St Augustine FL (2013-12-10)

N29° 53.373', W81° 19.340'

Tonight we're moored at the Hidden Harbour Marina in St Augustine Florida.  Yes, that's right... Florida! :-)


A lack of available Internet access for the last 6 days has prevented me from updating the blog, so I'll try to be gentle with tonight's post.

We ended up staying an extra day in Hilton Head to get the outboard looked at.  We checked with the service manager at Palmetto Bay Marina and as luck would have it, it ended up that one of their techs was a former master mechanic with Mercury.  He gave our outboard a good going over and so far it seems to be running much better.  Time will tell...

Thursday morning we raised our anchor and headed back out to the ICW.  Ahead of us was the Georgia section of the ICW, and some of the most challenging areas, such as Hell Gate and the Little Mud River.  Luckily we had the timing of the tides on our side, and had mid to high tides for all of the trouble stretches.

Our first two nights in Georgia we anchored well off the beaten track, on the Vernon River on Thursday, and on the Crescent River on Friday.  Both spots were peaceful and scenic.


Saturday we anchored on Jekyll Creek, near the Jekyll Harbour Marina.  We took the opportunity to dinghy over to a nearby boat ramp and went for a nice long walk.

Sunday was a bit of a breezy morning, and once the morning fog cleared we headed out.  The ICW leaves Jekyll Island and then heads way out into St Andrews Sound before returning to the inland waterways.  This sound is often quite rough when the winds are up, and Sunday morning was no exception.  As we headed out toward the sound a look ahead with the binoculars revealed some very rough water ahead.  Luckily there is an alternative route for shallow draft boats, called the Umbrella Cut.  A quick 180 had us heading back the way we came and diverting into the Umbrella Cut.  It was very shallow, and even at mid tide there were a couple spots that were under 5' in depth.

As we were transiting this alternative route the fog started thickening up.  By the time we rejoined the main ICW we were down to about 1/2 mile of visibility.  This made travel a bit challenging for the next couple hours, but we were able to find upcoming navigational markers without too much problems.

The fog eased a bit after that, and by the afternoon we found ourselves crossing the St Marys River and finally entered Florida!  This marked the completion of a major milestone in our trip, and the checking off of a personal bucket list item for myself.

We stopped for Sunday night in Fernandina Beach, anchoring just to the south of the mooring field.  The fog rolled back in with a vengeance shortly after supper, and we found ourselves completely socked in.  The fog stayed pea soup thick all night, and finally started to lift mid morning on Monday, around 0930. 

We stopped for fuel before leaving Fernandina, and I discovered that I'll have to change my standard reply to the question "Where are you headed?".  When the guy at the fuel dock asked that very question I started to reply the way I always had before, with "Florida", but caught myself before I did, realizing that that wouldn't make much sense. 

After fueling up, we continued south on the ICW.  Our destination for last night was a free dock that I had found in Jacksonville, on the Sisters Creek, just before the St John River.

A cold front that was supposed to swing through on Wednesday decided to arrive a day early, and was forecasted to be accompanied by strong winds.  We had originally planned to anchor in the St Augustine harbour, but with the weather coming we decided to find something solid to tie up to.  Luckily there's a quite economical marina named Hidden Harbour Marina, up at the end of the San Sebastian River.  They charge a flat rate of $26.50 for a night, power and water included.  

We managed to get to the marina and secured to the dock by 1440.  The clouds had been building all day, and by then they were looking dark and nasty.  We had just managed to get the boat buttoned up when the front hit.  We had torrential rain and strong wind gusts for about 30 minutes and then it was done.  It rained lightly for about another hour before stopping altogether.  After supper we went for a walk in downtown St Augustine.


If the weather cooperates we'll continue our travels tomorrow, and will hopefully make it to Daytona Beach.  After that we'll have less than 200 miles left until we get to Lake Worth, which will be our staging point for the crossing to the Bahamas.  With any luck we should be there by the end of the weekend, or early next week, depending on what the weather gods deliver.