Monday June 13, 2011

Leaving Florida Day ….

This morning we again awoke to the smell of the brush fires and a heavy haze, a bit worse than yesterday.

St Augustine Floating Docks (floating because of 8 ft tides)

We left the dock at around 8:00 and visibility was starting to improve as the breeze picked up. We are now starting to get into high tidal range areas so you have to be aware of the depths and current. We managed to get off the dock at slack tide rather than a 2 kt current.

We spent the morning travelling up the Tolomato River section of the ICWW passing under a few more bridges. Most of the scenery looks like this.

We traversed a man made cut through the Cabbage Swamp which was natural on one side with the other lined with nice homes and covered docks.

Note the putting green and tee box for hitting balls over the ICWW!

Our critter sighting of the day was a pair of deer at the edge of the swamp.

We crossed the St John’s River inlet shortly after noon and followed Sister’s and Sawpit Creeks to Nassau Sound from which we entered the South Amelia River. The boathouses in this area are built for the tidal range.

The weather was starting to look a little unsettled and we started to hear the first sounds of thunder a while later. When it looked for certain the the storm was heading our way, we decided to look for a place to anchor while the storm passed. This was a bit challenging being we were at low tide and depths out of the channel are minimal. We decided to take refuge in a published anchorage up the narrow Amelia River. In the process of trying to set anchor, we think we touched bottom with the propellers so we aborted that and decided to anchor at the edge of the channel but not before getting hit with 50 kt winds at the front edge of the storm. The front deck lounge pad threatened to leave the boat so I had to throw myself across it while Joan got a line to lash it down. We were both totally soaked.

The storm passed fairly quickly and we were on our way past Fernandina Beach.

 Fernandina Beach Waterfront

At 16:05 we entered Georgia! We went past the nuclear submarine base at Kings Bay.

We found an anchorage about 10 miles inside of Georgia at Delaroche Creek. A winding creek through marshland.

Not a soul in site except for five dolphins who played around the boat for a while.

The tidal range here is around 8 - 10 feet with strong currents. We ended up setting two anchors. Again, smoke from the brush fires was evident by the red sunset.