As you go along the loop, you pass through different regions, each with their own flavour and requirements. For example, in lake Michigan we had to be very careful about the weather, or on the inland rivers we had to pay close attention to what the tows were doing. Now that we are headed north, we have to pay attention to the changes that happen to the Intracoastal Waterway (ICW).
The east coast of the United States has a chain of barrier islands that runs from the south tip of Florida all the way to Maine. These islands provide protection from the ocean swells and heavy winds. A pathway has been charted all the way from Florida to New York City, using various rivers, estuaries and dredged canals, between these barrier islands and the continental U.S. The ICW. The part of the ICW we are currently transiting passes through an area of coastal swamps with muddy bottoms. This area is subject to the occasional hurricane or tropical storm, which pushes around the sediments in the ICW. In addition to these "big movers", there is a large tidal swing here (as much as 7 feet) that creates strong currents in and out of the waterway. All of this moving water pushes sediment, creating shoaling.
The charts we are using are based on surveys that are decades old. Because we are using GPS for navigation, we have the luxury of electronic charts, which add crowd-sourced sonar data to the original NOAA survey data. This helps us avoid some of the shoals. To avoid pretty much ALL of the shoal areas, we use Bob's tracks. These are a series of routes you can load into your GPS, which provide safe routes through all the shoals.
Bob's tracks are provided for free by Bob Sherer aka BOB423. He maintains a website which provides these guide tracks, which are prepared by himself using data from the Army Corps of Engineers, the dredgers, and a small group of trusted boaters.
When we were in Florida, Rich showed me how to download the tracks and display them on our GPS. Now that we are in Georgia, these become very important to the safe operation of iFloat. Before we left on our journey north, I made sure to download the latest tracks for the section of the ICW we would be transiting.
Following Bob's tracks. Our boat's heading is up. The blue line is the Bob423 track we are following. The black line is our track, recorded by our GPS. The boat icon shows our boat's location. The black line with the circle shows our heading, the little circle at the end shows where the boat will be in one minute at our present speed. I always split the GPS screen into close-up on the right, and a zoom out on the left. I try to keep the right-hand pane zoomed to our heading in about the next minute of travel, the left-hand one varies depending on where we are, usually the next 2 to 10 km of travel.
Inspecting the engine belts. I do regular engine inspections, checking oil, coolant, the belts, fuel filters, and looking for any leaks. Usually some boat-yoga is required. Along the way, we started storing spare parts and some tools in the engine room to free up more space in the salon. We used some bins we got from Canadian Tire for this, but it now requires some wiggling to check some things on the engine.
Photo from the turtle hospital on Jekyll island. They were draining some absesses from this turle and stitching up a wound on its hind flipper.
Turtle rehab on Jekyll island.
We left Jekyll island just after sunrise as part of a group of several boats headed north. The day was pretty calm and sunny, and after a few hours we reached our destination, New Teakettle creek, where we would be anchoring for the night. Along the way we went through a stretch of the ICW with really shallow water, our depth finder was reading 0 for some of the ride (the depth finder reads depth under the keel). We did not touch bottom, so I think what we were reading on the sonar was weeds. We followed Stulie into the anchorage, which was a wide creek surrounded by reeds. Stulie ran into an issue with their windlass and could not set their anchor, so Louise and I set out the anchor and Stulie rafted onto us. The winds were light, so we had a pretty quiet night, although we did swing quite a bit around the anchor as the tide came in and out. Basically every 6 hours we swung in a big arc and faced the opposite direction.
Pretty much every navigation aid you pass has some birds hanging out on it. Here, a pair of cormorants are taking a break.
At one point we got passed by a small cruise ship - a catamaran. This boat travels the ICW from New York to Florida. The ship was going about 2 kmph faster than we were. Here you can see it coming up behind Stulie.
We pulled over into a side creek to allow the cruise ship to pass us. Much less stressful this way than a tricky maneuver in the narrow channel.
Besides shoaling, one other feature of this area of the loop are no-see-ums. They are relentless. Basically, you cannot go outside with any skin showing or you get bit. All day long, although it gets waaaaay worse after sundown. No worries, we visited with Chris and Julie aboard Stulie for the afternoon, inside their salon. Chris was also able to fix his windlass, which turned out to be a connection issue on the switches.
Driving from the flybridge. It was hot enough for T-shirts when the sun came out, but when it went behind a cloud I had to layer up with a blanket.
Louise also had to layer-up, but she got Pikachu and Eevee!
The next morning we were up and hauling anchor at sunrise. It took a while to bring the anchor out of the mud, the bottom here was clay which just "sucked" our anchor in solidly. We had to use the boat's momentum to lift the anchor out of the bottom as the windlass was not strong enough to do it. A pain in the morning, but very reassuring.
Wait for it..........
We had some wake-riders along the way. We often see dolphins approaching the boat, but then lose sight of them. If they ride the bow wave they are hard to see due to the flare on the bow, but when they ride the wake on the stern it makes for a great show.
With the anchor in we set off for our next anchorage at Buckhead creek. About half way there we pulled off the side of the ICW to let a cruise ship pass us. The ICW is fairly narrow, and you want to give big boats as much room as possible. When we arrived it was really windy, blowing steady 25 kmph winds with the occasional gust. We had to set our anchor twice, as the first set put us too close to shore. Second time was the charm, and the anchor bit into the bottom really solidly. Once again Stulie rafted onto us. Despite the strong winds and tidal currents, we did not move, love our big mantus anchor. The winds died off after supper and we had another quiet night on anchor.
In the morning we set off for Savannah, which was only a couple of hours away. We pulled into the marina and got set in. Then the four of us took an Uber to downtown Savannah. We walked around the historic district and then along the waterfront, and had linner (lunch/dinner) at a BBQ place on the waterfront. After visiting some tourist-trap shops, we Ubered back to the boat.
Marina desk looked like the transom of an old boat.
Most of the marinas here have a dry-stack facility. They store boats indoors on big racks, and use special fork-lifts to launch them on-demand. Once the boats are taken out, they flush the engines with fresh water and put them back on the stack.
There is an old barrier wall on the waterfront in Savannah. They have a network of pedestrian bridges set up so people can access apartments from the parking areas.
Louise got a selfie with some random guy from the 30's.
Mega-candy store downtown was selling candied apples.
The next morning, as we were finishing breakfast, we were provided with a little entertainment. The marina had put us at the end of a long dock, with a large (50+ foot) boat behind us. Around 8 am, they fired-up engines and got ready to leave. They untied their lines, and proceeded to use thrusters to get off the dock. Well, this didn't work, so they then tried using their main engine, sending lots of turbulence our way. We wondered what these guys were doing, and then we saw that they had forgotten to untie one of their lines, and were still stuck on the dock. I ran out of the boat, and yelled at them that they were still tied, and went forward to help them untie their line. With the line free, they were able to clear the dock. Kind of amusing, however in my rush to get to their rope, I went out barefoot and ended up slamming my toe on a gap in the concrete dock. Ouch.
Next time I'll take the time to put on my shoes.
I did some boat chores, replacing fuel filters and I also changed the oil on the genny. I was just finishing up this task when Rich and Melanie dropped by. They had gone to Atlanta for a funeral and stopped by on the way back to visit with us. Louise and Melanie went shopping while I finished the oil change. Once the girls were back, Rich drove all three crews (Jewel, Stulie and iFloat) downtown, which took two trips.
One of the tourist-trap stores was selling this hot sauce. Was tempted to buy some just for the container.
They were also selling these small statues made of motorcycle parts welded together.
We walked around a bit, then had linner together on the waterfront. After that we walked around the historic area, had some ice cream. One interesting feature of Savannah is that it is a hot-spot for bachelorette parties. All day we saw groups of young ladies, which appeared to be wedding parties, coming and going through various bars, tour busses and even some pontoon boat tiki bars.
Memorial for Black soldiers in the civil war.
After walking around for a few hours, Chris and Julie went off on their own, while Rich and Melanie drove us back to the marina.
Pink moon. The first moon of spring is pink because the flowers start growing.
Next morning we got caught up on boat chores, I hosed the salt off the boat, then Louise and I "audited" our food inventory to see just what we had on board. Chris needed some things at Home Depot, so he and I took our scooters to do some shopping. I had a bit of a mis-hap. In a parking lot, I came up to a truck that was maneuvering, and he suddenly changed direction. I jammed on the breaks, but scooters have their brakes on the front wheel, so I went over the handlebars. No injuries, just my pride, the worst part of the whole thing was that lots of people saw me make my dumb-ass flip over the scooter handle bars.
Back on the boat, we got some more tasks done, getting ready for the next leg of our journey. That night Chris and Julie went into town to do a ghost-walk, while Louise and I spent a quiet evening on the boat. Just after sunset we were treated to a rocket launch, although we only got to see a small part as low-lying clouds obscured the initial rise. However, it was cool to see the rocket travel down-range. Those things move incredibly fast!
Our destination for the day was now Hilton Head island. We set off in the morning with full sun and a cold wind, we were driving from the flybridge, as there was not a cloud in the sky and we were expecting it to be nice. However, the wind was freakin cold and so we spent the whole trip bundled up in hoodies, extra layers and even blankets. The last hour we decided to go below and drive from inside.
Once on the island, we found it does not have much in the way to tourist things to see. It is basically covered by golf courses and gated communities. We broke out the scooters and visited a local "museum" at Fort Mitchel. Basically the fort was just a semi-circular earth wall about 12 feet high and about 200 feet in diameter, with a couple of cannons. Not much to see. We kept on scootering towards a couple of restaurants nearby another marina. To get there we had to pass through a gated community, which meant checking in at a guard shack and show ID (yes, we actually had to do this). To get out, we had to check back in and show our ID again. Papers please!
The fork-lift operator here must be hard-core!
The dessert that eats like a meal. This slice of pie was four inches tall. We shared.
The marina where were staying in did not have a breakwater, and they do not use large no-wake signs in South Carolina like they do in Florida and Georgia. Instead, wake zones are marked with small buoys. The result of the this is lots of wakes from jerk boaters. We were on a T-head and got the brunt of it, it was like a Saturday back at the RYC! Our fenders got a bit of a work-out that day, we even got waked at 4 am (it woke Louise up) when the fishing boats went out.
Back on the boat, we had docktails with the crews of Stulie and Sunset Seeker. Ed and Carole of Sunset Seeker will cross their wake soon in the Chesapeake.
While we were having docktails a heron landed nearby and went fishing. Here he is preparing to eat his dinner.
Meanwhile, we were preparing to eat our dinner, home-made pizza from the air-fryer.
Boat name of the day: Masterbaiter
