Sorry this is a bit late, there are throngs of people in St Augustine these days and for some reason it is making the internet really s——-l——o——-w! That combined w/a bout of extreme procrastination, you’re lucky this is out.

6 MONTHS!!!!!

We’ve been aboard Rory for 6 months?!?!? Huh, who’d of thought! Sometimes I’m not sure we would have thought. Does it seem like it? No, not really; however every slight once & awhile it does. We went thru some stats on our 4th month milestone so we’ll do so here as well.

Nautical miles travelled – 2,634

Engine hours – 305

Diesel fuel consumption – ~223 gals

Sailing/motoring miles – S=957, M=1677; sailed 36% of the time (one had to motor in the canals, ~214 miles)

Anchoring/marina nites – A=113, M=69; anchored 62% of the time, quite awesome!

Number of states visited – 13; WI MI OH PA NY NJ DE MD VA NC SC GA FL

So now what? We keep on going south; Bahama’s bound. We’ll hang out here in St. Augustine till the end of December then work our way down the Florida coast to the Palm Beach area and wait for a weather window to make the crossing.

St Augustine. Other than the throngs of people on the wknds, it is a great little town; very historical, touristy w/out being kitschy. During the holidays the entire historic district is lit up w/thousands of lites; trees, bldgs, bridges, boats, even people. We just happened to be in the right place @the right time for a change and were treated to the lighted boat parade for the season. D and our meager attempt at boat lites.

This is the S/V Cloudy Bay. For those of you who watch YouTube sailing vlogs, Glen posts great DIY videos and D has watched a few of them. D managed to dinghy over to ‘introduce’ himself and chat for awhile. There are also a couple of other YouTuber boats in St. Augustine as well. Brush w/fame.

We met up w/our good friends Jean & Yata for a couple days and had a wonderful time. They once were from the Pepin area and are avid travelers. We’ve sailed Grenada and Croatia w/them and meet up when we can. They were in Orlando, met up w/us in St. Augustine, now in Barbados then to Grenada then to Costa Rica. Whew! We were always envious of them, they’ve been gone almost every winter for 15-20 years. We wandered town and managed to check out some very good music venues w/semi-outdoor seating.

We toured the Lightner Museum, an eclectic mix of just about anything. Located in the former Alcazar Hotel built by Henry Flagler in 1888. We also toured the Pirate museum, what a hoot! Very well done w/historical references and authentic artifacts; one of 2 remaining Jolly Roger flags, Captain Kidd’s original journal from his final voyage in 1699, and the only surviving treasure chest in the world, Captain Tew’s, known as ‘a wicked and ill-disposed person’. We then wandered around the grounds of the Fort Mose’s museum (closed).

Jean & Yata off to Barbados now on to boat projects, sight seeing and provisioning the boat.

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We said goodbye to Cumberland Island, GA and moved all of 6 miles down the Cumberland River and up the Amelia River to Fernandina Beach, FL. Yay, we’re in Florida! We took a mooring ball there which gave us access to the marina facilities; think showers & laundry & dinghy dock access. Our plans were relatively loose at this moment; we knew we ‘needed’ to get to St Augustine by the 12th of Dec for our 2 week reservations at a marina there. Also we were going to be meeting up w/2 sets of very good friends there; Jean A & Yata P who are on a whirlwind tour of vacation spots and Mark & Cheryl M who are going to be in the area for awhile. We had extra time to play with, because, making plans to be in a specific spot whilst sailing is tougher than one thinks. We definitely had enough time to pick our weather window and get to St Augustine while hanging out in Fernandina Beach.

Fernandina Beach. What a small gem of a town. There had to be at least 50+ restaurants here all w/outside dining, a great historic district, the best ever hardware store and friendly people. The town plotted in 1811 and named after King Ferdinand VII of Spain, claims to be the only US location to have existed under 8 different flags. We wandered the streets looking at the architecture, ate outside a few times, made multiple trips to the hardware store, and attended a holiday parade one evening-hindsight-big mistake WAY too many people; D&I only ones wearing masks.

A couple cool houses, the wall on the Cat Rescue shelter, and the pirate painting on the hardware wall that looked amazingly like the owner, K’s new buddy in front of the oldest bar in Florida, the Palace Saloon circa 1903 (no we didn’t go in) and K’s wardrobe conundrum – wool shirt, down coat, flip flops?!?

‘Snow’ in the south.

K was getting so hangry “I could eat my arm off” and solved the dilemma w/pizza, a great salad and Prosecco.

Key lime pie review #2. 3 on 1-10 scale. Custard made w/cornstarch and way too firm, odd taste in crust, bottled raspberry sauce. Lime flavor good. (not at pizza place)

Took a day to do some boat stuff. D found and fixed a leak under the galley sink that stemmed from the fresh water intake filter. Now we know why the plywood was warped. K managed to bake some bread.

Final day in Fernandina, and sorry, a sunset pic – Rory IN the sunset.

Passage to St Augustine. After careful planning, replanning and planning some more we picked the date and time to head for St Augustine. We needed to get the winds and waves pegged but more importantly to get the tides and currents nailed for both departing St Mary’s River inlet and entering the St Augustine inlet. The St. Aug inlet is one of those that constantly shifts and shoals so caution is needed to enter. We insightedly contacted a St. Aug TowBoatUS captain for advice. Also if too windy from one direction or waves from another virtually make it tough to unable to enter. Day chosen, 12/9 departing at 0200. Up and ready, departed at 0202 and moving down the channel w/the current at 6.5knots at 1,200 RPMs…in the dark. YeeHaa! Got to the inlet and of course the wind picked up to 17 knots and the waves were 5-6 ft on the nose. On top of that we were hailed on the radio, in the middle of the night, by the Coast Guard! Oh, and by the way there are 4 CG boats. BIG boats. No problem. We have been hailed from time to time on this trip by people saving us from doing things wrong, what could they want? They just wanted to pass us. All and all the inlet exit went well. It was here that K had the realization that she is becoming her mother. In the dark the boat was moving side to side, front to back in the dark so one could not plan their stance on deck. A ‘forced’ sit down occasionally happened to which K would let out a loud yelp or humph or ohhhh, not for fear just because. My mom did that all the time; there were times that I would come running because I thought she had hurt herself or worse; but no, she had just stepped wrong or sat down hard. So yes you do become your parents, and yes D is screwed!

Passage was 10% sailing, 30% motor sailing and 70% motor, not ideal but acceptable. Calm winds and low waves, a few dolphins, made the St Aug inlet a piece of cake compared to what we were ‘expecting’. Pulled into an anchorage right in front of the Castillo de San Marcos and enjoyed our shot of rum. Out of bacon so will have to have the all-the-bacon-you-can-eat breakfast later.

St Augustine. Our home for the next 20 days. Looking forward to its exploration, meeting up w/our friends, getting boat projects done, getting some Amazon orders, doing a lot of relaxing, celebrating the holidays-the town is wrapped head to toe in lights, and a myriad of other ‘stuff’. One of which is K practicing her anchoring bit<hface and stance. Had a nimnode anchor just in back of us; if the wind would picked up ‘mathematically’ they would end up <15ft from us, too close. Contacted them via radio and they basically blew our concerns off, “we know how to anchor”. Current anchoring bit<hface didn’t work, we moved; need to up the ante.

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Passage from Charleston, SC to Jekyll Island, GA, 155nm. So let me put the brakes on for a moment and say that this passage was an opportune moment for us to re-learn the pitfalls of using words or emoting feelings such as ‘expectations’ or ‘assumptions’; K more so expectations, D on assumptions. In reality I don’t know how many times one has to re-learn these lessons but it seems that it is obviously more than once, twice, thrice.

Plan was to leave Charleston Fri 11/26 at 1100. That coincided w/the current being favorable getting out of the harbor and 24-26hrs later w/the current being favorable to get into St Simons Sound Inlet by Jekyll Island. Perfect! The winds were to start out from the SW switching to W then to NW, 8-11knots. Perfect! The waves were to be from the SW then W, 1-3ft every 5 then 6 seconds. Perfect! It was to be sunny the entire time, but very cold for the overnite. Acceptable! So now in K’s mind the ‘expectation’ of this passage was that it was going to be idyllic, peaceful for a change, warm during the day, smooth at nite. The ‘assumptions’ made to match were how to set the sails and route plan. Based on all the forecasting info we had in front of us we decided to put one reef in the mainsail based on the projected wind speed. (Explanation #1 below) We ‘assumed’ that sail set would carry us thru the nite. We chose a route closer to shore because we ‘assumed’ that the waves would be less there because the wind would be coming off land.

Let the passage begin. We were able to sail beautifully w/the headsail out of Charleston Harbor. Had to fight for space in the channel w/a tug pulling a barge who in turn was fighting for space in the channel w/a ginormous container ship. Got out of the Harbor Inlet (Explanation #2 below) and into open water and put up the mainsail w/the one reef. The wind was very light, contrary to forecast and the waves were from a different direction, contrary to forecast so we bounced around uncomfortably for the 1st 3 hours. Due to the lack of wind we were going to take out the 1 reef in the mainsail. Waited for a bit and slowly the wind started picking up so we decided to keep the sail reefed. Wind continued to build from the ‘wrong’ direction as did the waves. By 20:00 the wind reached the upper teens/lower 20’s and Rory’s nose was diving into the waves every so often. Uncomfortable-er? You bet. K was QUITE crabby because her idyllic ‘expectation’ of a perfect sail wasn’t happening. The ‘assumption’ of sail set and route plan was causing D to have a case of the ‘What Ifs’. What if the wind goes above 25 knots, what if Rory’s nose goes underwater and causes the anchor to loosen up, what if the wind goes above 30 knots, what if Borko(autopilot) stops working; etc. Winds stayed close to 20 knots for awhile, we chose not to put a second reef in the main due to the wave action, but did substantially reef in the headsail. The closer to shore route ran us right into a parking lot for container ships outside the Port of Beaufort, SC, 21 to be exact. That made the wind angle too tight and the waves even more confused as we needed to go into shallower water to avoid them. At 23:00 we FINALLY turned the corner around the ships and were sailing as the wind and wave direction shifted favorably. The winds slowly diminished the rest of the evening and by sunrise we were gifted with the ‘expected’ winds and waves. The morning was cold, the sun was warm, the sail was pleasant so we decided to press on to Cumberland Island Inlet roughly 20nm further south from St Simons Inlet and relish in our ‘expectedness’.

Explanation #1: Reefing the sails. The concept of reefing the boats sails is to decrease the amount of sail exposed to the wind which in turn slows the boat down, increasing stability and safety. Basically de-powering the boat; think dragging your feet while sledding down a hill to slow yourself down to not hit the tree. In our situation above, if the forecasted winds were to be in the 20’s as they ended up we probably would have put 2 maybe 3 reefs in the main for at least the overnite part of the passage. Putting the reefs in while sailing in rough seas is doable but not extremely desirable, especially at nite when the vision of the sea state is greatly restricted. So in the situation above, we should have put the next reef in the sail as we noticed that the winds were continuing to build.

Ok, so now we’re in sailing bliss and approaching the Cumberland Island Inlet, close to high tide and the current going in our favor. Perfect! Drop the sails and monitor 2 different charts as we go in; one on the chart plotter at the helm and one on an iPhone. The depths on the charts all look as in pics below, good mid to upper teens; lowest spot was 8ft so avoid that spot and head on to the anchorage. We turn into the inlet and the depths begin to radically differ then what are on the charts, every way we turn. Lowest we saw was 3.5ft; I was white knuckling the helm. Made it thru the rest of the inlet to the ‘deeper’ section of 20+ft. Not the additional stress we needed on a relatively sleepless passage. As I analyzed the chart plotter I noticed a tiny, and I mean tiny red dot. I clicked on that dot and the message below appeared. Yikes to quote Rita Ann; I’m glad we made it thru and I’m glad we did it at high tide which is almost 7 ft here. There were no shoaling demarcations on either of the charts, nothing but a tiny red dot.

Explanation #2. What are Inlets? By definition it is a bay or recess in the shore of a sea, lake or river. More specifically here along the Atlantic Coast they are a narrow water passage through a barrier island leading to a bay, lagoon or sound. The eastern US has the longest chain of barrier islands in the world. Inlets exist because of the tides. An inlet is generally formed when a severe storm breaks thru a barrier island and the tides keep the water flowing back and forth thus keeping the inlet open. However, due to that tidal flow its depths and sides move and change. Hence the differences in chart versus reality. There are many inlets, most of which are not navigable by a sailboat, or larger draft boats. Larger inlets say Charleston or Savannah or St Mary’s are dredged for commercial or military traffic. The others, one is supposed to call to get ‘local knowledge’ (usually a TowBoatUS) to find out the status of the inlet one wishes to transit. Hindsight!

We anchored at the northern tip of Cumberland Island for the nite. It was peaceful and we overlooked Jekyll Island and had an interesting view of the St Simons bridge. Did not realize how large the sounds or bays were on the back of the islands. Had our rum shots and made bacon-passage-breakfast the next morning.

The following afternoon we chose to move 16 miles further south and to do it on the ICW (intercoastal waterway). Like we wanted to go back thru that inlet again, yeah right. Sauntered thru grand marshes and islands down the Cumberland River. 2/3’s of the way down the river one reaches a major channel called King’s Bay, which leads to the Kings Bay Naval Submarine Base. There was a sub present on the docks. Can’t get too close or a naval gun boat intercedes. At times the channel is closed when a nuclear sub is either entering or exiting the base. Only issue we ran into was a dredge taking up most of the channel.

Cumberland Island. The barrier island has a rich and variable past. It has been inhabited by the Timucua Indians whose population was decimated by the Spanish either thru disease or their greed for gold and god. Then the island went back and forth between the English, French and Spanish. Then you have powerhouse players such as Thomas Lynch and Nathanael Greene, who among many men died ‘suddenly’ on the island. His widow Caty and her new husband built a cotton plantation. Eli Whitney came to the island to present his cotton gin, Caty suggested an improvement and thus the cotton industry was revolutionized. She built a mansion called Dungeness and a year after her new husband died. She continued to throw lavish parties. The widow’s daughter gained control of the estate after the Caty’s death and was visited by Robert E. Lee’s father; who yep, died on the island. And so on until the Thomas, the brother of Andrew Carnegie purchased the property. His wife Lucy added on to the mansion and yep, Thomas then died. After Lucy died many years later, the mansion burned and it is now ruins. Thru a whole bunch of ‘family stuff’ the bulk of the property ended up being purchased by the National Park Service in 1972. It is now home to feral horses, armadillos, alligators, raccoons, deer, turtles and bobcats.

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Wrightsville Beach was the first ‘civilization’ we’d been to in 12 days and even at the Severn Marina we were way out in the boonies. We anchored towards the end of town and had to use Bo quite a bit. If you recall the motor had been acting up. Well it continued to do so on our errand to get diesel fuel. Start, choke, spit, die. D at the fuel dock thought that just maybe the last gas we got for Bo was bad. Luckily the fuel dock had a disposal for gas and we got new gas. Start, choke, spit, die, start, choke, spit, die, start, RUN!!! Motor problem solved. We spent some time wandering the town and the beach area and saw palm trees for the first time. We also had a fantastic lunch out. I had gotten quite sick of my own cooking and this was a treat. We made 4 fuel runs with Bo, because the water depths would not work with Rory, and a small provision run. Good to go. We also had lunch out the next day which was so-so and served w/a plate full of french fries. Upon eating them all just because they were there and then bemoaned that fact for a full day.

Scenes around…

We spent a lot of time planning our next passage which would be about 24 hours. We sat out a low pressure system that blew thru and planned to leave on the back edge of it which would give us good N-NW winds to go south, albeit it would be cold. K had literally no sleep the nite before departure but stated she’d be fine. D was gungho to get started. We got out into the Atlantic a mile or so and the waves were horrendous (said no sleep K, also said other words that can’t be typed). They were residual from the low pressure system and were ‘square’ waves. Meaning same height as the spacing between them. IE, 6′ waves 6 seconds apart. The winds were light so the waves did finally stretch out a bit. However, ever so often a ‘rogue’ wave appeared that was 8-12′ high; yes Jean, Yata, Jeri & Dave, they were as big as a house!!! We motor-sailed for the first 21 of 155nm waiting for wind. Just before rounding Cape Fear and the Frying Pan Shoals the wind filled in, the sails went up and we were sailing. Hiphiphurray! The waves then became confused, due to the shoals; one could see breaking waves in the 4′ depths one needed to avoid. Continuing down the coast and sailing between 5.5 & 6.4knots the rest of the way with just a triple reefed main; the swell waves and wind waves continued to be a pain in the butt. The roll the boat sideways back and forth pain in the butt. Everything shifting in the boat pain in the butt! Let’s just say that D & K have quite varying opinions on how this sail went 😉

So the winds died down approaching Charleston and we missed our prime opportunity to hit the current into the harbor correctly. “Couldn’t be that bad, right?” HAH! Going directly into 2.5knots of current barely able to make 3.5 knots boat speed. Got the slow tour of Charleston Harbor. Hindsight-hang outside the channel until the current shifts. Obviously too tired to have foresight. Anchored in harbor around 1300, had the perfunctory celebratory shot of rum, put the boat to bed and put us to bed at 1630. Slept til 0500 the next morning. We moved to a marina for a few days to wait out another low that was pushing thru. Very different scenery at this one… The marina was originally a part of the Charleston Navy Yard which closed in 1996. The building on site was part of the degaussing procedure for the naval ships. IE reducing the ship’s effect on the earth’s magnetic field, thus making them less ‘visible’.

Low pressure day kept us on the boat and unable to tour Charleston. It did allow for boat projects and laundry. One project D has wanted to get done for awhile was to rewire the run from the batteries to the solar controllers to enable the addition of more solar panels and needed my help. Sidebar: we’ve done a lot of wiring together in our past and came close to the big D on a couple of those. Most notably at the farm we were wiring from the wind turbine to the inverter in the garage. After multiple attempts it was going nowhere; each of us blaming each other for the fails. Getting ugly. As luck would have it D’s brother Souvie and his golfing buddies showed up for a visit. One gave a suggestion that ultimately succeeded! If it hadn’t neither D or I would be on this boat today. Oh, this wiring project was a piece of cake even tho the boat got totally trashed.

Finally Charleston; we’d been here 25+ years ago and remembered little. What a cool historic town, based on the evils of slavery. Bittersweet. Wandered around looking at the architecture et al.

Onward…

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