Today's travel would take us past Fernandina Beach, FL. We had originally planned to stay a day or two at Fernandina, but when we called, the marina was still limping along from damages from hurricane Matthew, 2 years ago! No fuel, no pumpout, and no face dock. Just a few slips inside the T-head, and those were shoaled to 4 ft! They finally just got their funding, and are closing next week to begin the restoration. So, once again, no visit to Fernandina Beach.
And Matthew and his siblings have left another legacy. The channel near Fernandina has become shoaled to unpassable depths in some places, with the deeper water now having moved completely off the charted channel! Fortunately, there is a solution. A well-known boater who goes by the online name of bob423, posts daily tracks of his ICW travels, and had just passed through about a week before us. I don't know what kind of sonar capability he has, but it must be sophisticated (side scan?) since he confidently states that his track will follow the deepest water through. And Bruce, aboard s/v Pearl, has downloaded these tracks into his chartplotter and follows them. Although our chartplotter has this capability too, it requires transferring the downloaded tracks onto an SD card, and we didn't have one aboard.
So we stuck close on Pearl's stern as we gingerly passed through the skinny parts. It's unnerving when your chartplotter shows that the path you're taking goes over dry land (!!), but bob423 always found the good water. Bruce commented that a lot of people owe that man a dinner and a good bottle of whisky! I couldn't agree more!
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| Pearl Leading the Way Through |
Once past the shallow parts, the trip became pretty easy. Pearl resumed their normal cruising speed, which is a little faster than ours, and slowly but steadily pulled ahead. There was one confusing part crossing through the St. Johns River, where the channel markers have been moved radically off of the channel shown on the charts. But reality always trumps charts! The depth sounder is King, followed by the channel markers, and then the charts. Once we started following the repositioned markers, the depths were fine.
Our planned destination today was Pine Island, a popular anchorage about 50 nm from our starting point at Cumberland Island. We got there just before 4pm, and Pearl was already anchored. Our first anchor attempt seemed to go well, but when I backed down on the anchor to set it, it kept slowly dragging backwards. Eventually, we moved so far that we were in 8 ft of water, and the tide still had 4 ft to go down. We would be aground at low tide!
So we retrieved the anchor and tried again at another spot a little closer to Pearl. This time the anchor set with no problem.
Before sunset, three more sailboats pulled in and anchored. This is a popular spot!
After our usual end-of-voyage drink, we had a hot supper, did some reading, and retired early. Tomorrow, we will reach St. Augustine, where we have a slip reserved for a couple of days to make exploring the town easier.
Life is good.
It took me a while to believe or understand Bruce when he kept insisting I pay attention to the Bob423 Active Captain Posts. Then, on my way north, he told me about the waypoints he shares. I used my SD card to load them into my Garmin and it worked great. I suggest you take a SD card back to the boat after Christmas. I think I might be able to send you a bunch of good waypoints done by the author Steve Dodge. They also were somewhat helpful in the Abacos. But what I used the SD card for the most was to transfer my tracks periodically from my chart plotter to my PC. It's nice to sit here at home and see exactly where I anchored at the south end of Pine Island on my trip north.
ReplyDeleteFair Winds!!
Ron