east coast fun

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Things happen for a reason

I tend to believe that stuff happens for a reason.  This latest event has totally clinched it for me. We left Fernandina and the radar showed mostly clear. Hadn’t gone more than 2 miles when we dropped the hook just off the channel and waited out a small T-Storm cell. I am the chicken; when it comes to not being able to see well, forget it.  Our home deserves our utmost care and by golly I want to keep it. Ten minutes later we were on our way. Never did this procedure before; lucky for us, nearly all our travel has been in good or reasonably decent weather.
Eyes on the radar as well as the Weather Channel on my iPhone, we watched as the storm gods tossed more blobs our way. Didn’t get more than five more miles and you could see the wall of rain, hear the thunder while lightning flashed in the distance. Guess what? Scooted off the channel and dropped the anchor again.
We had just decided (that’d be me) that the coast was clear. We looked over to the ICW and coming our way and, “moving at a good pace” commented Russ, was a catamaran. As it got closer, I did my usual check it out and saw the person at the helm was looking at us! We raised the anchor and thought it good that we’d follow them- I feel safer seeing another boat when the weather is crap.
Right about then, the VHF sprang to life with “catamaran west side of Cumberland Sound, this is Celise/Spirit”. Holy crap, they were calling us and it was our friends from Boot Key Harbor –  you know, the ones with the cat bigger than ours! We knew they’d be headed up a couple weeks after we left and a few days earlier we had tried to guess when and where. Their mast is extra tall and requires passing under the non-opening bridges at low tide, if they can at all.   If we hadn’t delayed our day’s journey we would have missed them entirely.

ICW in Georgia looks like tree roots

Shortly after we joined up- they turned off to stop for the day near Cumberland Island and we continued farther. As things turned out, we had to cut our day short and our night’s rest was the north end of the same river they were in to the south.  We made plans to meet up at Thunderbolt Marina in Savannah; it’s their final destination. Haul the boat and fly back west to Washington and next winter the other owner has it. We’d chosen Thunderbolt marina, not knowing, how fortuitous.

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Bumper Boats & T-Storms

Fernandina papermill

Fernandina's eyesore and stinkpot

Fernandina Beach, located on the northern part of Amelia Island, is accessible, lovely (reminiscent of Martha’s Vineyard) and the harbor contains a wonderful municipal marina and two HUGE paper factories.  When the wind blew the wrong way, the smell was almost sickening and reminded us of rotten wet cardboard. Had missed this stop on our way south and had both heard and read that it was a good stop, just ignore the factories.
We had a good sail along the coast up from St. Augustine, outrunning the pirates who were speedily departing out the same inlet.(wink, wink). St. Mary’s entrance is a Class A inlet and although we were coming in against the current, we had no trouble.  We were assigned mooring #10, on the outside (row closest to ICW and marina across the river), did our usual quick pickup- have I mentioned how much we like our big mooring clip?- then Russ runs additional lines through and we are snug and secure. A trawler picked up the mooring ball behind us and while I had the “gee these balls are close together ” thought, we didn’t give that another thought… until 3am. The wind diminished and the tide was changing.  Typically when the tide changes, boats turn pretty much in a choreographed fashion, unless the wind messes things up. We heard the mooring ball hitting the hull, which does happen sometimes, followed by a much louder bang near the stern. Why does “stuff happen” at night? The dinghy of the trawler had gotten under our transom and the outboard had hit the hull. It moved away and we watched the “boat dance” all around.  Couple times we started our engines to make sure that the trawler itself did not hit us, but after an hour the tide had realigned the boats on their moorings and we dove back into bed.
Under the mooring ball is a certain amount of chain determined by the tide range- here about 5ft.- so at low tide the boats can be pulled closer to each other by the wind due to more chain available.  We checked out another ball, #17 that was empty and not far away. Russ dinghied over to check the water depth- (the inside row supposedly has less) and to tie a line to the eye on the ball. The inside row balls don’t have a pickup line. After I’d gotten the clip on the line, Russ still had to go in the dinghy and re-clip us to the eye and run a backup line through. It was a challenge; the wind had picked up to 15kts and we had to devise new hand signals for Russ to give me-he’s at the bow in the dinghy and I’m at the helm using one engine or both, in idle or some gas depending on the signal. My favorites are the fist in the air (out of gear) and the cut sign- engines off we are DONE! Phew- this proved a good move and we had no further trouble. I slept well that night.
The next day we were on the move again by 10am- after a few small T-storm cells passed by. More, many more were heading our way. sigh