North to South Carolina

Across from the fuel dock, Jacksonville Landing
had a festival going on.

Our week at Ortega Landing in Jacksonville went by quickly.  The upcoming week had absolutely beautiful weather forecast (but should we really trust a weather prognosticator?), so we wanted to get some cruising under our keel.  We departed on Sunday May 4, but stopped in downtown Jacksonville to fill up our fuel tanks.  We only needed 205 gallons, but at $4.00/gallon, we had to take out a second mortgage.

Playing "follow the leader" along the ICW

On the 24-mile trip back to the ICW, we enjoyed a following current on the outgoing tide all the way down the St Johns River.  There were numerous small pleasure boats on the river, but we only passed one ocean-going ship.  We proceeded north on the IC W where we had been twice before, and it was easy to follow our “bread crumbs” of our previous route showing on our chartplotter.  We traveled with 3 other boats in a “follow the leader” style as we picked our way through the shallow areas.  I followed a sailboat with a deep keel (that’s one good thing about sailboats!)

Another festival at Fernandina Beach FL

As we neared our planned anchorage just west of Fernandina Beach on Amelia Island, we saw and heard the festival going on in the city.  The shrimp boats we all decorated & the live bands were heard over the waterways.  It must have been either a Blessing of the Fleet, or maybe a Shrimp Festival.  We were able to listen to the music at our anchorage a mile away.



Our anchorage across the ICW from Fernandina Beach.
With the 2 paper mills, we could always tell which
way the wind was blowing!

Monday morning we got up at zero-dark-thirty to run offshore.  We had planned a one-day 120-mile run from St Mary’s Inlet north to Hilton Head S.C.  That run would bypass 150 miles of tortuous ICW travel through at least 5 areas of dangerous shoaling through Georgia. Had we tried to travel the ICW in this area, it would have taken us 3-4 days, with the tide cycle (and the need to cross the shoaling areas at half-tide or better).  Besides, that big high pressure system gave us absolutely gorgeous weather offshore.

Gee, which direction are we heading this morning??!

We were underway 20 minutes before sunrise and saw that big ball of fire rise right out of the ocean as we headed east out the Inlet.  This St Mary’s Inlet is very well marked and dredged, since the Navy uses it for their nuclear ballistic missile submarines to go to their Kings Bay GA base.  Sue wanted to know what the “warning” area meant on the chart at the entrance, so I explained to her that this is where the submarines surface after deployment, to enter the channel to come home.  Unfortunately, we didn’t have any excitement Monday morning.

Our planned route took us right through the area
that the shrimpers were working!

We continued our travel about 5-10 miles offshore, and the seas layed down nicely.  I was glad to see that the Atlantic Ocean read the same weather forecast that I did!  We got used to following our chartplotter and our charted course on the paper charts, along with our autopilot,  radar and magnetic compass.  One leg of our trip was about 70 miles long, so we “crawled” along at 10 mph for almost 7 hours before requiring a turn.  In general, the trip was boring and uneventful – exactly the kind of trip we had hoped for!

We came back in at the southern tip of Hilton Head Island & waved to all the mega-yachts in their marina.  We found our anchorage about 2 miles west of Hilton Head & settled down for the night, content that we made our 12-hour offshore passage with no problems.

Tuesday, we decided to remain anchored in Bull Creek for the day, to read & relax.  We enjoyed a nice breeze all day, even though the temp was 86F.  We opened all the windows, put up the bug screens, & enjoyed the day.  We have cell phone & wifi coverage, so we got caught up on emails & travel blogs.  Tomorrow we’re headed 25 miles north to Port Royal Landing Marina (right next to Parris Island – a place of fond memories for all you USMC-types) to spend a week.  We’ll do some sight-seeing and retrieve our car from Jacksonville.  And plan some more on how to get to the Chesapeake Bay!