Slow-rolling toward Christmas dinner

Happy holidays, everyone. As I begin typing we are westbound in the Okeechobee Waterway and the Caloosahatchee River, headed for the west coast and a Christmas dinner reservation. I'm not sure if I will get another post up before the holiday itself.

Nice city tree on the Fort Pierce waterfront.

Last Saturday in Indian Harbour Beach we walked to the shopping center and had a nice dinner at one of our go-to joints, Pizzavola, before hitting the Publix for a two-backpack haul of provisions. That included replenishing the strategic beer reserve, so my pack was laden with two six packs and whatever else would fit. Just in time, as it had just run out.

A sad day, the last Pluff Mud Porter of the trip. But we are now back in Maduro Brown territory.

I know I said we would move to the anchorage south of the causeway Sunday in anticipation of high winds that night, but in the morning we decided to just spring for another night at the yacht club dock. Our first night is free and then we pay club rates for any more nights. That let us walk to a nice breakfast at the Too Cool Cafe just up the street. The club's own stellar Sunday brunch only happens once a month nowadays and this was not the day.

At Too Cool Cafe.

The down day let me get some projects done, including bypassing the water heater's engine coolant loop as part of my ongoing diagnosis of our coolant problem. We also took advantage of the very convenient slip-side pump-out system. I had a nice long walk around nearby Gleason Park, where I found the public pool ($4 for a day pass), and we had dinner at the yacht club's own poolside bar. The rest of the club was closed for a private event, a past commodore's birthday party, and there must have been 250 guests.  At 6:30 there was a private fireworks show for the party that rivaled municipal shows we've seen elsewhere; we had just finished eating and stepped away from our table to take it in. Later I saw just a small bit of a rocket launch through the cloud layer.

These tortoises were everywhere at Gleason Park.

We often linger at docks until checkout, to take full advantage of supplied power, but with the extra day we had done all we needed, so we dropped lines at 9am to make Fort Pierce by dinner time. It was a drippy, windy day, with moderate chop on the ICW, so we had it mostly to ourselves. We had the anchor down in a familiar spot (map), where the boat makes odd "loops" as it swings; we prefer to be a few hundred feet further east if there is room. We bashed our way ashore at the city dock and had a nice dinner at the 2nd Street Bistro, which is a noisy sports bar but makes up for it with a large draft selection.

I soon learned why.

Fort Pierce was our decision point for continuing south, where will will find more Lugger dealers if we need one, or turning west per our original plan before we discovered our slow coolant leak. At this point in the process I had just changed out the water heater for a piece of hose, and we've been circulating UV dye marker for a few days. But the reality of this kind of hard-to-find leak is that it will take many days of running the engine to move the diagnosis further along. We decided to stick to the original plan, and the worst case, if a Lugger-specific specialist is required, is that we will have to pay travel time.

Sunset over Dragon Point from dinner.

With that decided, Tuesday we weighed anchor, headed down the ICW and made the right turn at The Crossroads onto the St. Lucie River. We made it through the FEC railroad bridge with just a couple of minutes to spare before it closed for a Brightline train. We had the hook down in our usual spot off Arbeau Point (map) in enough time for me to go ashore for a walk down to the shopping center and back.

The fireworks over the Banana River were spectacular.

We had already bade farewell to Dorsey and Bruce on Esmeralde back in St. Augustine, but we're all headed to Key West via the west coast, and we caught back up to them here in Stuart. They were booked while in town, but were generous to allow us to have our mail sent to their marina, and I swung by the office there and picked it up on my way home. We returned ashore together in the evening and walked downtown for a nice Italian dinner at one of our favorites, Luna.

I took lots of photos, but you get the idea.

As soon as we made the decision to continue to the west coast, I started working on where we could find the traditional holiday flavors for Christmas dinner. I was hoping that Cabbage Key, one of our regular stops and a hotel itself, would be doing something for the holiday. While they would be open, and were happy to take a reservation, it would be the regular menu at the regular time (after 6). I booked, "just in case."

The Falcon-9 launch, by contrast, was anything but spectacular. Also delayed by two hours.

Eventually I landed on the Westin Hotel in Cape Coral, whose Marker 92 restaurant is doing a holiday buffet with all our favorite flavors. It was spendy, but they have a courtesy dock and there is a nice anchorage right there. Altogether a perfect combination, and I booked us for 4pm. It does, however, give us a few extra days to kill along the way, and so we are slow-rolling it.

We passed the fireworks aftermath on our morning walk. I'm sure my pyro friends can guess the $$.

That let us decide to just spend an extra day in Stuart. In the afternoon we went ashore together for a walk and wandered by Esmeralde at the dock just to say hi. We had a nice visit for the better part of an hour and said another goodbye till Key West. We returned ashore in the evening for dinner at The Gafford downtown, another of our favorites. We were taken aback to see a large police presence on the waterfront, we suspect just a show of force for the Hanukkah menorah lighting, in light of several high-profile incidents elsewhere.

Stuart had a lovely tree. The menorah is behind it and down the steps to the waterfront amphitheater. The giant "bulb" in front of the tree rotated through various colors.

Even having decided to slow-roll, we got a very early start out of Stuart on Thursday, because high tide was at 8:30 and we wanted to be over the shoals between Stuart and the lock before the tide was headed back down. We ended up in the St. Lucie lock right behind Esmeralde. The former lockmaster, perhaps the world's rudest, thankfully no longer works here. The 7:45 start put us at Port Mayaca before 1pm.

Huge police presence for the sunset menorah lighting. It made me sad.

Normally we have to stop at Port Mayaca westbound, because we usually can not get all the way across the lake in the daylight. But today was the exception; if we kept going we would be in Clewiston just before 5pm, in time to go ashore for dinner at the tiki bar. The alternative of a 1pm stop on the dolphins at Port Mayaca would mean running the generator in the afternoon, and basically being trapped on board, and so we opted to just continue on through the lock. They opened the gates at both ends and we drove right through.

Esmeralde ahead of us in the St. Lucie lock. They fill these locks by cracking open the tainter gates and you can see the water pouring in ahead of them.

The lake was actually fairly choppy, but we had a full foot more depth than our last crossing, in the other direction. Still, at this level, I do not cut any corners. We picked up a little speed in the lake and were tying up to the Clewiston dolphins (map) by quarter to five. We splashed the tender right away to head ashore, as I wanted to get gas before the fuel dock closed (late, it turns out).

Approaching Port Mayaca lock with both gates open; you can see right out to the lake.

Esmeralde also stopped in Clewiston for the night, tied up at the marina. When they heard we were headed this way they set aside their cooking plans and agreed to meet us for dinner at the cheesy tiki bar, Scotty's, which we hit well before Karaoke was scheduled to start at 7. This notwithstanding that we've already said goodbye three times. While we were eating, a dozen police motorcycle officers from several departments came in and sat down, probably on a training exercise, but we all wondered if they were going to sing. The fare was actually decent, there were far fewer bugs than our last visit, and the company was superb.

After a half dozen or so meals together, we finally remembered to take a picture.

Starting our Friday in Clewiston meant Moore Haven was too soon to stop, and just as well because the city dock has increased its rates to $2/foot, which is definitely not worth it in this town unless we are desperate for power or water for some reason. So after locking down at the Moore Haven lock we proceeded all the way downriver to Ortona Lock, where we considered anchoring with a tender option to the Ortona Tavern. We arrived at just 2pm, and decided to lock through and continue on to LaBelle, where there is more "there" there.

Vector tied between two of the Clewiston dolphins, as seen from Esmeralde as she passed us. Photo: Dorsey Beard

LaBelle is a sleepy town and normally we have no trouble dropping the hook here off-channel with some protection from the bridge. But this time "our spot" was occupied by a sailboat, and so were our second and third choice spots. We ended up further downriver of the bridge, where our first attempt had us too close to the sailing line, and we weighed and moved until we were just a boatlength off the right descending bank (map). A strong southerly would have had us grazing the shore, but we thought that unlikely.

Both Ortona and Franklin locks had broken gates and we had to pass through just the working side. That's a 25' opening, leaving me just 4½' of slop on each side.

We tendered ashore at the city dock and walked to the Forrey Grill for dinner. I think of this place as mostly Italian, and I was prepared to order a red sauce dish, but after we were seated at the bar we learned Friday is prime rib night. We shared a single 14oz portion, which comes with the salad bar, and just added another side salad. It was pretty good for a place that does not bill itself as a steakhouse. We had a calm night and never came close enough to the channel to warrant burning more lights overnight.

Hay, Santa. Seen on Bridge Street in LaBelle.

Update: we are anchored in the Caloosahatchee River, just east of the Wilson Pigott Bridge (map). Regular readers may remember we anchored here earlier this year to meet up with friends at The Boathouse restaurant here, after a nail-biting trip from Fort Myers with the engine overheating. From LaBelle we would normally go all the way to Fort Myers, another ten miles downriver, but we are now very early for our plans at Glover Bight. With a decent restaurant here we decided to break the trip into two days. With a short day planned, we went ashore this morning at Mason Park on the north bank in LaBelle for a nice walk.

Passing the LaBelle library, next to the city dock, filled with children for an event. We liked the "tree."

We should be in Fort Myers tomorrow for a couple of nights, where, if the stars align, we might connect with friends. I'll make a pilgrimage to the Publix for pre-holiday provisions, and if the lagoon stays calm enough, we will enjoy going ashore for dinner at any of the myriad nice eateries in town. We then have one night booked at the St. Charles Yacht Club, which unfortunately will otherwise be closed, right before the holiday, before we settle in to Glover Bight on Christmas Eve. I am hoping we find a nice place for dinner that is different from Marker 92, where we will have Christmas.

I will leave you with six seconds of frenetic dancing holiday lighted palm trees at the waterfront park in Fort Pierce. Apart from a wimpy sound system, the lights were very well done and set to a variety of holiday music. Sorry about the wind noise.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas

We are underway southbound in the ICW, which here runs down the middle of the Indian River Lagoon. We are finally back in more temperate weather, and I've even worn a couple of short-sleeve shirts in the past week. We've been running the heat occasionally for weeks, but today we turned on the air conditioning for the first time since leaving the northeast.

Vector at anchor in Titusville, as seen from the causeway.

The remainder of our passage last Thursday was uneventful, although seas built shortly before we arrived at the St. Johns and we were glad to be heading inshore. We had a slight push upriver and dropped the hook in a familiar spot immediately upriver of the ICW crossing (map), across the river from the BAE shipyard.

Friday morning when the engine had fully cooled I learned that valving off the water heater had not changed the situation, which has since sent me further down the rabbit hole of cooling system diagnosis. We enjoyed more of the bagels that Dorsey and Bruce had gifted us as we discussed our options if we needed professional help, as that might impact which direction we went from the anchorage.

The chickens are fresh in Vilano Beach.

The worst case scenario is that the coolant is going into the combustion chamber, but at this very slow rate we are probably not doing any damage and can continue to run at our normal pace. That made the much more limited selection of boatyards upriver in Jacksonville less appealing than continuing south, where there would be a lot more alternatives ahead of us. A discretionary side trip upriver thus seemed a poor choice, and we decided instead to continue south directly.

Pesca rooftop bar and restaurant in the Hyatt Place.

We weighed anchor and set out for St. Augustine down the inside, with outside weather unfavorable and also not wanting to be well offshore should the problem become suddenly worse. We held back until we could make the San Pablo Creek bridge with only a couple of knots behind us (it runs as high as six), yet still have a fair tide south from the St. Johns.

Durty Neli's. Promising, but no food yet.

Underway I looked up every Lugger service dealer in Florida, and we also texted with Bruce and Dorsey, who happened to still be docked in St. Augustine. We learned they would be there for another couple of nights, and we made plans to connect for dinner in town Saturday, a fortuitous bonus of our decision to continue south. I ordered a coolant test kit and some UV coolant dye marker to the Amazon locker a couple of miles north of town.

The approach to the Vilano pier is always festive at the holidays.

With the Amazon deliveries not scheduled until Sunday and dinner in St. Augustine on Saturday, we decided to stop just short in our usual haunt of Vilano Beach, dropping the hook in a familiar spot just outside the cable area (map). We usually have this anchorage to ourselves, but today we found three sailboats already here, so word has gotten out. They anchored well north of the cable area, though, and we still got the closest spot.

When we came through here earlier in the year they were just wrapping up construction on an Irish pub, and learning it had opened we were looking forward to trying it. They do not yet have a working kitchen, however, and as lovely as the neat row of draft handles looked, we continued on to a different, but still new to us, place, Pesca. This is the rooftop bar and restaurant in the Hyatt Place, which was built in the Art Deco style despite being only a couple of years old. We sat "indoors," meaning under a roof, but the entire joint is open-air, so we were glad to try it on a very pleasant evening. The food was decent and we've added it to our list. We made a quick stop in Publix on our way back to the tender.

One of the St. Augustine Lions, near the eponymous bridge, with Vector in the background across the river.

Saturday morning we decked the tender and weighed anchor just before the turn of the tide, timing our departure to put us at the Bridge of Lions for the 9:30 opening. We did not need it, because we found just enough room in our preferred anchorage just before the bridge, across the river from town (map). We had the hook down just in time to see the annual holiday parade marching down the street along the waterfront, but it was a cold, rainy morning, and what little crowd we saw looked uncomfortable.

That weather kept us on board the whole morning. Things dried up a bit after lunch, and we tendered over to the city marina to pay the $15 dinghy dock fee and get a little walk in. We returned in the evening, met up with Dorsey and Bruce on Esmeralde, and walked over to Gaufres & Goods, a favorite of theirs, for dinner. We went early and were lucky to score a table; they take no reservations.

Parking is miserable in St. A, and costs more than the $15 dinghy fee. Tensions were high.

This tiny venue, close to the dock, serves a mix of Polish and Greek dishes, and I was surprised to find the same strong Polish porter that I had stocked up on in Sheepshead Bay, the only other place I've seen it. The food and service were excellent, with a warm ambiance, and now it's a favorite of ours, too. A gaufre is a Belgian waffle, which we had for dessert. It was great seeing Bruce and Dorsey and their pups, even though we keep saying "goodbye until Key West." Maybe this time we really meant it, but I am not making any bets.

Sunday it rained all day, and we were basically trapped on board. My Amazon orders arrived, but there was no way to get them without getting drenched. I did tender ashore in the afternoon in a brief gap in the rain to get a walk in, knowing my dingy fee would cover me until 11 in the morning to go get my packages. Our spot in the anchorage afforded us the perfect view of the festively lit St. Augustine waterfront. Tourists come from all over at this time of year to see the annual Nights of Lights display; tour boat or trolley tickets are well over a C-note. It was a nice backdrop to our dinner on board.

Best shot I could get with my phone to capture Nights of Lights. Every building is lit.

Monday morning I ran ashore, hopped on the city bus (actually a 14-seat shuttle van), and ran out to the Amazon locker. I had a good 20 minutes before the return bus, which I spent in the neighboring Winn-Dixie picking up the few items on the provision list that arose in the few days since our Publix excursion.

Cheers from McK's pub, Daytona Beach.

After returning to Vector I started calling Lugger service dealers, including the one in St. Augustine, who allowed there was a small chance they could get to us this week and that they would call me back. As nice as it would have been to go ashore for dinner in town, the wind forecast said we needed a better anchorage, and so we weighed anchor after lunch to make the 12:30 bridge (there is no noon opening) and continue south.

The memorial to Brownie the town dog is here year-round, but Daytona decorates it for the holidays.

Just a couple hours of cruising brought us to the lovely and familiar anchorage across from Fort Matanzas (map), where I settled in to make more phone calls. We had dinner on board to the sound of the surf, and ended the day with a 7pm video conference call, something our Starlink terminal allows us to achieve in this kind of peaceful, fairly remote anchorage.

The south end of the Esplanade.

Tuesday morning I called the local Lugger guys, having heard nothing back, and got the news I was expecting: they did not really have any availability until after the holiday, which is what I had heard from every other dealer from here to Stuart. We weighed anchor to continue south, but just as Louise was bringing the last of the chain aboard, the windlass suddenly made a seemingly uncommanded retraction and the anchor slammed hard into the pulpit. I could not release the pressure with the switch at the helm.

We seldom get to see this bridge at night. That's the slingshot ride at left.

The Matanzas inlet is no place to be messing around with this, with a couple of knots of current wanting to sweep the boat into the shoals, and a tricky shallow section right after making the turn into the ICW, so we just soldiered on until we were in a wider and deeper section. There we learned the circuit breaker for the windlass, which also powers the washdown pump, was tripped. We used the manual clutch to release the pressure on the chain.

Santa and his eight reindolphins.

Underway I called the yacht club in Daytona to make a reservation for the night, and it was a relief to learn they had space, relieving the urgency of getting the windlass working. Still, on a single-screw boat a working anchor is a critical piece of safety gear, and so once everything was settled, Louise cleared off the berth in the guest stateroom, AKA her quilt studio, so I could get to the breaker.

Fortunately that was all it was, and I was able to reach the breaker from atop the berth without having to descend into the carbon-dust-encrusted thruster bay to reach it. Before restoring power I first removed the battery from the remote control, in case that was what caused the uncommanded windlass movement. We may never know the cause but it was almost certainly somewhere in the wireless remote system.

The rest of the cruise to Daytona was uneventful, although we did have a delay at the Knox drawbridge while the bridge tender was in the head, and we passed an anchored unmanned sailboat very nearly in the channel that the USCG had been warning about on the radio for a couple of days. We were tied up in our usual spot at the Halifax River Yacht Club (map), where we met the new dockmaster, Dale.

New windlass solenoid, to reduce radio interference.

As long as we had cleared a path to the thruster bay earlier in the day, I spent a couple of hours working down there to replace the whizzy energy-saving high-power contactors that energize the windlass and thruster with something lower-tech. The fancy ones contain a PWM circuit to reduce power usage, and that circuit has been causing interference on our VHF radios. I was able to replace the windlass contactor with a 200-amp Cole Hersee I bought for the purpose, but my plan to repurpose one of the 400-amp Albright units in a spare reversing contactor was foiled when I discovered they bridged the two units with a solid contact bus bar. I'll need to order something different to finish the project.

I hoped to split these, but the single bar across the lower contacts makes them inseparable.

Since we were going to be at a dock with a good address, Louise decided this was a good place to try out our new Walmart Plus membership to have provisions delivered right to the front door. She chose a delivery window starting at 7pm when we would be back from dinner, and at dinner time we walked down the block to McK's pub, which had some nice drafts and decent pub food. We often just eat at the club, but we remembered the bar is very chaotic  on Tuesdays, when they have a weekly raffle of some sort.

I've put this large filter bag over the top of the thruster motor, in hopes of containing the unending stream of brush dust that now covers every surface in the compartment. 

Not only were the club bar and dining rooms busy, but all the function rooms were busy as well, with several holiday parties. In hindsight we should have chosen Wednesday morning for our delivery. The driver arrived shortly after 7, and, having tracked the delivery on the app, we walked out to the port cochere with a dock cart just before he pulled up. It was all over in just a few minutes and we were never in the way. A tip of the hat to our friends Stacey and Dave aboard Stinkpot, who turned us on to this seamless method to get Walmart orders without me having to schlep everything on the e-bike. I finished the evening with a long walk around the waterfront taking in the holiday decorations.

Street decoration in New Smyrna Beach.

With no particular schedule, and finally in some warmth, we set our sights for Wednesday only as far as New Smyrna Beach, where I had a first-hand report the city dock was once again usable for an overnight stay. That's a short run, and so we lingered at the yacht club dock until 11. I cleaned up from the under berth project and sanitized our drinking water filtration system. We offloaded all the trash and recycling before dropping lines.

The Santa Run streamed past right after we crossed the street.

We made it through the tight, skinny section past Ponce de Leon Inlet and were on track to make the 1:30 opening at the George Musson drawbridge when we heard on the radio that a dredging operation had a pipe all the way across the river just before the bridge and that the channel was closed until some indeterminate time. We pulled off-channel a mile before the bridge and dropped the hook with several other boats that were already waiting (map).

Louise and Vector in New Smyrna. The dock is curved, making for a challenging tie-up.

The closure was apparently not pre-vetted by the Coast Guard and the command center in Jacksonville was scrambling to figure out who was responsible and when they'd get it back open; it's almost unheard-of for us to come upon this kind of closure without having had any kind of notice. After about an hour we started to think about just being stuck there overnight, and we put the dinghy in the water to see if we could get past the obstruction to a waterfront restaurant just the other side of the bridge. No sooner did we have the dinghy in the water and ready to go than a nearby boater shouted to us that they had just cleared the channel.

View of the weird arrangement from the other side.

With a full half hour to the 3pm bridge opening we had plenty of time to lift the tender, weigh anchor, and make our way to the bridge. That put us at the New Smyrna Beach dock at 3:30, where I was happy to see the dock empty, but disappointed to see there is still a 5-hour limit sign. We did not want to backtrack to the inlet this late in the day, so we just took our chances and tied up (map). When I circled back to my first-hand report they said they regularly stayed there for a night with no issues; we just crossed our fingers. Long-time readers may know we'd stayed at this dock a couple of times early on in our travels, before the limit was enacted.

Cheers from Prima. The pizza was very good.

The little downtown Canal Street historic district is more vibrant now, and we enjoyed walking down the street and seeing the holiday decorations. After dinner at upscale pizza joint Prima, a recommendation from friends, we walked a bit more, barely avoiding being run over by the Santa Run. I thought the town was festively decorated and there are lots of nice-looking eateries, so it's too bad about the dock. We're hoping the have the floating dinghy dock back in operation before our next pass through.

We asked for a sample of one of the drafts and they brought it in a demitasse cup.

We had no knock on the hull overnight and awoke to a pleasant morning. With only an average length day to Titusville I spend part of the morning walking the town in the daylight, and of course I could not resist picking up a couple of bagels at the bakery. We dropped lines on the flood for the Mosquito Lagoon and the Indian River, finding ourselves in a spread-out line of southbound boats. Apart from the Haulover Bridge operator deciding to make up rules on the fly, the cruise was uneventful. He did open the bridge when I insisted on it.

Mural in progress on Canal Street.

We had the anchor down in our usual spot south of the Titusville Causeway (map) with just ten minutes to spare before a scheduled rocket launch from the cape, but it ended up being delayed anyway and we saw it from our aft deck just before we tendered ashore for dinner at Pier 220, really the only option here. The food is decent for a pier joint and they have a couple of beers on tap. Their outdoor tiki bar is incredibly popular, and late in the evening we could see some police and fire department action there that went on for nearly an hour.

Where is the tenderness?

Yesterday we weighed anchor after a leisurely breakfast and were on track to arrive at the Eau Gallie Yacht Club early in the afternoon. I had reached out on Thursday to make a reservation. It was a gorgeous day, and as we approached Cocoa, we decided on a whim to stop there instead and catch the annual holiday boat parade, scheduled for last night. We first had to search a little to see if we could still get ashore with the day docks having been removed after a hurricane, and I had to call the yacht club to postpone our arrival by a day.

Centuries-old ruins, either an old fort or Turnbull's mansion, no one really knows.

We had the hook down in the well-used anchorage (map) early in the afternoon and settled in. A short time later an alarm started sounding on our plotter, the response to a Man OverBoard (MOB) beacon being set off nearby. A quick check revealed the MOB beacon to be moving north toward us on the ICW at ten knots; a real person in the water would only be drifting. I called the only boat I could see at that position and speed.

Another batch of Starlink satellites rising to orbit, from our deck. VAB to the left of the sailboat.

The skipper seemed confused, because his own display showed the beacon a thousand feet behind him. Why in the world any skipper would ignore an MOB alarm and just keep going, in violation of the law of the sea, is beyond me. Of course it was a false activation of a device on his own boat; MOB beacons just can't update their position fast enough to keep up at ten knots. He finally sheepishly admitted he had them on life jackets in a locker someplace.

After the drama was over, I was very happy to see that this all worked well on our own boat. We have exactly such an MOB beacon, which is worn by whomever is on watch overnight while the other is asleep. The alarm is both insistent and persistent; they are deliberately hard to ignore or silence, and the MOB icon persists on the chart no matter what you do.

The Nutcracker. We assume just the highlights.

The boat parade was scheduled for 6, so we tendered ashore at 4 to get in a walk and an early dinner. We had read that dinghies could tie up at the boat ramp in the absence of the day docks, but we could see no way to do that without blocking one of the three ramps, so we tied to the seawall instead, closer to where the day docks had been. We had a nice walk around Cocoa Village and good burgers at the Americana Pub, which has an impressive array of drafts. We saw the city tree, to be lit at 7, and a few minutes of a children's production of The Nutcracker in the park.

The tail end of the boat parade, with the rest of it in the background.

We were back aboard well in time for the start of the boat parade, which went right past us through the anchorage. It was just a bit distant for good cell phone pictures, but we had a nice view. We could see the tree all lit ashore through our binoculars, and it turned out to be an enjoyable stop. There is no evidence they will ever replace the day docks, but that does not seem to be a major obstacle to stopping here again.

We had great conditions and a nice view.

Yesterday one of the cordless blinds in the pilothouse gave up the ghost, and I spent about an hour re-stringing it this morning. It's a short cruise to Indian Harbour Beach and the Eau Gallie Yacht club, and I expect we will be there before I get all the photos loaded and captioned for the post.

Update: we are docked at the Eau Gallie Yacht Club (map). Tonight we will make a pilgrimage to Publix for provisions and probably hit dinner on the way. Tomorrow we will move to the anchorage on the other side of the causeway to hunker down for an incoming wind storm tomorrow night.

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.