Fernadina Beach to Charleston

Our arrival in Fernandina Beach from Daytona was uneventful. The USCG was broadcasting a warning about shoaling at the intersection of the ICW and Mantazas inlet with depths at low tide of 3.5'. If true then that was a real problem depending on our timing of the tides. We were fortunate that we arrived at this point at a few hrs before high tide and went through without an issue. In fact we had no less than 7' below our keel. There was a lot of chatter on the marine radio about the depths with boats who had gone through relaying information back to those who had yet to transit the inlet intersection. A sail boat by the name of Trinity gave us his advice which was helpful. Nice guy.

Our original plan was to stay for 2 days at the city marina in Fernandina Beach, rest, eat and catch up on chores. But we changed our mind when Jeannie found a diesel fuel company that would fill us up for about $.35/g less than anything else we had seen and would let us dock for a very modest charge. So we changed our plans and went to the fuel dock. Nice guy, helped a lot and ended up not charging us for the dockage. What a super deal this was. However, in this area the tides are a real issue, averaging 6.5-7'. These docks, unlike the city docks (which are floating), were fixed. The challenges were tieing the boat so as the tide changes, the lines were not too tight nor too loose. Getting off the boat at low or high tide was quite a challenge. In some ways it was easier to get off the boat deck. Jeannie was locked on the boat at certain times of the cycle.

Looking at the weather we felt we had a small window of opportunity to go offshore. The forecast was calling for 2-3' seas for the next 36 hrs and then a tropical low was forming and sea conditions would deteriorate significantly. With that information in hand we decided to make the run to Charleston SC., bypassing the Georgia ICW entirely. The issue with the Georgia ICW is several areas which are not passable at low tide. The biggest single problem is the Mud River which has a 7' tidal range  and would be at low tide mid day & unpasseable. Ugh. Just would not work. So with a good short term forecast and complicated options for an inside run we made the call to go outside. 

Our logistical issues were timing the passage to arrive in Charleston at a good arrival time. It is about a 20 hr run at our typical speed and 24hrs at a slightly slower but more fuel efficient speed.  We wanted to arrive in Charleston in the early morning about 8-9pm. That means we would need to leave by lunch. There is always a but......lunch time departure would require us to leave at low tide. I mean a really low tide. From the side deck of the boat you were looking "up" 6' to the bottom of the dock. Just no way to get on and off safely to undo the lines and power cable. Leaving at 8ish was a more practical solution for an easy departure and that is what we opted to do. That meant slowing our speed over ground to time our arrival. If we went our typical speed we would arrive at 4am. We left and set our route and speed at 6.5-7kts. Slow but very fuel efficient.

The trip north went well. Our only complexities occurred about 25nm offshore in the early morning off the inlet near Savannah Ga. We encountered, around 2am,  5 cargo vessels all coming and going into or out of the port from different direction and a line of unpredicted thunderstorms were popping up all around us. We are fortunate and have an AIS system which picks up ships' name speed course and other data and displays it on our chart plotter. While the visibility at 2am had much to be desired, we could track each vessel's course and stay well away from them. All commercial ships over a certain size are required to have AIS capability and it is optional in pleasure craft. We opted for a system that transmits our information as well as receives; the cargo ships could track our course and speed and compared to these big ships we are just a tiny thing on the waters, so it is good to be seen on their chart plotters as well. We ended up zigging around dodging cargo ships and thunderstorms which added some distance and some time but it was the safest way to proceed.
We arrived in Charleston Harbor at 7:30am and worked our way up the Ashley River to the Mega Docks City Marina. These docks are better protected from waves than other marinas we have found and have really great support services for boaters. A bit more expensive than the other ones too.
Boy are the docks crowded. The weather has forced everyone in and sitting tight until the fronts pass in a few days. There are some really big boats here in the 120+ft range, all with crews running around in uniforms cleaning and polishing. Meanwhile I am in my ratty tee shirt, flip flops and ball cap....but what the heck I like my look and it has taken years to perfect it. I mean after all I have swatted lots of flies with my ball cap and it is quite comfortable & broken in.

We are here for 3 days unless the weather says otherwise and here is what we want to do;
Sleep and get caught up on our rest from the overnight run
Make a pass at some of the finer restaurants, we like to eat lunch out (cheaper) and a light dinner on  board.  Charleston has the best shrimp and grits by far! OMG
I have decided to switch our navigation software from Nobeltec to MaxSea. Lots of reasons but the nut of it is Nobeltec has been problematic since it was first installed a year ago and I have done just about everything to work out the bugs to no avail. It will crash on me at the most inopportune times more so if I use some of the common features such as tracking. So out of total frustration I am making the switch. MaxSea is a cool technology that has a lot of interesting features. I installed it yesterday and will work on it again today to become familiar with it and will start actively using it tomorrow. Should be fun. 

We plan on heading out tomorrow am for Georgetown SC via the ICW, still too rough off shore.
We have a bit over 400sm miles to go until we are back in Kilmarnock and should visit some interesting places along the way.

St. Augustine

We arrived in the St Augustine area this afternoon. So far we have traveled 393 nautical miles or 452 statute miles. The weather has been spectacular with comfortable temps and reasonable humidity for Fla. It always amazes me that on the boat we think of travel in a different scale than by by car or plane. In boating we do short daily hops of 50-70nm for the most part with an occasional overnight offshore.

As we travel closer to northern Fla the tides and currents change and become more pronounced. This morning we heard a Coast Guard advisory regarding Ft Mantanzas  inlet and shoaling.   They recommended avoiding  this area at low tide with water depths of 3-4 ft, holytamole!
We crossed the inlet 2 hours before high tide and found two things. First the USCG had moved the green markers further to the west and the most problematic area near green 81 we had over 10' of water. For the majority of the time we had greater than 14'. So, after some angsting, everything worked out just fine.

Our next task was fueling and we ( ok, actually Jeannie) found a place in Fernandina Beach Fla., where the cost is close to 33 cents less than other areas and they will let us tie up to the dock for a fraction of the cost of other areas. Tomorrow we will be at our last stop in Fla. Sunday appears to be a good weather window and we will do a brief offshore stopping in Brunswick Ga. Afterwards the weather deteriorates a bit so we will travel north via the ICW and hope to be in Charleston by Thursday?? Looking forward to some very good eats.

As an aside we have left the love bugs behind us, thankfully. A few here and there are one thing, but a swarm is quite another. Took me a few hours yesterday to clean up the mess.    

Cocco Fla

We left Stuart on Tuesday and, after an overnight in Vero Beach, we are comfortably in Cocoa Fla near Cape Canaveral. Shame we were not here for last weeks' shuttle launch. We did see it from the Lake Okeechobee Waterway but it was less dramatic than had we been this close. Our trip so far has been uneventful with the exception of swarms of Lovebugs.

Lovebugs live for a year as larvae and each year at this time they morph, grow wings and take flight. Their main purpose is to reproduce by attaching to each others abdomen . The male dies shortly thereafter and the female lays her eggs which hatch in about two weeks. She then dies. We have been the unfortunate (as were others) of thousands of the lusting bugs. It has been a real challenge. They were all over everything outside  making quite a mess. Hopefully this will end soon and we can walk around with out as much trouble.

Tomorrow we are off again for Daytona. We had considered an outside run from Canaveral to locations north but the weather window is closing and the wind direction will change to the N/NE with increasing waves. It looks more likely that an inside run to Fernandina in the most likely and will reconsider an offshore run then.

Stuart

We had a very pleasant trip  across the center of Fla., via the Lake Okeechobee waterway. We took a bunch of pictures which for the moment are locked in the camera due to having left the cable back in Kilmarnock when we were there the other week. ugh. We will switch to our other camera for future updates.
As we traveled through Lake Okeechobee waterway ( http://www.sailmiami.com/Okeechobee/ ) we traveled through five different locks. The lake is higher than the sea level so as you go to the lake the locks raise the boat and as you go away from the lake it lowers you. We went through a total of 5 locks, three on the western side and two on the eastern side. For the most part the scenery was wonderful, rural farm and orchards. We stopped twice: once just east of Ft. Myers at a family run small marina oozing with charm called Rialto Harbour http://rialtoharbor.com/. A very tranquil and delightful stop. Our next night we spent at the city docks of Moore Haven just west of the Moore Haven lock. This is a community based around the sugar cane industry. They consider themselves the sweetest town in America.
We still think Hershey PA has that distinction!

The portion of the waterway between the Moore Haven Lock and Clewiston is the least scenic but the most significant from a bird watching perspective. We saw a flock of wood storks, red wing blackbirds, a pair of eagles, great blue herons, grackles, egrets, lesser blue herons, vulchers, osprey, both white and brown pelicans and two alligators. It was quite the show. The lake, which is the 2nd largest inland waterway in the US, took 2.5hrs to cross and while it can get choppy with wind it was an uneventful crossing. Water depths in the past few yrs have been such that this crossing was not possible two years ago but with recent rains the lake levels are back to normal. In fact they are releasing water from the lake to lower the levels in anticipation of hurricane season.

We departed the lake through the Port Mayaca lock which was only a few inches of a drop and then went on to the St Lucie Lock which dropped us 14 ft.

As we went through the various locks we found all of the locks, unlike Great Bridge Lock in Chesapeake Va., had supplied lines to secure the boat. Jeannie would handle the stern and I would handle the bow. Generally raising or adding water into the lock chamber created more turbulence than lowering. Either was quite interesting and added to our skills in boat handling.
We arrived in Stuart at the Harborage Yacht Club and Marina and joined up for a few days with Ray and Susan Cope aboard their OR65 Copeing.

We will stay here until tomorrow when we expect to depart and travel up the ICW. Today we are having the boat washed and expect to have Outer Reef service department here for some last few warranty items before heading north.

Will post picture of the locks when I can get a new camera cord.

And we are off

We got underway this morning at 6:55am, it was a beautiful morning and we pulled away without any problems. The diver came late yesterday afternoon and worked on the running gear (props, shafts and other metal parts) for about 2.5 hrs. He reported that we had a lot of marine growth called sugar coral. He went on to tell us in this particular area there is an acceleration of growth twice a year in the Spring and Fall, sometimes requiring cleaning every 2 wks., yawsa! That is a lot and certainly more than we are used to. Fortunately  it was a very simple and inexpensive fix and we were able to take off.

We went inside the GICW until Venice Fla., where we turned and went out into the Gulf Of Mexico. You can see our track for the next few days at: http://share.findmespot.com/shared/faces/viewspots.jsp?glId=0YbgAe68AMPZoLxpBHQYaVI86IlerZvb3 A very uneventful trip. We thought we might have had a problem with the  impeller on the hydraulic water pump because the water flow meter was not moving. Once in and docked at Cabbage Key I checked and all was well. It took a tap on the water wheel with the back of a screwdriver and, voila, it started moving...

Tomorrow we are off to the Lake Okeechobee Waterway and will pass Ft. Meyers FL on our way east.

Well maybe tomorrow

We pulled off the dock at 7:15am and to our surprise we had problems getting enough thrust with our bow and stern thrusters as well as forward and reverse thrust off the main engines. Oh boy!!

We think that with a warming of the water the has been a bloom of marine growth that is fowling our running gear. So we have a diver coming later today to take a look and to clean the gear if that is indeed the problem. So for now we sit and wait.........erg!

On the bright side it is a beautiful day! Lemonade anyone.

Preparing to depart LBK

We have been busy provisioning, giving all of the systems a once over, and getting a boat wash. We had been undecided about whether to cruise out into the Gulf of Mexico or to travel inside on the Gulf Intercoastal Waterway. There are pluses and minuses for both. We opted to go on the GICW. Going outside was much longer versus the bridges on the GICW.

Not a terribly long day tomorrow, about 55nm but slow. Should be fun. We decided to return to Cabbage Key. We had stopped there on the way north to Long Boat Key and had a great time so it would be fun to stop on the return trip. The truth is we are looking forward to a dinner their as well a notorious drink called the  "Cabbage Key Creeper". Yikes

Afterwords we start the Lake Okeechobee Waterway.

Selby Botanical wow

One of the last and maybe one of the best visits we made was a trip to the Selby Botanical Gardens in Sarasota. Maybe it was the time of the year, Spring, maybe it was just a cool place, but whatever the reason it was amazing.
Colors, textures and lighting, nature is a wonderful artist.

Our next entry and we should be underway and begin the 1100nm trip home.