May 7, Sunday, Day 27, ICW Mile Marker 620-ish; St. Simons to Newport River, Georgia

Yesterday the winds were still pretty strong with a small crafts advisory, and so we took the advise of more experienced boaters and stayed put one more day – even though we were ready to be on our way.

We joined our new friend James for breakfast in the quaint town of St. Simons, then  bought repair items at Ace Hardware in town (we always need something else it seems). Back at the boat we cleaned and worked on minor boat projects  and also relaxed and read. Later in the afternoon the wind calmed down – too late for leaving, but not for a wedding! A group on our dock was on the way to the marina gazebo for the small wedding and party. Everyone is friendly here – so we knew the story of who was getting married, and that his son was ok with it and that his mom had already remarried, and…

Oh – this Morningstar Marina was a hot bed of Mainships – the type of boat we have. They don’t make Mainships anymore, and they go back to the mid-70s. We talked with owners of two live-a-boards Mainships in the marina both 34 feet), and I think 3 others came in besides us. (It’s a nice clubby feeling).

Today we left without denting our boat or any others (yea!) and were happily on our way in a nice breezy area. And then we reached the marshy areas and met with our next challenge – carnivorous black flies! They bit us now and then, but mostly are grossly annoying as they cling to the canvas on top of our heads and the sundeck. We’d take turns waving them away with a rolled map but they just come back. I think we have to take a deep breath and live with them (outside) until we leave the marshes. Fortunately I closed the doors and not many came into the cabin.

We also enjoyed the beauty of the marshes and were surprised when a shrimp boat with nets hanging down the side shared one of the creeks with us.

We are anchored in a peaceful bay with another pretty sunset. We’ll make our way up to the Savannah GA area tomorrow, but probably not cruise up to the city, although it can be done.

 

May 5 & 6; St. Simons Island

We have been so fortunate so far on this trip – never had to worry about the weather. But yesterday as we started to say good-bye to our new friend James, he showed us the radar for the day  – a storm was coming our way. The dock master also suggested we not travel since a small craft warning had been posted (guess who hasn’t been checking daily weather!) . As optimistic as we are, we decided to heed their warnings and stay put. The dock master needed us to move to an inner slip which we did with his and James help, and we spent the day either on board or buying binoculars on sale at West Marine.

Today we were planning to leave early but I went up on the flybridge and the wind was howling. The new “Windy” app was predicting 20 mph winds all day which we had never seen before.  Dirk and I took a walk, got some advice and decided safety was a higher priority then moving along so we opted to stay another night. James invited us to join him and another boater, Keith, for a Mexican lunch in a non-tourist area of the island. We got there and – Hola – it’s Cinco de Mayo with an all you can eat all day buffet, and music and banners. So we’ll be going back for dinner too!

James had mentioned the historical Fort Frederica site where a final battle between the English and Spanish was instrumental stopping the Spanish threat to the Georgia colony. It once was home to around 800 people and is now only beautiful area and an interesting archaeological site.  We listened to a movie of its history and toured the area this afternoon.

Hopefully the winds will die down and we got get underway tomorrow… Adios!

May 3, Wednesday, Day 23, MM 675; St Simons, GA

Never a dull moment! Dirk woke up to a rushing water sound last night and quickly shut off the fresh water pump – it’s getting to be second nature to us! Sure enough, a leak we thought had been fixed was much worse and so no water for us until that could be fixed again. Fortunately we were already heading to the Morning Star Marina on St. Simons Island for two reasons, and now this added a third. 1) we needed to get fuel in Georgia to prove that we left Florida to avoid paying sales tax for the boat, and 2) Dirk wanted to take our bent propellers to be fixed by an expert in Brunswick.

We started the 10 mile trip to the next marina at around 9:30, recalling that the low tide had been at 8 am a day or two ago. Another newbie mistake ! Everyday it gets much later and was just hitting low tide as we left on the narrow, shallow Jekyll Creek. After almost hitting bottom we stopped the boat, dropped anchor and waiting an hour and a half for the tide to come in. We had a friend join us for a little while once we headed north.

After we filled up with diesel at the friendly marina, Dirk was able to use the marina’s courtesy car to drop off the propellers. I contacted the maintenance manager for the on premise yacht sales company and he fixed the leak pretty quickly. We were done by 2:30 pm, rested a while and then headed into town of St. Simons.

The island is beautiful. What we saw as we were driven into town (Uber) were many large oak trees laden with Spanish moss. St Simons Island seems to be more lush than the landscapes we’ve been seeing. The town was nice with quaint shops and a lovely pier and park right and the water’s edge. We ate at La Sur, an Argentine/Italian restaurant, where I had the best restaurant meal of the trip thus far – fresh grilled veggies with an optional Argentine parsley, garlic, vinegar dressing.  It is a challenge to stick to a vegan diet at restaurants so this was a treat.

 

May 2, Tuesday, Day 22, MM 685; Jekyll Island, FL

We made it to Georgia today without breaking anything on the way – yea! It was a sunny day with much less wind making handling the boat less stressful.

We couldn’t leave the Amelia Island Marina until around 1pm – we needed to wait for the tide to rise due to shallow areas in the marina. Dirk did a great job taking our big boat down the little channel you see in the picture below.

We traveled north past the town of Fernandina that we visited by car yesterday and saw numerous shrimp boats on the way. We will be missing their annual Shrimp Festival next weekend which is probably just as well because there will be huge crowds. But if you like shrimp and big fairs, put it on your to do list for someday. There were also more wrecked and abandoned boats as a result of last year’s hurricane Matthew to be seen.

We traveled up to the Cumberland Sound and stayed on the big water for most of the afternoon.

We are now anchored out just off the ICW and Jekyll Island, GA. We noticed a lot of smoke when we arrived and it turned into a fire so bad that two helicopters made numerous runs to drop water on the fire. We won’t be going ashore so we’ll probably never know what happened unless we catch some local news. It seems odd not to know whats going on when it happened so close to where we are.

We had a lovely sunset that we were able to watch from the sun deck (thanks to the lack of the strong winds we’ve had recently.)

May 1, Monday, Day 20; Amelia Island, FL

Yesterday was spent waiting another day before we could to limp into the Amelia Island Marina. We spent a quiet Sunday anchored out off the Little Amelia River near Fernandina Beach. I spent a few hours  studying the Garmin Marine GPS user guide again and finally thought of You Tube where I found some helpful walk-throughs of the features.  Between reading, eating and looking at the upcoming navigation through Georgia it was a nice day.

Today we had to wait for the tides to come in a bit before we could get into the Amelia River Marina for the lift out of our boat for repairs. The short trip took us 45 minutes since we had to move slowly due to the damaged propellers. It was also extremely windy and we were nervous as we pulled into the marina but Dirk managed getting the boat into position for the lift out.

The marina offered us a courtesy car (!) to use while they worked on the boat and so we were able to go into the historic town of Fernandina Beach and enjoy a lunch and the sites.

 

We returned to the marina around 4:30 with the plan to leave the marina and travel a short distance  to the town mooring balls in the Fernandina harbor for the night. However they were having a challenge finishing and it was also very windy and getting closer to low tide. In the end we decided to stay in a local Hampton Inn for the night and not take unnecessary risks. It will also be a treat to sleep in a bed that doesn’t rock to and fro and to not hear water lapping when trying to sleep. The hotel is on the ocean side of Amelia Island which is great – there is very beautiful ocean beach that runs the entire length of the island. The walk on the beach was lovely.

Tomorrow we leave Florida and begin the Georgia adventure!

April 29, Saturday, Day 19; St. Augustine to Jacksonville area

We left from our three day stay at River’s Edge Marina in St. Augustine this morning (with everything working!). Dirk took us out of the boat slip with some help from the marina and friends and we traveled north through the heart of St. Augustine that we’d visited few days earlier.

The St. Augustine Bridge of Lions is a landmark but also controversial for boatersdue to the reduced opening schedule. It only opens every hour and a half to reduce traffic backups, but creating boating backups. Oh well… We came at the right time and didn’t have a problem.

We passed the old fort as we traveled north.

Initially it was quite windy and it was difficult to hold a course on the wide rivers north of St. Augustine. We passed the ocean inlet where a huge dredger was working.

Later it narrowed into a smaller river populated with similar docks in front of houses for quite a long stretch. When the left side of the river became wild, the homes on the right became fancier and the docks more elaborate, complete with bars, patio furniture, and multiple raised motor boats. (I was trying to image docks like this on Lake Boon.) There was one stretch of 6 miles with one of these homes after another. Now this is Saturday, and in all of those 6 miles we saw maybe 3 children and 10 adults. All that nice outdoor space and where is everyone? Perhaps there was an event in town (Point Vedra Beach).

When we approached Jacksonville on St John’s River we encountered a strong current going under major bridges and then in the junction of a number of rivers as we moved north.

I was disappointed that the Jacksonville water front isn’t on the ICW – I would have liked to see it – but it was getting toward mid afternoon and it wasn’t in our plans to take a side trip.

As we cruised up the ICW from the Jacksonville area the river (now Sister’s Creek) was a challenge to follow since the markers are far pretty apart. Unfortunately we ran aground in an area that looked to be in the ICW channel, with a result that the port propeller now shutters a bit. (Note: We were told that everyone runs aground at least once, but we hoped to beat the odds!). So off to a marina tomorrow to have it checked out and possibly switch propellers. Alas!

We are now anchored out in a quiet area off of Little Amelia River at the junction of Alligator Creek. Neat names – right?

 

 

April 28, Friday, Day 18; St. Augustine

Thursday started out pretty well in terms of fixing the fresh water pump. Our marina has a small, well supplied marine store with an experienced maintenance guy – Bobby. He not only installed our new/used water pump but also fixed two other leaks, eliminating the need for me to crawl into the engine hole again. We also ordered some sound insulation sheets (ours fell apart as we removed the stairs to get to the water pump) to be delivered next day.  We cleaned up and decided to go see San Augustine. As we walked out of the marina I enjoyed the tree and plants a permanent boat resident had added to his deck.

 

We enjoyed a Town Trolley Tour of Saint Augustine and then had dinner downtown at Harry’s right across the street from the Intracoastal near the famous Bridge of Lions where wedding pictures were in process.

Later we traveled to Home Depot &  bought all the tools we might need for future challenges, and got back here via Uber of course. Much to our surprise the faucets produced no water! The new (used) pump wasn’t working! So much for leaving today.

To cut it short, today was spent buying and installing a brand new water pump – Dirk’s project – and re-covering the stairs with the new insulation and rug material – my project.  It was about 90 degrees in the boat, the foam was hard to cut and we hadn’t been careful to note the order of the previous carpeting before ripping it out. Opps. I missed Ellen and Gail who helped me make the aft cabin curtains and to figure out the best way to do it. The stairs came out looking pretty good, but were difficult to reinstall. We were too tired to go far so ate at the marina’s Hurricane Patty’s- how appropriate.

(Note: I bet you thought this blog would be about TRAVELING on a boat – not fixing it!)

 

April 26; Wednesday, Day 16, ICW MM 779; St. Augustine, FL

We started early today hoping to get to St. Augustine with enough time to shop for more boat parts (of course). We left around 7:30 am, took our time (the boat is going fast at 9 mph) and still arrived around 3:30. Early on we saw our first river billboard, and a memorial bridge with amazing mosiac-looking paintings of dolphins and manatees on every column.

Now river the waterfronts show different foliage and there is more variation in the types of homes. There are still many mansions but they are less crowded and slightly smaller. There are miles of homes where all the houses have a long dock with a boat lift and deck at the end. In one area of Palm Coast everyone had huge Florida rooms (attached screened areas big enough for another house to fit into), and some were taller than the second story of the home. We assumed it gets pretty buggy in these areas.

We are seeing a lot of evidence of hurricane Matthew as we cruise up the ICW. There are many damaged or destroyed docks, we saw sailboats and mid-size boats like ours beached or half sunk, and some damaged homes. Note the Lake Boon roofing on one of them. (Sorry – Lake Boon joke).

After arriving at the River’s Edge marina up the San Sebastion River in St. Augustine, we walked to Sailor’s Exchange which is a marine consignment store, and to West Marine to get the parts we need for tomorrow’s boat DYI adventure – replacing the fresh water pump and fixing another hose leak. Hopefully we’ll still have time for some sightseeing since we are only a short walk from historical St. Augustine. Don’t I sound very matter of fact about these repairs now?

 

 

April 25; Tuesday, Day 15, ICW MM 835; New Smyrna Beach to Daytona area

Does it seem like there’s always something? Today’s installment…

Last night after returning from a lovely dinner in New Smyrna Beach, Dirk noticed water coming out of a hole in the hull and he was pretty sure it was coming from the sump pump – he could hear something running below deck. After much pulling up of sections of the floor he found it – water literally spurting out of a hose onto the side of the hull under the galley. There was nothing to be done last night so we turned off the water pump and decided to “think about it tomorrow”.

This morning it became clear after searching for additional access to the problem area that only I am small enough to contort my way into the area with the leak. So down I went past the port engine into a tiny space with access to the water hoses and discovered that a t-connector had snapped. I cut out a small section and wiggled out of there and off we went to the local marine shop. Surprise! We’ve been here before. It turns out after we walked across the causeway from the marina that it was exactly where we bought our used dingy two months ago. What a coincidence! And during our walking around I snapped a photo of Dirk at the site of an old Spanish fort.

They didn’t have the t-connector – off to Home Depot via Uber again. We got what we needed and I went back into the hole. Listen to this – I joined an old hose with a new one with an extender and clamps, and then installed the new t-connector (after cutting out the old ones). Pretty cool-eh?

It worked great when Dirk turned on the water pump- no leaks there, but now the hot water t-connector is leaking! Argh! But in dribbles, not a lot, so we can use the water a little. That’s probably a project for Thursday after we get to St. Augustine tomorrow.

We actually did get on the ICW, saw some sites and decided to anchor out in a recommended spot just south of Daytona. We often see a glimpse of dolphins, too far away for a picture, but I saw three diving just off our bow today.

It’s hard to imagine that the city is so close out here on the water. Although we were only cruising about 3 hours it was a good way to end a busy day.

 

 

April 24, Monday, Day 14, ICW MM 845

Well, we had a little excitement last night after dropping anchor. Turned out that the anchor tag line, which is a line attached to the anchor line with it’s own small white buoy, drifted back under the boat and was cut off. The white buoy wandered away (Wilson!!!) but some of the rope stayed twisted around the port engine. So guess who went into the water and cut it away this morning? I was nervous but it turned out to be easy. Fortunately we brought our snorkeling gear with us. The hardest part was getting back on the boat.

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We had a solid plan for today – to stay the night at the New Smyrna City Marina about 40 miles north of us, and it worked. Most of the way we were on the very wide Indian River and were happy when the ICW went through a narrow channel to bring us into Mosquito Lagoon. It was windy so no mosquitoes for us luckily.

The Lagoon opened up wide but we later entered a less open part of the Indian River near Oak Hill, south of New Smyrna. Interesting small town from the river view. While going through Oak hill we caught up with a tug boat pushing a barge –  it took us a while to pass it in the narrower river. Tug name is “Little Bully”.

As we reached New Smyrna Beach we hailed the marina, they were ready for us as we turned the corner into the marina and helped us as we docked. No damage to the dock or the boat. Wonderful! After hooking up electrical, Dirk washed the muddy back half of the boat, then we walk through the historical, low-key touristy section of town and found a nice place for dinner called the Gypsy Fresh Grill. And to add to the exciting day, we are now doing laundry at the marina. Yes!