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Published: June 10th 2008
Doug & Sharon
WE had an outing to the great boat part salvage store in ST. Augustine, FL. “Island Hopping on the ICW”
After a short stay in Fort Pierce, Florida, we headed up the ICW (Intracoastal Waterway) to the town of Vero Beach. This turned out to be a very boater friendly place. There is a city run marina just yards off the ICW with great facilities. They had slips for rent as well as about 75 moorings. The grounds were very nice and they provided a TV-lounge, a laundry, and a very nice shower facility. Also, the City provides free bus service and they had a stop right in the marina. The bus took us to West Marine for boat things and to the beach for restaurants and walking the boardwalk. We spent a couple of days here and ran into several friends we had made during the winter in the Bahamas.
Then we decided to move on and our destination was Palm Cove which is near Cape Canaveral. Our plan was to meet up with a couple of Cameron’s college classmates that live in that area. We were able to meet Chris Edwards, a local dentist and his wife Judy and Captain John Boltz, a recently retired Port Canaveral harbor pilot. It was
fun to catch up with friends from long ago and to hear what they have been doing over the years.
From there we moved on to Daytona Beach. This was only a night stop and we did not go ashore here. We were anxious to move on toward St Augustine because we had heard so many good things about that city. We took a slip at the St Augustine City Marina for the first night and our friends from the boat “About Time” drove down from St. Mary’s to meet us. Doug and Sharon had just finished having their boat hauled out of the water and put away for the summer so they could go back to Canada and the real world for a while. Since they had a car we took this opportunity to go to a Publix supermarket and stock up on groceries. We had about used up most of our provisions from the Bahamas trip. After our visit with them we left the marina and motored out to the anchorage right in front of Fort ? . We wanted to explore St. Augustine for a couple more days before moving on. Later that afternoon we found
Tom & Bonnie
Meeting old friends in Fernandina Beach out about the activities of the fort as several loud cannon shots echoed through the boat. Every hour men dressed in period costumes put on a show for the people touring the fort.
Next we moved north to the city of Fernandina Beach. We anchored off the town the first night in strong northerly winds. It was a rough night with the wind howling and the current rushing through the anchorage at several knots. Double-Wide danced in circles all night as the wind and tide were pushing in opposite directions. We decided that we would move to a mooring for the next night so we would not have to worry about the anchor dragging in the strong currents. When Cameron attempted to haul in the anchor, he found that the chain had tightly wrapped itself around a 4 foot pier of steel debris which was covered in a mass of barnacles. It must have weighed 80-90 pounds and would not fall off as he winched in the anchor rode. He decide to loop a couple of spare dock lines around the steel piece of debris and support it from the front beam of the boat so he could slack off
Armadillo
We came across this guy on Cumberland Island. the chain and try to get it untangled. This difficult operation took about 30 minutes with Cameron hanging off the front of the trampoline hitting the chain & debris with a hammer until he could free the chain. All went well until he pulled in about another 40’ of chain and found a 2nd piece of steel wrapped in the anchor chain. We had to repeat the untangling effort to finally get the anchor back aboard.
Once we were safely tied to the mooring buoy, we had time to walk around the historic city of Fernandina Beach. It is filled with interesting shops and quaint restaurants. We had a chance to meet old friends Tom & Bonnie Ackerman for dinner one evening. We know them from our church in Baltimore and now they live in Jacksonville, FL. On our second day we found a little French bakery that had hot baguettes that we bought to go with our spaghetti dinner that evening.
Our next stop was a short motor 12 miles north across the Georgia line to the colonial town of St. Mary’s. They have a town dock that can be used for free for up to 6
hours. We walked around the town with our friends Cathy & Willis from the sailboat “Whistling Winds”, they were in St. Mary’s having their boat repaired in the local boatyard. Cameron toured the Submarine Museum which has lots of info from the nearby Kings Bay Sub base. Early that afternoon we moved over to a small bay just off of Cumberland Island National Seashore. On our way we had to wait outside the channel while the Navy brought a huge nuclear submarine up river to the King’s Bay sub base.
The next morning we dinghied ashore and hiked around the park. It is a barrier island 16 miles long and has never been developed except for the super expensive “Greyfield Inn” which is famous for hosting the wedding of John F. Kennedy Jr. many years ago. The island has the greatest collection of live oak trees we had ever seen, most draped with Spanish moss. There are many hiking trails and several excellent camp grounds hidden among the trees. We crossed the island until we found a path leading to the beach and then walked the deserted beach for what seemed like several miles before circling back to the
dinghy landing. We saw several wild horses and a very large armadillo besides numerous birds.
Our next island, just north of Cumberland was Jekyll Island. We anchored just below the bridge leading to the island and dinghied north to a dock right in front of the Jekyll Island Club where we were able to rent bikes for the day. We took an ambitious ride around the north end of the island. There are bike trails covering most of the island so the ride was free of the stress of dodging autos. The next morning we saw a commercial crabber checking his pots and he sold us a dozen crabs for $10.00. They were all large, heavy crabs and once steamed with our special Baltimore crab seasonings, provided a gourmet dinner in the cockpit.
Our next port of call was Thunderbolt GA. As we were crossing St. Catherine’s Sound on our way, we noticed another cat about our size entering the sound from the ocean. It was about 3 miles ahead of us but through the binoculars it looked very much like our own boat. We tried to cal them on the VHF radio but did not receive a reply.
As we entered the ICW again we lost sight of the other catamaran. It was getting into twilight so we anchored for the night in a small creek just off the ICW among the marsh grass. The next morning as we were weighing anchor, we could see the same mystery cat moving north about 2 miles away on the other side of the marsh. This time we got a reply when we called them and it turned out to be the Seawind 1160, Imagine, with Jim & Liz Hanson from Wisconsin. We had been emailing with them for about four months and had tried to meet up with them in the Abacos but had not been able to. We found out that they were also headed for Thunderbolt, so we agreed to all stop at the same marina. There are only 3 Seawind 1160’s on the East Coast and to have 2 of the 3 in the same place by accident was pretty amazing. We met them for dinner and spent the next day comparing the two boats and talking about common problems and solutions.
The marina in Thunderbolt was part marina and part shipyard for luxury yachts. We
Huntress
UNder repair at Thunderbolt Shipyard had a chance to see a 165’ Perreni Navi sailboat hauled out of the water, this was a truly massive yacht. There also were motor yachts up to about 200’ having repairs done. Our boat looked like a toy next to them.
From here we motored up the Savannah River to tie up to the Riverfront floating docks in the heart of downtown Savannah. AS we were docking Cameron’s cell phone rang and he was surprised to hear from Laurie Zotsky, a friend that sails a Seawind 1000 out of Waterford Harbor back in Kemah, Texas. It just happened that she was attending a conference in Savannah and was standing on the waterfront across the river and saw us docking. We enjoyed touring the old part of the city and walking through the numerous tree shaded squares and parks. We caught up with fellow cruisers Toby and Joanne on the trawler “Moon River” while we were there and had a great dinner with them and a nice German couple Wolfgang and Gabby who sailed there boat “Rasmus” all the way from Norway.
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