Pop-up passage

We are underway northbound in the North Atlantic Ocean, on an unplanned and somewhat unexpected passage. We should end up at one end or the other of Edisto Island at the end of the day, which will put us about a day from Charleston.

Monday morning we were up early, weighed anchor, and pulled up to the fuel dock at Port Consolidated at 7:45, fifteen minutes before they open. I did not want to take the chance that some sportfisher would jump in ahead of us. As it turned out, a shrimper wanting 30,000 gallons had an appointment for that spot at opening time; they are required to make advance arrangements because vessels holding more than 10,0000 gallons have a phalanx of extra regulations.

Spectacular sunset over Bells River from our anchorage in Fernandina Beach.

We had been prepared to cast off and move if need be when the attendant arrived, but he decided to go ahead and fuel us to get us out of the way altogether before the shrimper arrived. We bunkered an even 1,000 gallons and were off the dock at 8:30; their pump can deliver 50 gallons per minute. With the tax waiver and the cash discount we paid $4.48 per gallon, the lowest price on the east coast.

We whizzed out the St. Marys inlet with a knot behind us into calm seas. We had a comfortable passage to St. Simons, came in with the current again behind us, and were anchored in a familiar spot in the Frederica River off Lanier Island (map) by 3pm. We made arrangements with our friend John to meet us after dinner over at Coastal Kitchen for a beer; we tied the dinghy up at the marina just as they were closing at 5 and had a nice dinner. It was great catching up with John for 45 minutes before he needed to run off to a different dinner engagement.

Louise brought me these gifts from our niece, whom I am marrying next month, which I was not to open until I had her on the phone. I think the bobble-head is a remarkable likeness, and the personalized "Officiant" notebook is for my notes during the ceremony.

On our way to dinner we spotted brand new signs on the Gascoigne Park courtesy dock saying "No Mooring." Previously we could tie the dinghy up here for up to two hours, and I've used the dock many times to go for a walk ashore, or to ride the e-bike down to the grocery store for provisions (it's a nice walk but hard to make the trip in less than two hours). We were very disappointed to see this. On top of that, the adjacent county-owned, privately-managed marina is closed right now for dock replacement.

I posted my findings on a couple of online forums and was scolded by someone who called the parks department and was told that the signs were old and there was a two hour limit. Which made no sense since I could tell the signs were new since our last visit in December. It turns out that the county commissioners voted to close the dock after some inconsiderate boaters abused the privilege, had Public Works put up the signs, but neglected to inform the Parks department. We're hoping an outcry from boaters will have them rethink the policy.

Brand new No Mooring signs on the dinghy dock. Photo: John Samford

Tuesday morning we awoke to heavy winds and occasional light rain. Perfect conditions for us to move along, as these conditions keep many boaters off the waterway. We had to wait to 11:30 to weigh anchor so as not to arrive at the very shallow section through Little Mud River with insufficient tide.

Evidently a 62' Nordhavn had done just that, and as we approached Altamaha Sound we could see him circling. I called on the radio and offered to lead them through, but at that point we were doing 3.5 knots against the current and it was an hour before we caught up to them. We arrived with plenty of tide for us and just enough for them, and I think they were grateful to follow an experienced boat through the troublesome section.

After following us through the skinny stuff the Nordy overtook us. We only saw one other boat all day.

Once we crossed Doboy Sound we had a fair tide, and we opted to run all the way to dinner time, dropping the hook at 5pm in a new spot for us, on the Crescent River (map). It was still just as windy when we anchored as when we had weighed. We had a nice dinner on board.

Yesterday our plan had been to run up the inside, make Hell Gate with plenty of tide, and drop the hook someplace just shy of Savannah. I even reached out to friends in Hilton Head, with the expectation we'd be there for dinner this evening. Before we even made it to lunch time, Louise discovered that we would have a one-day window today to run up the outside.

Yesterday I disassembled the old fuel transfer check valve so I could recycle the body, a huge hunk of brass. Looking carefully at this poppet it's clear why the valve was leaking.

I started figuring routes, making plans to go out Ossabaw Sound this morning just before Hell Gate and run all the way to North Edisto. But the longer I looked at the chart, the more I realized that we could save a lot of twisting, turning ICW if we went out St. Catherines Sound instead, with the option to come back in at the South Edisto if we could not make the North Edisto in the daylight. I waved off with our Hilton Head friends, who are boaters themselves and understand that windows are windows.

I picked an anchorage in Wahlburg Creek that would be the closest spot to the St. Catherines inlet; getting to the anchorage usually involves backtracking to the creek from the sound after passing the shoal that blocks the direct entrance. But a bit more investigation revealed that, with careful navigation, we could enter the other end of the creek right off the ICW and avoid the backtracking altogether, so that's what we did.

St. Catherines buoy R-4 has been missing for a while. We found it aground off Wahlburg Creek, miles from its station.

We had the hook down in a comfortable spot in the creek (map) by 12:15, on a day we had figured to be underway until nearly dinner time. The sun broke through in the afternoon, topping up the batteries, and I grilled a steak for dinner without ever starting the generator. I used the afternoon to troubleshoot the new start battery charge system, which has already quit working. It turns out the contactor is bad.

This morning, high tide at the inlet was 6:30 but slack was not until 8. We split the difference, departing just after sunup at 6:40, pushing against the flood, and arriving at the bar at 7:45 with six feet of tide. We found the north gap lower than charted at about 9' MLLW, and were happy to have the tide to give us nine feet under the keel in the two-foot swell. The seas have laid down some while we've been out here and we are having a comfortable ride.

No one out here but us and the shrimpers.

Last night's showers were colder than expected, and this morning we discovered the new water heater loop was not heating. That turned out to be due to no engine coolant flow through the heat exchanger, so this old problem, supposedly solved by using a heat exchanger lower than the engine, is back. I spent a half hour in the hot engine room with a long sleeve shirt and rubber gloves getting the coolant moving again with a drill pump. We also rinsed out our waste tanks with seawater while we are outside the three-mile limit.

The plotter says 6:30 to the South Edisto, and it would be an hour and a half or so more to the North Edisto. Sunset is 8:30 and I would want to be well over the bar by then. We're missing a lot of shallow stuff out here, but if we come in at the south there is still more ahead. In either case, though, we should be in Charleston tomorrow.

Georgia

We are underway southbound in the Atlantic Ocean, off the coast of southeast Georgia, after a two-night stop in the Golden Isles. We will end the day somewhere in Florida, most likely anchored on the St. Johns. My last post was from South Carolina and my next will be from Florida, so I guess this is my Georgia post.

Harbour Town at night.

We had a nice dinner Saturday evening at the Quarterdeck with Dorsey and Bruce. It was very nice of them to gift us the half dozen bagels from Rain-n-Bagels in Beaufort, and they even provided the cream cheese. Later they also gave us a two-pound bag of ground coffee, so our joke in the morning was that it was nice to stay at a place that provides free breakfast. By the end of dinner they were still ruminating about heading offshore in the morning.

Sunset over Daufuskie Island from The Quarterdeck.

They were out of the marina before we could even pry ourselves from under the electric blanket in the morning, and while they reported it was lumpy crossing the Savannah River entrance, conditions were good enough that they continued on to St. Simons Sound. We, on the other hand, lingered in our slip until the noon checkout, basking in the warmth of electric heat and topping up our water tanks.

As we were making preparations to get underway we heard the marina directing an incoming boat to our slip, and I had to call them to say we were still there. Evidently check-in and check-out are both noon. I was going to linger to the last minute and take one more stroll, but with another boat hovering outside the marina we expedited singling up and were off the dock ten minutes early. We proceeded directly to the fuel dock to pump out, which necessitated spinning the boat around both before and after.

This sculpture in the plaza, "Out to Lunch," was very familiar to us from in front of the Sunnyvale, CA Public Library. I'm not sure how many were cast. Louise had a dog who would walk up to it and lick the hamburger.

We had an easy cruise down the ICW, with enough tide to easily get us over the nasty shallow spot at Ramshorn Cut. At the Savannah River we faced the choice of going upriver for a stop in Savannah, or continuing south on the ICW, and we chose the latter after learning we'd have just one day and two nights of nice weather in town. That's a long detour for a short stop.

We instead set our sights on the Thunderbolt area as a stop for the evening. While we normally anchor in the Herb River, this time we would arrive at a high tide of +7', and we decided to try our luck with the anchorage up Turner Creek just before the bridge. That would let us get ashore for dinner and a walk, with plenty of daylight to backtrack to the Herb if the anchorage did not work out.

This was the festive view from our deck. The flip side is that we were the view for the tourists.

There is a 4'-deep shoal at the entrance to this creek, which means it's really unusable for us unless we have at least half tide both coming and going. Long-time readers may know that we basically started our boating life here, as Turner Creek is where Hogan's Marina is located, where we moved the boat for a month right after we took possession. We did not know enough back then to know this was a terrible choice for newbies in a big boat, but it was a friendly marina that let us park and live in our bus while we moved aboard.

After a dozen years, 56,000 nautical miles, and a Merchant Mariner Credential, Turner Creek is no big deal anymore, and at a full high tide it was an easy cruise upriver past Hogan's to the anchorage. We squeezed in to what amounted to the only legal spot to anchor in a line of five other anchored boats and dropped the hook (map). Setbacks from marinas, docks, and the bridge have shrunk the anchorage since our early time here.

This weird mural adorns the unisex restroom at Basil's.

I tendered over to Hogan's, which is now actually called the Sun Life Wilmington Island Marina, before they closed to get some gas and pay the daily ten buck dinghy fee. Dockmaster Bubba (really) still runs the place and it was nice to catch up with him after a dozen years. We returned together at dinner time and walked across the highway to Basil's for pizza and draft beer, followed by provisions at the Publix right next to the marina. It was all very familiar, and I'm happy to now have a track into the anchorage that follows the channel thalweg. It was very quiet overnight.

With access to so many things right there, we contemplated staying a second night. Maybe it was nostalgia for the early days. But in the morning we decided there was nothing further we needed on Wilmington Island, and we decked the tender and weighed anchor at 7:45, while we still had a good 4' of tide to get out of the creek.

One of my current projects: replacing these instrument lamps with LED.

Leaving the creek on 4' and falling put us at the notorious Hell Gate at dead low tide. We need at least 2' to get through, and so we dropped a lunch hook off-channel to wait. A previously scheduled conference call at 1:30 meant we'd actually have to wait until the call was over, maybe close to 3, and that suited us, because it would give us a bit more tidal help, and more of a push on the other side of the Gate.

We were far enough off-channel that everyone could get by us, and a whole conga line did. One boat pulled off channel and anchored a couple hundred feet from us, waiting for the same reason. All was well until Louise noticed the northbound American Liberty, a cruise ship with a 6' draft that is also 56' wide, on AIS well ahead of us on the other side of the Gate. Shortly, I heard them making meeting arrangements with another boat. While I knew he had plenty of room to get past us, I did not want even the appearance of being in the way, and so I called and talked with him. They figured to come through at 2:54, when they had enough tide to be comfortable, and that might well have been while we were on our call. We moved another 200' from the channel before our call, just to be safe.

At one point on Tuesday we had our own personal flock of gulls, feeding on what we were stirring up.

As it turned out our call lasted just a half hour or so and we were back underway a little after 2. I called American Liberty back to let him know we'd shoot through ahead of him, and after we cleared Hell Gate I called and gave him our soundings. We pass these big American Cruise Line ships pretty regularly, and when people tell me they think their boat is too big to take down the ICW I will sometimes point out that these guys do it every day.

With the stop at Hell Gate I figured to make the "top of the hill" (where incoming tide from both directions meets) on a fair tide, and stop at a familiar anchorage there for the night. But it was barely 3pm when we arrived, and still cold, and we decided it was better put push on another hour, even against the tide, to have the heat and power. We instead dropped the hook in Big Tom Creek (map), a new spot for us. We had the place to ourselves, a lovely, if windy, night among the spartina of the low country. We would have gone another hour, but this was the last decent anchorage before St. Catherines Sound.

Our view in every direction from Big Tom Creek. Spartina grass and not much else.

We got a fairly early start Tuesday, another cold day where we wanted the heat afforded by moving. That put us at the Darien River by 1:30, where we seriously considered turning upriver for a visit to Darien. This side trip has been on "my list" for a while, and in all our transits this is only the fourth time we've passed by. But after learning that what was a free overnight dock is now day-use only, and the formerly $1/foot city dock is now double that, we decided it was not worth trying to anchor when the weather was not even good enough to call us to Savannah. We'll save Darien for a warmer time.

Unless we wanted another cold night trapped on the boat, continuing on meant making it all the way to St. Simons, with a bail-out option to the Two Way Fish Camp if it started to look like we would be too late arriving. We lucked out and arrived at the shallow Little Mud River just as the tide came up to 2', the minimum we need to get through. We had just a few inches under keel in spots. The 8' draft tug boat behind us, whom we had overtaken just an hour earlier, plowed right through it.

One of a pair of historic tabby slave cabins at Gascoigne Bluff Park.

When it became clear we would make St. Simons in the daylight or soon after, I reached out to our local friends there, John and Laura Lee, on the chance they might be available to get together. They were busy Tuesday but said they were available Wednesday, and we just decided to make it a two-night stay so we could connect with them. We dropped the hook in a familiar spot between Lanier and St. Simons islands (map) and tendered in to the newly reopened Coastal Kitchen for dinner. It was decent but they are still having teething pains. We got a much-needed walk in before dinner.

With a full day at anchor ahead of me, in the morning I jumped right in to a problem that has been nagging at me: we seem to be losing an ounce or two of engine coolant on every run. I went over the engine and hot water heater very carefully for leaks, checked in all the bilges, double-checked the oil and coolant for signs of cross-contamination, and then hit the Internet for research.

Park rules say no docking after dark. I suspect no one cares but we did not want to test the waters.

Quite a number of sources implicated the hot water heater, which, while not cheap at about a thousand bucks, would still be much preferable to anything wrong with the engine itself. This theory is consistent with the heating loop through the water heater constantly losing prime of late, and my fingers are crossed that this is the issue. I have valved off that loop, and it will take a few days' running to learn whether or not that is the problem. I am having cognitive dissonance over actually hoping for a busted $1k water heater.

After learning that my next step requires more sea time, I took the afternoon off, and I went ashore at Gascoigne Bluff Park and walked the 1¾ miles to the nearest shopping center. I found a Dollar Tree there with some items I needed and then hit the Winn Dixie for some provisions before hoofing it back. It felt good to finally get a long walk in after days on the boat.

This brand new sign is the only new thing in the park. I suspect the result of the horrific incident in nearby Fernandina Beach in July. 

At 6:30 we tendered to the St. Simons Island Marina, after learning that Gascoigne park technically closes at dusk and is also pitch dark. This county marina has allowed us to tie up the tender in the past, but on this visit I found no one to ask. Laura Lee and John picked us up and whisked us to Nest, one of their island favorites, for a nice dinner. It was great to spend a couple hours catching up with them; they are dear friends.

We had a cold dinghy ride home, and with the tide unfavorable this morning until 8:30 we decided to deck the tender in the morning. It was cold this morning, too, at just 49°, but at least it was daylight, which somehow makes it feel warmer. We had the anchor up just ahead of the turn of the tide, and had a nice push out the inlet this morning.

Golden Isles Sunset from our anchorage.

As I wrap up typing we have already passed the St. Marys and are on track to arrive at the St. Johns just as the flood starts. We should be anchored by sunset just off the ICW, and in the morning we will decided whether to continue upriver to Jacksonville for a brief stop, or continue down the ICW toward St. Augustine. In this cold weather we are leaning heavily toward the latter.

A trio of ocean hops

We are underway northbound in the Atlantic Ocean, about 15 miles east of Charleston, South Carolina as I begin typing. Today is our third successive hop in the Atlantic, and at this writing it looks like we'll be out here overnight, bound for Cape Fear.

When last I posted, we were anchored off St. Simons Island, where we hoped to meet up with friends for lunch. We settled in for the night expecting a quiet morning aboard. But at 4am a thunderstorm rolled through, kicking off with a 61mph gust of wind. That plowed our anchor through the soft mud some 40', and we staggered upstairs with the alarm blaring. The gust was over in mere moments, and realizing the anchor was still well set and we had stopped moving, we just adjusted the alarm and went back to bed.

61mph (53kt) wind gust recorded on our anemometer. Coincidentally the outside temp is also 61.

Our anniversary gift to ourselves was just being able to sleep in after being so rudely awakened. We had a video call scheduled with our newly-engaged niece in California at noon, and we agreed with our friend John to meet up whenever that call was done. We had a quiet morning aboard, finishing up the last of the sourdough bread our friend Karen made for us for breakfast, having defrosted it to have with dinner Saturday night. I puttered around fixing a few things in the morning, and we splashed the tender so we would be ready to go when our call was over.

The call with our niece and her new fiancé started out more or less as expected. I am her uncle by marriage, but Louise has known her her whole life, and so we were not surprised when they asked us if Aunt Louise would make a toast at their wedding next year. What was surprising, however, is that next they asked if I would officiate.

Out track plot the next morning. The top and bottom lobes were the limits of our swing; lobe on the right is where the gust pushed us. We love our Bruce, but if you pull it hard enough in pluff mud it just plows through.

I am honored to do it, but I must confess also to a certain amount of nervousness. Of the "don't mess it up" kind. Louise and I had asked a motorcycling buddy of ours to officiate at our wedding, and even though he was a mail-order minister with some experience, our ceremony was probably the largest he'd done, and he married Louise off to "Sean Lawrence Welk." It was all I could do not to immediately say "ah one, and ah two." Anyway, I have more than a year to study up and practice.

After our call and with some new dates on our calendar, we hopped in the tender and zipped off to Gascoigne Park to meet up with John. Laura Lee was unavailable. We had a very nice lunch at the Mallery Street Cafe, with much catching up, and afterward John swung us by the Winn-Dixie so we could pick up a few things. It was great seeing him, as always.

The last of Karen's wonderful sourdough. This was actually from dinner Saturday; there were still three pieces left for breakfast Sunday.

The busy morning and the lunch date had us off to a late start, but we wanted to get some miles in, so as soon as we got home we got underway. I had figured to stop at the Altamaha River, where we might have tendered in to Mudcat Charlies at the 2-way Fish Camp for our anniversary dinner.  But after a big lunch neither of us was hungry, and fried food and bottled beer did not call us, so we decided to press on to a further anchorage and just have a light snack on board.

Late in the afternoon we had a favorable tide to transit one of the shallowest stretches of the entire ICW, less than four feet deep at low tide, the Little Mud River, and with no dinner plans we ran the extra few miles to get it behind us. We had the anchor down just after 6pm behind Wolf Island on the South River (map), the same spot we had chosen in the other direction when we had to wait for favorable tide to cross the shallows.

This ICW daybeacon at Doboy Sound was knocked over somehow and lying flat. I filed a report.

As we enjoyed our snack and a beer, we discussed the possibility of going outside right there at Doboy Sound. It looked like we might have favorable conditions that would improve over the next two days, and if we got lucky we might be able to run outside to Georgetown or even Morehead City over one or two nights. I spent an hour or so researching the Doboy Inlet, which would be new to us.

Monday morning the forecast still looked just acceptable for the outside run, and with lots of bailout options we decided to try our luck. We did not have enough tide to just run down the South River to the sound -- there's a 5' bar at the river mouth -- so we went the few extra miles to take the ICW to where it intersects Doboy Sound.

I had to divert to go around this anchored shrimper on Doboy Sound.

The inlet proved to be no problem, but I was thankful for all the information that had been posted about it online. I recorded our tracks and published them for other mariners to use; these tricky, poorly charted and often poorly marked inlets can be challenging and even hazardous to the unprepared. Now we have a good track for the next time we need to use it.

Things started well, but contrary to forecast, conditions worsened throughout the day, with seas three feet on five seconds by mid-afternoon. The wind had picked up considerably, and, also counter to forecast, we were fighting a knot of counter-current. We decided to bail out to Wassaw Sound, near Savannah. We've been that way before, but that was nine years ago, so I again spent some time researching the inlet. Fortunately, we arrived at mid-tide.

Sunset at Romerly Marsh Creek.

We also arrived mid-ebb, and we fought our way up the Wilmington River against nearly two knots. This river is where it all started for us, when we bought the boat from John in Thunderbolt, a few miles upriver. It was such a hard slog that we stopped at the very first anchorage that would be comfortable, a side channel known as Romerly Marsh Creek (map). We were out of the swell here and had a comfortable night.

In the morning we again had a choice to make -- continue upriver to the ICW, or go right back out the inlet. It was again mid-ebb, and outside weather looked acceptable for a day run. We decided to go back out on a fair tide and make Edisto Island. I again recorded and published our tracks into and out of Wassaw Sound.

We can still see the SpaceX launches here. In the binoculars it's a well-defined streak and not this little dot that my cell phone captured.

We were hoping for a fair tide arrival as well, but we again found ourselves pushing into over a knot of current, doing 5.3 knots while making turns for 6.5. That actually improved throughout the day, and we just caught the last of the flood on the South Edisto, another new inlet for us. We have better charts nowadays, and found the inlet wide and deep, with the ancient NOAA soundings completely out of date.

We dropped the hook in an off-channel shoal near the entrance to Big Bay Creek (map). We tendered into the creek and tied up with permission at the Marina at Edisto Beach, and walked down to High Tides for dinner. The food was decent and they had my cherished Pluff Mud Porter in cans. The marina restaurant, Presley's, would have been more convenient, but they're dark Tuesdays, and we needed the walk anyway.

Cheers from High Tides, Edisto Beach. Louise and some scruffy guy who could not be bothered to shave.

This morning found us with the same decision as yesterday -- ICW or back outside. But before we could even make it, I had to fix the chartplotter, whose display started blinking off and on just as I went to the pilothouse to look at tide schedules. It had the appearance of a loose or intermittent power cord, and so I rooted through my box of orphan cables looking for the right type. I found one, but that was not the fix.

We have a plan "B" for this problem, which involves unbolting the TV from the guest stateroom and substituting it for the PC monitor, but that takes time, and we needed something working right away or the outside choice would not be an option at all. I have a little 4" HDMI monitor that I use for setup and troubleshooting our Raspberry Pi systems and the backup plotter computer, and I was able to rig this in place. The plotter software amazingly worked on the tiny monitor, although some of the data like ETA was omitted from the screen.

My plotter arrangement for the morning.

Today's outside forecast had improved, and we'd need to wait for the inside route until the flood, as we'd need tide for a couple of shallow stretches. So with the plotter now working, back out we went, whizzing out to sea with two knots behind us. So far it's been a good run. After lunch I tore into the defunct monitor, hoping to find a simple loose wire.

What I found instead was a fried power supply. It's a simple supply that turns 120vac into 12vdc, and that led me to discover that this monitor has an unadvertised direct 12vdc input. I removed the fried power supply altogether, attached a cable with a mostly correct plug on it to the DC input, connected it to 12v, and voila, we're back in business. I was glad, because I really did not want to haul the TV up from downstairs and jury-rig it into position.

Penny for scale.

This monitor is only eight months old, and normally I would complain to the manufacturer. But long-time readers may remember that this monitor was such a piece of junk to begin with, that after replacing it once with no real improvement, they just refunded my money and told me to keep it.We'll see how much longer my "free" monitor will keep working.

We had our sights set on Charleston Harbor when we left this morning. But as we approached the turn-in towards the harbor entrance off Folly Island, we decided conditions were right to just keep going overnight to Cape Fear, with a daytime bailout option at Five Fathom and a late night bailout at Winyah Bay.

The fried power supply, sitting atop our log book. Looks like two caps are blown, and I was noodling on how to fix it when I discovered we could just use DC power.

As I wrap up typing, Louise has already hit the berth, and we're on the final leg from Cape Romaine to Cape Fear. We had a bit of a fire drill right after dinner, when a project to backflush the waste tank with seawater and detergent overflowed into the master head, leaving me on my hands and knees cleaning everything with disinfectant and enzymatic cleaner. Thankfully, it mostly smelled like detergent.

We're about an hour from the Winyah Bay entrance, and the plotter says it's 12.5 hours to the Cape Fear River, which will put us at the entrance just as I come back on watch at 0900. That will also put us there mid-ebb, so we'll bash our way in against three knots, and drop a lunch hook at the first safe spot to wait it out.

A mix of family and cruising updates

We are underway northbound out of Florida, headed toward St. Simons Island, Georgia. That will have us north of the "hurricane box" with most of the month left to spare. I have a lot to update today, as I was never able to squeeze out an update before we flew to Colorado -- there was just too much to get done. It has been a full two weeks since my last post.

Last night's fireworks at the Fernandina Shrimp Festival.

The remainder of our cruise on Saturday was uneventful, even with the weekend traffic, and we arrived to our usual anchorage at the Matanzas Inlet right at 5pm. The area seaward of the fort was still busy with the weekend crowd, so we dropped the hook just on the landward side (map) but still inside the no wake zone. By sunset all the day trippers had left and we had the entire anchorage mostly to ourselves. We had a nice dinner of grilled chicken on board.

Sunday morning we weighed with the tide for St. Augustine, which was pretty busy on a pleasant Sunday, We continued to our usual spot north of the bridge in Vilano Beach (map). That made it a short day, but the next stop at the St. Johns would have been a stretch, and we still did not have an answer on the funeral timing. Besides, I had errands to run.

Vector as seen from the Vilano pier. That's as close as we can anchor due to a cable area.

Chief among those errands was to run to Ace Hardware for a tube of bathroom caulk, as I had discovered the night before that the old caulking had separated enough to allow water to run down the walls past the shower pan. The other was a simple grocery run to the nearby Publix to restock the beer and a few other items. It turned out I could do neither of those things, because both Ace and Publix were closed for Easter.

This whimsical bird on the Vilano pier always makes me smile.

We ended up with a quiet afternoon aboard, wherein I polished up both our dress shoes for the service, and changed the charcoal in the filter canister for the waste vent. Fortunately several of the restaurants in Vilano were open even on the holiday, and we tendered ashore for dinner at 180 Vilano, one of our old standbys, with decent food and one of my favorite brown ales on tap. After dinner we took a short stroll around town.

I can stop searching now. Peacock for scale.

Monday morning I jumped in the tender to run the errands denied me on Sunday. I landed on the mainland side at the boat ramp, where I stirred the mud crossing the bar in just 18" of water at low tide. It's a mile walk to the Ace, where I picked up the caulk and a quart of denatured alcohol, which we've learned will remove mild rust stains from our paint. I have since re-caulked the shower.

It's basically an enormous but quite fabulous chicken.

When I returned to the dock I ran into a Great Loop celebrity, Peter Frank, who is doing the Great Loop in a canoe, clockwise. Most loopers, ourselves included, go counterclockwise, owing to the five knots or so of current on the unavoidable stretch of the Mississippi, so in addition to having to paddle the whole 6,000 miles, he's going the hard way. To borrow a phrase, backwards in heels. I've interacted with him online, in particular regarding stops in New York, and we had a nice chat for a few minutes before we both shoved off.

Peter Frank and the canoe he is paddling around the Great Loop.

After leaving the boat ramp I crossed the river to the Vilano pier and hoofed it to Publix. They did not have any beer we wanted, but the had the rest of our list. On my way back to the tender I buttonholed one of the workers at what had appeared to us to be a new restaurant under construction, and he told me it would be an Irish pub, with a couple of B&B units in the back. I expect it will be open the next time we pass through.

We left this tour boat, Atlantic Fury, behind in Key West. The season is winding down there and she's moved to Vilano for a time. Many of the Key West tour boats spend the summer in New England.

I returned to Vector just in time for a quick lunch before weighing with the tide for the run to the St. Johns. Timing was such that we hit the Pablo Creek Bridge, with its notorious currents, with over a full knot against us, but there was no way to avoid that and still have a daylight arrival. As we passed Beach Marine in Jacksonville Beach, we got a phone call from our friends Charles and Vicki, who were having dinner at the Dockside Seafood Restaurant there and saw us go by. It was great to hear from them; had we known ahead of time we might have figured a way to get ashore there and join them.

Vector underway in Jacksonville Beach. Photo: Charles Cornett

We caught the last of the fair tide at the St. Johns to make our familiar anchorage between Blount and Little Marsh islands (map). By this time we had received word that the funeral would be Monday, eliminating Savannah as a departure option, and we knew we would be continuing up the St. Johns in the morning. We tendered ashore for dinner at Palms Fish Camp, followed by a brief stroll over the bridge. We passed a couple of absolute neophyte fishermen on the bridge, who had caught a flounder but did not know what it was or whether it was edible. Louise did her best to answer their questions, even though neither of us fishes.

Palms Fish Camp. That's actually a public dock.

I spent the entire evening online combing through flight options, hotels, and rental cars to reserve all three. We ended up with flights to Denver, as there are no non-stop options to Colorado Springs, leaving Saturday and returning Tuesday. I booked a slip at the Florida Yacht Club starting Friday, to give us time to settle in, get the boat squared away, and have time to get ready. That would give us three nights until our arrival.

It was past 2pm before the tide became favorable on the St. Johns Tuesday, so I spent the morning refurbishing my noise-cancelling headphones, which were starting to shed bits of protein leather everywhere and were really too ratty to take on the plane as-is. I also fine-tuned the hotel reservations and car rental timing.

The bread pudding at Palms was enormous. Hand for scale, and two bites are already missing.

We weighed anchor before 2:30, and in hindsight we should have waited another half hour, because the tide was not as fair as I'd hoped. But we had a pleasant couple of hours cruising upriver to Jacksonville. Our plan was to dock for the night at the east face dock in Metropolitan Park, which had plenty of room when we arrived. However we could see lots of activity in the park as we pulled up, and that turned out to be the setup for the upcoming Jacksonville Boat Show. We did not want to be in the middle of that so we continued on.

Vector anchored off Little Marsh Island.

A small part of the face dock at the Landings, east of the Main Street Bridge, is again open, but we opted to continue to our usual anchorage between the bridges, in front of the Baptist medical center (map), or as we like to call it, the suspicious boat anchorage. We often have it to ourselves, but on this occasion there were already three boats here. We tendered ashore at the newly restored Friendship Fountain in Southbank and walked to Sake House for dinner on their patio.

This brand new pirate-ship-theme playground is at the newly renovated Friendship Fountain and it's already hugely popular.

Knowing we were staying put for a couple of days, Wednesday morning I finally tackled the slow leak in the stabilizer system. Hydraulic fluid had been seeping out somewhere in the back of the fluid conditioner unit for a few weeks, and I had already spent hours looking for it, finally determining it was either a blanking plug on the very back of the unit, or the centering solenoid on the left side. In either case the stabilizers would be unusable for the duration of the repair, so we need to be stationary and with time on my hands.

The first order of business was to pin the fins. That process requires the system to be working, and they needed to be pinned in case the repair went sideways and we'd have to run without benefit of stabilization. In hindsight I should have pinned them when we arrived to the anchorage, but it wasn't topmost on my mind, so I had to fire up the main engine for ten minutes while I got it done.

Jury-rigged support for the fluid conditioner. I knew I'd need that 1' section of PVC pipe some day.

The conditioner unit weighs 80 lbs dry, and has about a gallon and a half of hydraulic fluid in it, so a little over 90 lbs total. It's mounted on an aluminum diamond-plate backboard with studs and nuts. I had to jury-rig overhead support with a couple of 4' poplar 1x4's I had lying around, and a pair of 3/8 poly ropes with a cinch hitch. I used a 1' section of schedule 80 PVC pipe, also lying around, to allow the rope to slide freely over the boards for the hitch. For good measure I put my bottle jack under the reservoir, atop a pair of 5-gallon oil pails.

Bottle jack let me unweight the studs for removal.

Fortunately I only needed to fully remove two of the nuts, and loosen the other two, to tilt it away from the backboard and get behind it. Using my phone and a mirror, I found a leaking boss o-ring plug to be the culprit. After removing the plug I found the ~20-year-old o-ring solidified into hard plastic, with a wedge-shaped cross-section. A section of it broke away completely when I removed it.

I could just get my phone (and a tool) behind it with the mount at the end of the studs.

I had purchased an assortment of fresh O-rings for this project and had the right size on hand. Replacing the plug fixed it right up, test-running the system before getting the nuts back on the studs. We've now put more than a dozen hours on it with no leaks. I do wonder just how many other 20year old O-rings are ready to start leaking. I had everything cleaned up and the fins unpinned by the end of the day. We tendered ashore to Anejo Cocina in Brooklyn for fajitas and a pitcher of Modelo Negra.

This photo taken with a mirror shows a better view of the leaking plug.

Louise and I both ordered new "personal item" size suitcases for the trip, and hers was delivered to the Amazon locker at the transit center on Wednesday (mine never arrived, which is a story unto itself). So Thursday morning we decided to go retrieve it together, making use of the Skyway, since it is otherwise a long walk from the closest dock. This quickly turned into a train wreck, if you will pardon the pun, of the highest order.

We landed at the fountain dock on the south bank and walked to the San Marco station, only to find it closed with a sign saying all the Southbank stations were closed and to, instead, take a shuttle bus to the Central station on the north side of the river. Not wanting to wait twice for shuttle buses, we got back in the tender and went over to the landings dock on the north side, a short walk to the Central station.

Jax skyline. New logo on the CSX building is actually a locomotive. The colored lights on the Actosta bridge are off for some reason.

This, too, we found closed, with yet a different sign saying the whole system was down. Sheesh -- couldn't they have put that sign on the Southbank stations? While we were standing there, one of the downtown Ambassadors who is normally at the Central station to direct the lost came over to say they had just closed it that morning and it had been news to him, too. He'd been timing the shuttles and advised us we'd be better off taking the city bus instead.

By the time we arrived at the nearest bus stop, we realized the transit center was just ten minutes further and we ended up walking the whole way, which was pretty much the limit of Louise's feet. We did take the bus the other direction, all the way back to the landings, after first loading the transit app to pay the fares. I guess it was an adventure, but it took all morning.

We caught a SpaceX launch while we were anchored. That orange spot center-frame, still lower than most of the buildings, is the rocket. 

We spent the afternoon rifling through closets picking out clothes for the funeral, in case either of us might come up short and need a quick excursion to the store. Also, we knew some of it would need a trip through the wash, and we wanted to have everything ready to pack. We tendered ashore to the Southbank Water Taxi dock and walked to Ruths Chris for dinner, where they have a little-known and quite reasonable food menu in the bar during happy hour.

We need high tide to get into the yacht club, and we weighed anchor Friday morning for a high-tide arrival at 10:15. When I had booked the slip, Carter the dockmaster told me it was a squeeze because they were having the grand opening party for the new pool and deck, and we arrived to find the docks busier than we've ever seen (but still not full). Even at high tide, we plowed the mud backing into the slip (map).

We passed this Chesapeake Bay buyboat, possibly now a yacht, on our way upriver to the club.

After we got everything squared away, I went into the club to check on my own Amazon packages, pick up our mail, and make a reservation for dinner. That's when I learned that the grand opening party was so big that the club was not serving any of its normal dinner options in the bar or dining room. They still had room at the event, though, so I signed up for two tickets for the very reasonable buffet.

We draw 6' but the water is only 5.3' deep. Our keel is in the mud.

My Amazon order of fresh earpads for my headphones arrived, allowing me to finish that project, but my suitcase disappeared into the Amazon abyss. I would ultimately spend a half hour on their chat explaining that when it arrived after we left the dock, I would have no way to return it. I dug out another bag, and by dinner time we had everything ready to pack.

We enjoyed attending the big grand opening shindig. It's a very nice pool and patio area, complete with outdoor bar area, and the party was well attended. We enjoyed the buffet, but ended up sitting by ourselves and did not really meet any members. They had a live band, which we could hear from the boat, but they did not go to late and it was mostly pleasant.

Saturday morning I had a last-minute pilgrimage on the e-bike to the Winn-Dixie for some fragrance-free toiletries, as one of the nieces has a severe fragrance allergy. I had hoped to try out the new pool, but between the shopping trip and packing there was not enough time before our Lyft to the airport. We breezed through the pre-check line and settled in at Shula's, near the gate, for a beer before boarding. We picked up subs from Angie's, also near the gate, to eat for dinner on the flight. We had paid for upgraded economy seats and we lucked out, with each of our window seats having an empty center seat adjacent.

The new pool and patio on official opening day.

Somewhere before boarding we heard an announcement that the in-flight Internet access would be unavailable on the flight, and sure enough, when I tried it, normally free for me with T-Mobile, it was not working. You could get the on-board entertainment, which comes from a server on the aircraft, but that was it. So we were essentially incommunicado during the flight, just like the old days.

And so it was that as soon as we were on the ground, Louise's phone lit up with a surfeit of text messages. Her dad, also in town for the funeral, had taken a bad fall in his hotel shower and was being admitted to the hospital. We spent the whole time between the gate and the Hertz building ruminating about whether we needed to bypass our Denver hotel near the airport and drive directly to the hospital in Colorado Springs, and booking another room there instead.

By the time we were driving out of the airport, cooler heads had prevailed, and given that his wife was with him, and it would be near midnight on our body clocks and close to the end of visiting hours when we arrived, we instead proceeded to our original hotel a short distance from the Denver airport. Not before stopping at 7-11 for some much needed beer.

We had a little bit of a Rocky Mountain view from our Denver airport hotel.

My plans for a leisurely morning at the hotel before the drive to Colorado Springs were out the window, and we were up before dawn, wolfing down the free breakfast when it opened at 6, so we could check out and head directly to the hospital. As she was headed to the breakfast table, coffee in hand, Louise dropped her phone on the tiled floor, shattering the screen into, to borrow a phrase, many fragments, some large, some small. The phone mostly still worked, but she could barely touch the screen without getting a glass shard in her finger.

Normally on a short trip like this we would just set it aside and get by with my phone, but now there were dozens of messages concerning her family that barely involved me, and there was a real possibility I'd be heading home without her, and she'd need a usable phone. When we got back to the room I spent some time finding a suitable replacement on Amazon and ordered it on one-day delivery to a locker in Colorado Springs.

That handled, we checked out and proceeded directly to the hospital, a drive of about an hour and a half. Things were not nearly as bad as we feared, and he was in good spirits and doing fairly well. We left the hospital in time to make our commitment for a family luncheon and get-together at 11, about 40 minutes away. While the circumstances were sad, we were glad to meet all our great-nieces and nephews and it was good to spend time with our nieces, nephews, and my brother- and sister-in-law as well as her siblings.

The view from our Colorado Springs hotel. The Hilton app lets me choose a room and I selected the side with the view.

I rooted around the house where some family were staying looking for packing tape, but what I found instead was Saran Wrap and Scotch Tape, and with those I was able to fashion a screen protector so Louise could use her phone until we got her set up with a new one. After a nice visit we drove across town to check into our hotel.

We had enough time for a much-needed short nap before we drove off in another direction to the church, where we met a much larger contingent of family, our niece's in-laws, and a lot of close friends, over coffee and dessert. Any semblance of normalcy in our caloric intake or dining schedules was, by this time, long gone, and the hotel breakfast, 11am lunch, and 6pm dessert was more than enough for the day.

Monday morning we had breakfast at the hotel before driving to the graveside service. These are never easy; there is a finality to it that can not be denied, and it was very emotional for all of us. Fittingly, it was a cold morning, and we shivered through part of it. Afterward we had a full hour before the church service, and some of us met for coffee in a nearby coffee shop while we waited. When we went to pay the check there wasn't one; some kind soul who knew the family had picked it up.

Early arrivals before the service.

The service was packed. Our niece was well-known and well-loved in her community and her church. The service was a little over an hour and was live-streamed, so my father-in-law got to see it in his hospital room. A lunch reception followed, after which we made our way back to the hotel to rest after a very emotional few hours. I even managed a few minutes in the hot tub.

Although we had nothing else on our schedule, an impromptu family dinner began to emerge over text messaging, and by dinner time 14 of us were converging on the Black Bear Diner, not far from the hospital, with the thought that some would go for a visit afterward. While we were at dinner we got the notification that the new phone had been delivered to the Amazon Locker.

Family dinner.

We had intended to go to the hospital after dinner, but with at least four other family members going, and being dog-tired and still working on Eastern Time, we waved off and instead headed back to the hotel by way of the locker. We instead went directly to the hospital Tuesday morning after a quick breakfast and checking out of the hotel. Things were improving, and he had been moved to a regular room from the progressive care ward.

We wrapped up the family visit with lunch at our niece's house. Here we added the final family member to our tally for the trip, Sterling, the bernedoodle. They had adopted this dog just before her diagnosis, and I know Sterling was a great comfort to her through her illness. She is a sweet dog who warmed right up to us after the obligatory bark at the unknown arrivals.

Sterling, a good dog.

Right up to lunch time it had been in question whether Louise would be flying home with me, or would need to stay to support her father and step-mother. Over lunch it was decided that her brother and sister-in-law, who had driven down from Canada, would stay a few extra days, with the option for Louise to fly back at a later date if the need arises. We're keeping the list of accessible airports in mind as we continue north along the coast.

We drove directly to the airport by way of a cheap gas station, dropped off the car, and were through TSA over two hours before our flight. We had to hunt a bit for a bench where Louise could stretch out; she crashed hard and slept for nearly an hour while I struggled to catch up on email and messages after three days of not being able to pay attention.

Dolphins in our Jacksonville anchorage.

We had scored first class seats for the return trip and had a decent dinner on the plane. The WiFi was working on this flight, but nary a message came in, thankfully. By the time Uber was dropping us off at the yacht club it was well past midnight. That's when we  discovered that, in our absence, workmen had erected more fencing to remove the old patio and gates that were previously unlocked were now locked, and we did not have the gate code. Rather than roust the dockmaster at nearly 1am, we managed to climb through part of the fence to get back to the boat and our own comfortable bed.

We slept in on Wednesday morning, trying to recover from the jet lag. We had just enough milk for our morning coffee, after which I had to run to Winn-Dixie on the e-bike for more milk and a few other items. High tide was at 2pm, and so after lunch I finally got in a brief swim in the nice new pool. It was lovely, but not as warm as I like; that will be a non-issue shortly in the brutal heat of Florida summer.

More of last night's fireworks. I have dozens of photos.

We dropped lines at high tide and made our way out into the river, heading right back where we left from on Friday at the suspicious boat anchorage (map). We needed another night to recover and get a few things done before heading back downriver.

One of those things to be done was to set up Louise's new phone and transfer everything. I had been prepared to do that in Colorado if she was going to stay, but once that decision passed, it made no sense to be monkeying with phones right before she'd need it to board the flight. I had plugged it in to charge first thing in the morning, and after we set the hook I got to work.

Vector at anchor as seen from the Skyway as it crosses the Acosta Bridge.

I did not get far. I had ordered an unlocked model, brand new in box, and while it was in generic packaging I immediately got an error while trying to activate Android, telling me to call a certain number. That number turned out to be Verizon, so what was supposed to be an unlocked all-carrier phone turned out to be a Verizon model. Louise does have Verizon, but we never take the carrier-specific model.

That phone went right back to Amazon, sadly no longer new-in-box, and I hunted around for another one that could be delivered overnight. Jacksonville was the last Amazon locker location we will see for a while. That committed us to another night in Jacksonville, and Louise also ordered some meds to the only Walgreens accessible from the docks, buried in the bowels of the Baptist Hospital. We found the Post Street dock to be reopened and we had dinner at relatively new Rodrigos Pizza in the Five Points neighborhood, ending with ice cream from a joint just called Waffle Cone.

Old Hickory himself. Behind him on the site of the Landings is a new riverfront park under construction.

Thursday as soon as the Amazon notice arrived I set out on whirlwind excursion on the Skyway, once again operational. I tendered ashore at the Landings, locked up the dink, and walked to the UPS Store to drop off the incorrect phone, by way of a stop at the Chase branch to take care of some account business. The Skyway entrance is right next to UPS and it was a short ride to the transit center for the new phone at the Amazon locker. A change of trains took me across the river to Baptist Hospital with its Walgreens that is little more than a pharmacist counter.

At dinner time we were hoping to head back to Five Points for either the biergarten or the Mediterranean place, but the river proved far too choppy south of the I-95 bridge, and we turned around and headed to Brooklyn instead. We ended up back at Anejo Cocina for another pitcher of Modelo Negra to close out our Jacksonville stop.

This ocean-going Ro-Ro barge is being loaded for Puerto Rico.

Yesterday morning we got an early start to have a fair tide all the way downriver and into Sisters Creek. There was a bit of a glitch as the anchor came up with the hammer-lock hockled, but it was able to bash its way over the roller and through the hawsepipe so we could get underway; I freed it later on our way downriver.

The anchor chain somehow jammed on the hammer-lock like this. I had to pry it apart.

As we were turning off the St. Johns into Sisters Creek, our friends Amy and David aboard Selah Way hailed us on the radio; they had spotted us as they were entering the river from the other side of the ICW. They passed us under way and we caught up with them later at the fuel dock.

Vector underway north of Cumberland Island. Photo: Amy Deutl

The early start and fair tide let us get all the way to Fernandina Beach by mid-afternoon, in plenty of time to catch the Port Consolidated Fuel Dock before they closed for the weekend. Fuel here is just $2.65 a gallon for cash or check, with no tax if the fuel is leaving Florida. We had to wait a little over an hour for our turn, after a shrimp boat, and spent another hour at the dock putting in a full 1,100 gallons, which should take us all the way to New England and then some.

While we were fueling this "pirate ship" came in on its way to the shrimp festival.

After bunkering we headed straight for the anchorage (map) and tendered ashore, running right smack into opening ceremonies of the 60th annual Isle of Eight Flags Shrimp Festival, the biggest thing that happens each year in Fernandina Beach. While fresh shrimp from a stand has a certain appeal, we wanted a sit-down meal with a draft beer, and we made our way to Scully's Irish Pub while it was still uncrowded. We've done all the must-see restaurants in Fernandina, and wanted something different and less crowded. This one was fine, but not worth a repeat.

Contestants in the Miss Shrimp Festival pageant lined up for the stage.

After dinner we strolled downtown, the entirety of which had been closed to traffic for the festival, with center street and two blocks either side of it filled with vendor stalls. I somehow neglected to snap an overview shot, but I caught Louise with the mascot shrimp. We heard the music from the main stage well into the night out in the anchorage. Fortunately it was mostly our era. We got to take in the fireworks show right from our deck.

Louise tangles with the festival mascot.

As large and vibrant as the festival was, the couple of hours we spent was plenty, and we did not feel the need to spend another day. Nothing they are selling at any of those booths is something we need aboard Vector. We got underway this morning with the tide, arriving at the St. Marys Inlet just as the flood started.

This pirate-ship tour boat, en route from its winter cruising grounds in Marco Island to its summer grounds in New Jersey, smoked us. We had the last laugh when we passed him at the fuel dock in Jekyll Island. No autopilot; he's hand steering for 1,500 miles.

Update: We are anchored in the Frederica River at the north end of Lanier Island (map). We had a fair tide a good part of the day, and arrived at Jekyll Island right at high tide for an easy passage through this notoriously shallow creek. The Coastal Kitchen restaurant nearby is still closed for some reason, and we were not up to walking a mile, possibly in the rain, to the next closest place, so we ate aboard. Tomorrow we hope to see our friends John and Laura Lee for lunch before we weigh anchor and continue north.