Ahhhh…back in Vero Beach

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11/22/15
Vero Beach, FL
Position: 27 39.257N, 080 22.280W
Posted by Bill

We made it to Vero Beach today. If you are a blog follower, you know this is one of my favorite stops along the ICW (Intracoastal Waterway). The moorings are very reasonably priced, the facilities are above average, you can walk to the beach in 15 minutes, you can take a short dinghy ride to many restaurants/bars, and there is a free bus service that will take you to nearby grocery and liquor stores, a great dive shop, and fresh seafood market. It is known among the cruising community as “Velcro Beach” because it has a way of keeping you from leaving. It is also a very picturesque area along the waterway:


They have a huge Thanksgiving day gathering where the city provides turkey and ham, and everyone brings a dish to share. Our friends on Simple Life that we met here last year, Joe and Michelle, invited us to sit at their table so we will be enjoying Thanksgiving with them and several other people that we know who are here. Unfortunately, Byrd Ketcher ran into some mechanical problems in St Augustine, and they told us yesterday that they are not going to make it here for Thanksgiving. This will be the first Thanksgiving away from family…ever…which is hard for us, so we are glad to be amongst friends.

There are several previous posts about Vero Beach with pictures. Use the blog search function if you are interested in seeing more.

When we left St Augustine, we made our way through a badly shoaled area called Matanza’s Inlet. We hit it at low tide, and following the advice from Active Captain, we had no problems. Not so for this guy who ran aground…hard aground:
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We also passed this guy who created his own fishing vessel out of two kayaks:
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What a hoot!

After a long day, we anchored in Ponce Inlet at Rockhouse Creek. You may remember it from our blog in the spring when we stopped there. Very nice anchorage. Search the blog if you are interested in seeing pictures and learning more about it. The next day we had another long one getting to Cocoa, where we watched the Ohio State game with one of Tricia’s long time friends from high school, Connie and her husband Scott. It was great meeting them and having dinner with them. Then today we made to Vero, where we will be until Friday. It was supposed to pour rain all day today but we didn’t get one drop, thank goodness! After this we make the push to Marathon…trying to get there in the first week of December.

One other thing…we have been seeing tons of dolphins. The morning when we left Ponce Inlet, we saw constant dolphin activity for at least 2 hours along our route. Several times after that we have had them swimming along side the boat. We usually see them every day at one time or another, but the last couple of days have been amazing. We will try to get some pics.

Last day in St Augustine

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11/19/15
St Augustine FL, Hidden Harbor Marina
Posted by Bill

We have enjoyed being in a slip for a couple of days. Usually, I prefer to anchor out or pick up a mooring ball as marinas tend to be like RV parks on the water. Anchored or moored, you have more space between your neighbors and a 360 degree view of the water! That part is cool. The down side is that you have to generate your own power, you have to take the dinghy ashore to get off the boat (in less than comfortable weather and wave conditions some times), you don’t have a fresh water hookup, and it is a LONG way to the restrooms other than what you have on your boat. Marinas offer convenience. We have been anchoring or mooring for a week prior to arriving here, so this was a nice change. This is the first time we have stayed at this marina. It is smaller than most and has mostly clients that live aboard their boats. It is pretty far up the San Sebastian river and is a designated hurricane hole, so it is well protected from severe weather. It is also a close walk to downtown St Augustine, just a few blocks from a great farmers market, and just across the street from a huge liquor store. The people who run this marina are really nice, and the restrooms and showers are some of the cleanest we have seen…a huge plus. They only have a couple of slips for transients like us, so it is set up mostly for people that are full time clients.

It is interesting to see the boats and people here in the marina. Everyone is friendly for the most part. Many of the boats never leave the dock and are in really bad shape. There is evidence that there are some people living here with meager incomes and some health issues. For a 40 foot boat, which is quite a bit larger than what most of these people are living on, you can live for $500 a month, including all utilities. For St Augustine, FL, that is probably a major bargain. Smaller boats would cost less. Seeing the boats that some of them are living on kind of gives you a different perspective on what some people do to survive. Here are some pictures of the marina and looking down the San Sebastian River:








And here is our Island Bound at dock:

We have hit most of our favorite spots in St Augustine while here, including the liquor store and the farm market. In addition, I have checked off a few boat projects. One was to change the spark plug in the generator, and in typical boat project fashion, it took 25 minutes to get the spark plug and all of the tools out. Then 5 minutes to change the spark plug. Then 25 minutes to put everything away. Sometimes that can be downright frustrating. Another one was to troubleshoot the AIS system and the GPS, which have been a little flakey lately. I had to take all of the crap out of the cockpit locker, filling up the cockpit, and then spend some more quality time in my favorite dungeon…the cockpit locker. I did resolve both issues after a couple of hours of work, so I guess it was a good time!!

Tomorrow, we will work our way to Vero Beach, arriving on Sunday to spend Thanksgiving there with some of our friends from last year, including Kurt and Sharon on Byrd Ketcher. They are going to catch up with us there on Wednesday! Looking forward to that.

St Augustine 2015

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11/17/15
St Augustine FL, ICW, Hidden Harbor Marina
Position:29 53.352N, 081 19.308W
Posted by Bill

We left the Fort George river anchorage at dawn:

We moved on to St Augustine, transiting up the San Sebastian river to Hidden Harbor Marina. They only have 2 transient slips, but it is close to the city, and they have really clean facilities. We tried to get into River View Marina, where we docked last spring, but they were booked. We took showers and walked into town to the best happy hour in St Augustine…go figure! After dinner and drinks, we milled around the shops and came back to the boat. I am still recovering from busting ass down the waterway, and the lack of sleep from the restless nights.

We started seeing the signature opulence that is the Florida ICW:


Here is a cool view coming into the inlet at St Augustine:

Along the way, we saw this really nice house boat, a 1940 Trumpy 80′ boat. It was really nice. John and Mary Ann, if you are following the blog…here is a sanding project for you…lol:

St Augustine is a pretty cool city and will allow us to enjoy some R&R while we wait out the impending weather system. To see more from our visits here check out these links:
St Augustine contender for tourist trap of the year

Checking out the slave trade on the Fort George River

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11/16/15
Fort George River, FL ICW
Position:30 26.586N, 081 26.463W
Posted by Bill

Our first full day in Fernandina Beach was pretty miserable. 25 knot winds out of the north came barreling down the mooring field which runs north-south. The worst part was that when the tide started to go out, it pulled the boat broad side into the waves and wind. Not only did we get rocked and rolled by the waves, but the wind also kept pushing us into the mooring ball which made it thunk into the side of the boat. Of course, this started about one in the morning and went until about five, leaving us with very little sleep. We did manage to go ashore and have some dinner and drinks, but we got soaked on the dinghy ride back to the boat. and to top it all off…one of the main things we love about Fernandina Beach is the fried cheese curds at the Salty Pelican…and they took it off of their menu! Foul!!! In spite of all of that, we ended up staying another night. The wind abated and we got a good night’s rest.

Now that we are in Florida, we can take more time and not kill ourselves trying to make it south. Today was absolutely beautiful. 75 degrees with a nice breeze. After 10 days of long pants, we finally got the shorts back out! After getting fuel, we took off. We decided to head to an anchorage about 1/3 of the way to St Augustine in the Fort George river. I read some good things about it and they have a national park that used to be a plantation involved in the slave trade. They have a nice dock that you can dinghy to and check out the plantation. We also decided to hunker down in St Augustine from Tuesday through Thursday to weather out a system that is bringing 30 knot winds and rain, so this made an easy three hour run to stage the trip into St Augustine, and it is someplace new for us. It turned out to be a delightful anchorage.

When we first arrived, we were greeted by a pod of dolphins. They swam right up to the boat:



We always love seeing them up close. They kind of disappeared in Southport in October, but we started seeing them every day in South Carolina when we started south. We saw tons of them the last couple of days.

The plantation house:

The inside of the kitchen house showed a lot of the construction of the late 1700’s. We took these particularly for Matt and Shirley. We know they dig this stuff:

http://images1.snapfish.com/232323232%7Ffp93232%3Euqcshlukaxroqdfv33892%3Enu%3D6646%3E863%3E255%3EWSNRCG%3D%3A434h9gd04gdg%2F7ffc0d33%3C%2F53%3C2f474%3A4%3Ceot1lsi


The different layers of the interior walls:

Tabby (sand and oyster shells) floors:

Slave houses…one was fully constructed:


It really bothered me to learn how the slaves were treated. Kidnapped from their home country, brought over in horrid conditions, cruel and tortuous treatment. I can’t believe that human beings were treated like that. Absolutely horrible.

Lastly, a couple of pics of the anchorage, including Island Bound anchored in the distance:


We got out asses kicked, but we made it to Florida

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11/15/15
Fernandina Beach, FL
Position:30 40.264N, 81 28.143W
Posted by Bill

On the 13th, we left our anchorage at sun up and motored through the next major shoal area; Hell Gate. No issues. We caught the tidal current very favorably and made great time, overshot our intended anchorage and ended up anchoring in the Darien River; position: 31 23.015N, 081 20.175W. It was a great anchorage in the middle of nowhere.

Yesterday, we left the Darien River at sunrise:

Our stretch goal was to try and make it to Fernandina Beach FL, but we really needed the tidal current to help us. It was a real stretch. We made it through the last two bad shoal areas with plenty of water beneath us and we were moving great…until we came out of Jekyll Creek and rounded the tip of Jekyll Island into St Andrew Sound. Winds were forecasted to be out of the north at 10 to 15 knots, and it was pretty windy inside the ICW, but when we came out into the sound we got hit with 25 knots, 5 foot seas and a 4 second wave period! Caught by surprise, the boat was getting tossed all over the place, and stuff was flying around in the cockpit and down below in the cabin. We had to go way out into the sound to get around a shoal area. The picture below shows our intended path with a magenta line. We were going from top to bottom and the wind was coming in the direction of the big red arrow:

It was a long slog through a washing machine. After 30 minutes or so of getting slammed, I cut the shoal area short (it was high tide and I took a calculated risk), which put us on a course with the waves behind us. That helped significantly, but it was a good hour and a half before we got back into more protected waters. It was a good lesson to make sure you are always ready for bad seas and winds, even in the ICW. This area is atypical of the usually protected waters of the ICW, but from now on…we will secure the boat better.

The tidal current helped us and we made it into Fernandina Beach before 4:00 PM! Glad we are out of Georgia! We will probably stay another day here and then work our way to St Augustine where we intend to wait out the next weather system that is coming Tuesday through Thursday.

Moon River…wider than a mile…NOT

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12/11/15 Breakfast Creek, Georgia ICW
Position 31 56.195N, 80 40.673W
Posted by Bill

We left Beaufort/Port Royal at 6:35 and made it through the first set of Georgia shoal areas with no issue…thank goodness! Here is what we saw along the way…

Sunrise on the Beaufort River:

Some pelicans hanging out on a river buoy:

A shrimping boat heading out for a day’s work:

The Harbor Town light house at Hilton Head…I just can’t take enough pictures of this:

Some cool boats like this one:

Rescue squad at Dufauski Island. They were all over this tug boat trying to get someone off of the boat. I hope it ended up well:

Close to the end of the day we passed Moon River, the inspiration for the song made famous in 1961 in the movie, Breakfast At Tiffany’s. I remember the Andy Williams version that my Mom had the album for…pretty much dates my ass. Part of the lyrics are “wider than a mile”, but it isn’t. It might be a half mile at most, but more like a quarter mile. Replace that for the last sentence in the lyrics…it’s a hoot. Here is what it looks like:

It was a LOOOONGGGGG day. We got the anchor down in one of our favorite anchorages in Georgia, Breakfast Creek:

We are here with one other boat and it is as peaceful as it gets! This is what I love about cruising. We watched the sun set and schools of dolphins feeding in the anchorage. Cocktails of course!

Tomorrow we are going to try to make the other 2 major shoal areas of Georgia in 1 day. Wish us luck!!

Stopover in Beaufort

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11/11/15
Port Royal Landing Marina, Beaufort, SC
Position: 32 23.698N, 80 40.673W
Posted by Bill

We left Charleston on the 10th and took the ICW to Bass Creek just north of Beaufort, SC. We were debating to go offshore for a 30 hour trip from Charleston to Fernandina Beach, FL. We had an almost perfect forecast of winds around 10 knots and seas 2-3 feet until you hit the southern part of Georgie, and there was a potential of seas of 6 -8 feet. That was a clue to go the ICW route instead of offshore. You have to be willing to deal with 2 times the forecasted waves and wind in an offshore situation. We have taken offshore routes with the best of forecasts only to have our asses kicked.

I was really kicking myself after the decision to go “inside” because the forecast was so good, and we could be in Fernandina in 1 day versus 4 or 5 using the ICW. Plus we could avoid all of the shoaling and tide planning associated with the ICW. Friends of ours took at outside run from Hilton Head, SC to Brunswick, GA, just north of Fernandina that same night and got their asses kicked. The forecast fell apart and they had a really rough passage. Glad we took the route we did!!

In Bass Creek I did some planning, both offshore and ICW to get the rest of the way to Fernandina, and was leaning toward ICW passage skipping Beaufort and saving a day of travel. It was going to involve 4 days of anchoring. Then, in the morning, the hose that we use to wash down the anchor chain as we bring it up broke at the base that connects into the deck. I figured no big deal, just use one of our garden hoses…except it doesn’t fit onto the threads of the deck fitting. Plan B…I remember a spare deck fitting in our spares inventory. It came with the boat but we never really checked it out. Sure enough, a standard garden hose fitting will screw into it. So I try it and the deck fitting leaks…damn! After several other random trials, we have nothing that will work for an anchor wash down. This is not good, because any mud, sand, crap that we pull up with the anchor ends up in our bilge. Not only does it make a mess, but it smells bad after a few days.

So…I pull up my plan B, which involves stopping in Beaufort and pushing the schedule back one day. If we go to Port Royal Landing Marina, where we stayed for a month last year, we know we can use the courtesy car and shop a solution for our anchor wash down dilemma. All of the other tide schedules can work through Georgia, which is full of shoal areas.

We pull into the marina, get the car, go to the hardware store first. With their help, we determine that the threads on the wash down fitting are metric and will not match anything in their store. We also buy larger and tighter O-rings for the spare wash down fitting that leaked, hoping that this may make this one a viable solution. We also buy a new hose. We then stock up on liquor because South Carolina has much cheaper liquor than any other state on the southeast coast. A quick stop at the grocery store and we are on our way. Then we go to West Marine and engineer a fix to the old wash down fitting with hose adapters, a piece of hose, and hose clamps…just in case the other solution doesn’t work. So, after 5 hours and $40, we have 2 potential solutions.

Back at the boat…we find the 2nd set of O-rings does the trick for the spare wash down fitting and we are back in business! Time for a beer!! Then time for dinner! Now we can anchor on!

The plan is to leave first light in the morning tomorrow, around 6:30. Hoping currents allow us to make our shoal areas at the right tide level and that we can make Fernandina Beach in 4 days. Another typical day in the life of cruising.

For more about Beaufort and Port Royal Landing Marina, search the blog with the search box above. We stayed a month here last year and there are many posts and pictures.

Passage planning

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11/8/15
Charleston, SC
Posted by Bill

It is blowing up to 30 knots today and starting to rain here in Charleston, and we are rocking and rolling in the marina. The Cooper River is not looking too nice:

We walked to the grocery store a couple of hours ago, but otherwise we are stuck inside. Based on that, I decided to share our passage planning process. Several people have asked about it and I also thought that it might also help someone who is new to traveling the ICW.

The major components that go into the process are as follows:
1. Kettlewell Guide to the ICW – this is a publication that has nautical charts for the Atlantic ICW. Each page is about a 5 mile segment of the ICW, and in the margin there is information about marinas, anchorages, bridges, etc… We didn’t have this on the way south last year, but used my friend Matt’s copy on the way back. It has made tracking and planning much easier than the standard charts and chart books. One caveat, they stopped updating the charts and information in 2006, but it is still the best publication we have found.

2. Active Captain – this is a web site and associated database that has electronic nautical charts that highlights marinas, anchorages, local knowledge points, and hazards on the map. On top of that, people provide comments and can add/delete/maintain the data in a crowd sourcing fashion. Kind of like Yelp for the cruising community. Since it has grown in popularity, many marine navigation vendors have incorporated the database in their products. It is a valuable resource. www.activecaptian.com

3. Weather – we primarily use Weather Underground (wunderground.com) for weather forecasts and radar. In addition, we use NOAA Marine Weather (marine.weather.gov), Passage Weather (passageweather.com), Wind Finder (windfinder.com), Mikes weather page on Facebook or spaghettimodels.com, and for tropical storms…tropicaltidbits.com. These are all internet resources but in addition we use the following apps for iphone/ipad: Marine Weather (tides, marine weather, currents), Pocket Grib (similar to Passageweather.com data), the Wind Finder app, and the Weather Underground app.

Tides and Currents – we use the NOAA tides and currents website and/or apps: Ayetide, Marine Weather, Garmin Blue Chart Mobile

Here are some screen shots of some of the above resources to give you an idea of the information that they provide:
Windfinder:

Passage Weather:


NOAA marine forecasts:

AyeTides:

Pocket Grib:


Active Captain:

The colored boxes denote marinas (red), local knowledge (blue), hazards (yellow), and anchorages (green). You click on a box to get more info, including comments and ratings.

The process:
We plan on 50 – 60 statute miles per day generally. Looking a the Kettlewell guide, you can see how far that takes you. Then using Active Captain, you look at available anchorages and marinas in that general area so you know where you might want to stop for the night. I usually look at 40 miles and 65 miles as alternatives in case the currents work for or against you.

Next, look at the hazards in Active Captain, which tells me what shoal areas are going to impact us, and how other people dealt with them successfully. I do this with the web site or using Garmin Blue Chart Mobile on the iPad. Garmin has Active Captain data integrated and also tides and currents. I go page by page on Kettlewell and look up the area in Active Captain, writing the results on a post it note that goes in the Kettlewell page as an instruction of how to deal with this area of the charts. I use tide and current information to formulate the plan as well. After all is considered, I write up a plan in my passage composition book as to when to leave, when to hit certain mile markers/areas and pertinent information. While underway, I use this book and the Kettlewell charts with my sticky notes to follow in the cockpit.

Sample of the Kettlewell book with my notes:

Some people just write in the margin of these pages, but the conditions change all the time and I opted to use the post its so they can be swapped out.

Off shore passages require a different type of planning which is heavily dependent on data about wind speed, wind direction, wave height, wave period, wave direction, tides and currents. We use NOAA nautical charts and Maptech Chartkits for off shore. For the Bahamas, we use Explorer Charts.

You are never quite sure what the speed of the boat will end up being, so you need to have alternate plans for both ICW and off shore that take into account multiple scenarios.

For weather forecasting, I use all of the resources mentioned and develop my own idea based on all of them as input. They are never the same, so you need multiple sources and have to interpolate. You also need to watch the sky…duh! As for weather…we don’t plan to go out in anything uncomfortable, but plan to get surprised for the worst while we are out there.

It is definitely more of an art than a science.

Back in Charleston

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11/8/15
Charleston Maritime Center, Charleston SC
Position: 32 47.344N, 79 55.459W
Posted by Bill

We made it to Charleston, one of our favorite cities. Yesterday, we needed to time the tide to get from Isle of Palms to here, and that meant we couldn’t leave until 1:30 PM. It was an absolutely beautiful day and we enjoyed watching all of the boat traffic going in and out of the marina and surrounding area. I also snapped some pictures.

Island Bound at dock in Isle of Palms Marina:

The view at the marina:


There were a lot of people coming in and out of the restaurant and marina store and we saw some strange vehicles park in the 60 minute visitors parking area, including this John Deere tractor!:

I was shocked to see this parked here. First of all, Isle of Palms is a posh resort and beach area. There are no farms here. There are some eccentric residents, so that might be it…not sure.

The passage from Isle of Palms to Charleston is the worst shoal area in the ICW, with low tide depths under 3 feet. We need 5 1/2 feet to float, so we had to time the tides. We pulled in to the Charleston Maritime Center around 4 PM and went out for a pizza at D’Allesandro’s. It was outstanding. Last night around 2 AM the expected weather front moved in and the winds were howling. The wind was making one of the lines on the mast slap the mast at rapid fashion, sounding like a machine gun. Can’t sleep through that racket so I get up and try to adjust the tension, stick a foam noodle between it and the mast, and fend it off with bungee chords. After an hour or so of messing with it I got it to shut up. If I got it too loose, it would slap. If I got it too tight, it would make a loud hum. Finally pushed the noodle up the mast with a boat hook and got back to bed around 3 AM. We will be here until Tuesday. The weather may stifle our usual exploration of the city…we shall see.

If you are interested in Charleston, here are some of our older posts when we were here. Lots of pictures:
Chillin’ in Charleston
Chillin’ in Charleston part deux
Chastown…one of our favorites

Gators and dolphins and shoals…oh my!

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11/6/15
Isle of Palms SC, ICW
Position: 32 48.381N, 79 45.592W
Posted by Bill

Morning at Mimim Creek where we anchored last night:

After we got the anchor down last night, the bugs swarmed us. This morning, parts of the boat were covered with these black bugs:

Those who know me know that I am a bug phobe, and I don’t know if it is a coincidence, but they love ME. Glad we were able to go inside to the protection from this stuff!!

Today we left at 9 AM. We got to sleep in because we were transiting a notoriously bad shoal area at McClellanville, and we needed to hit that no earlier than 12 noon. Leaving at 9 would put us there based on our average speed. We arrived a little earlier due to a favorable tidal current, but we made it through the shoal area without incident!! Yay!

Then we made the push to Isle of Palms, a beach area of Charleston. If you remember from last year, we have friends Terry and Cassandra that live there, and we had a great time with them on our trip down last fall. We hooked up with them for dinner and drinks and had a great time again!!

Along the ICW, we saw our first alligator:

And our first dolphins in quite a while:

It was a long day again!

There is a pretty strong front coming in on Sunday and Monday, so we need to get to Charleston to wait it out. Charleston provides provisioning and entertainment while we wait out the weather and we will move on tomorrow to Charleston Maritime Center.