchor at first light and the swamp was steaming due to early morning low temps.

We had to slow to no wake so as to not disturb this Nordhavn anchored right off the main ICW route.

The next swing bridge is actually a floating swing bridge. Very cool. It simply uses drop-able drive-on ramps and a huge tilt-able bow thruster.

We arrived in Charleston, SC and the marina we requested a slip from had us “wait-listed”. We anchored for the night next to the USS Yorktown.

The sun was setting on Charleston.

Sunrise in the AM and we were off… bound for Beaufort, SC

We anchored in Beaufort with hopes of getting off the waitlist for the marina. In the AM we called and they found a spot for us on the outer face dock.

Beaufort is a fun town and we wasted no time getting ashore at Plums Restaurant for some lunch.

We napped after lunch and made a second run on the town before we would leave in the AM. Beaufort has a great outside park area right in front of the marina.

In the morning we were off to Savannah, GA. Last time I docked right in downtown around River Street but felt it a bit seedy at night. We decided to stay at Thunderbolt Marina and Uber’d into town for a Savannah pub crawl.

Are impromptu pub crawl consisted of the following venues:

Spanky’s
Boar’s Head Grill
The Cotton Exchange
Huey’s
The Warehouse Bar

We ended the night singing Journey.

Up early to a Whiskey Sunrise & potato pancakes and off to Fernandina Beach, FL

This post consists of 5 legs of our journey

Leg 15 – Waccamaw River, SC to Charleston, SC

We hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving with family!!!

Savannah to Sapelo Island

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.

Bad weather – Wind against you.
Bad luck hitting currents mostly against you.
Shallow areas where you must slow down to prevent running the boat aground at speed.
Late starts means not pulling up the anchor right at sunrise.
Time spent waiting for bridges to open and let you pass under.
No Wake Zones – Near marinas, anchored boats, homes with boats in the water, kayakers, paddle boarders, etc.
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.

Catching bait fish with small throwable nets

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.

Old Dock of sorts a distance off the shore and exposed at low tide

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…

Sun Goes Down on Georgia

We awoke on anchor just South of Turtle Island in SC. It’s a tiny uninhabited island that is on the Atlantic Ocean. There is hardly any light at night so the stars just pop out at you. They seem so much brighter and like you could reach up an touch them. Seeing the cosmos this way makes you realize that your consciousness is contemplating your existence on a small planet in the Milky Way galaxy. I wish there was a way to capture it in a picture but alas I have not found a way.

Cold. It’s F’n cold when I stand outside and watch the sunrise. It’s part of the experience but it’s also the whole reason we left New England and have been boating for the last 180 hours. Getting away from the cold means traveling further South than you would think. It’s only 36 degree as I stand out there watching the sunrise. 36 degrees and I’m on the edge of Georgia! Time to simply weigh anchor and go..

Turtle Island is South of Hardeeville but I’m guessing this weather app has no data for Turtle Island.

When anchored in weather like this you need a 12V heater as there are no long extension cords leading to the boat. Kelly & I installed a Espar D8LC 27K BTU diesel-fired forced-hot-air heater and mornings like this I realize we would never live on a boat without HEAT.

Espar D8LC Diesel-Fired Forced Hot Air Heater Schematic

Georgia has enormous tides and strong currents.

We were riding an 8′ high tide so we were unstoppable. Well, I mean unstoppable in the sense we probably won’t run into a shoal and be stopped dead in our tracks.

Field’s Cut is just before the ICW crosses the Savannah River and we had to cruise fast to get ahead of the oncoming container ship that just issued a ‘securite’ warning that they were on incoming on the Savannah River and approaching Fields Cut. You need to listen to these securite calls from large ships if you don’t want to wind up on the wrong end of them. We’d have snapped a photo but we were more concerned with staying out of their way. We hailed the ship and let them know that we would be crossing in front of their bow and that we would not be in their way.

Finger drawn route of us crossing Savannah River into GA from Fields Cut in SC

We call this picture “Bush of White Birds” cuz we so creative.

We slipped under this bridge carefully as we just fit beneath.

Low bridges that boat traffic must wait on openings are being replaced by tall 65′ high bridges. That’s a good thing for boaters and motorists alike.

I learned today that the Surf City Swing Bridge was just replaced by a full-height Bridge. Time to update my bridge list.pdf

Kelly has a thing for wooden transom boats so we snapped these pics of MV Sandrita as she was being hauled via a marine travel lift. We had to slow down to no wake speed as these dock workers were trying to load her in the slings.

Going into the Slings
Don’t you just love a Wooden transom?

We hailed this blue-hulled sailboat to warn them they were approaching a shoal. They had already figured it out but thanked us as they backed out of the channel they were in. Captains on the water are kind and always offer help if they see another boater doing something that might get them into trouble. I’ve had captains hail me and say… Simple Life, you need to keep that red tight to port to clear that shoal”. Kelly & I feel lucky to be apart of a group that looks out for one another.

Approaching Hell’s Gate – a notorious shallow cut that leaves boats aground

Kelly & I each bought Florida saltwater fishing licenses today. We’ll be in Florida for a minimum of 3 weeks while we prepare for our Bahamas departure.

If we catch a single edible fish, We’ll have paid $130.70 for it 😉 Should have gone to the Capital Grille and just ordered the fish special.

I am on many Facebook Boating groups and love the discussions about the Aqua Maps Explorer Bahamas charts. Folks complaining about the fact that they are raster (bitmap) charts vs vector charts which use math equations to draw the charts at each particular zoom level. It’s interesting to me not just because they pictured Green Turtle Cay where Kelly & I have wanted to visit but that I just am drawn to nautical charts. We hung one on the 275 gallon oil tank in our old house that we sold. It took me hours to print each individual 8″x11″ chart and piece them all together to have a huge chart of Narragansett Bay. I enjoy staring at paper charts like they are artwork for ship captains. Vector charts lack the beauty of raster (paper-style) charts.