Sunset in Florida

Fernandina Hartbor Marina, Florida

Florida!

We finally made it to Florida!  We are safely in the Fernandina Harbor Marina, in the NE corner of the state.  Beautiful day today - cold (45F) this AM, but now that we are in Florida it is nice and sunny and warm. We are in shorts and T-shirts. Yeah!

Of course, there is a storm coming tomorrow (what else).  We expect cooler temperatures and winds up to maybe gale force on Friday.  But we are at the dock, and staying put.  Everything here is within walking distance; lots of good restaurants, fish market, stuff to do. Time to catch up on our reading, walking, biking, and sleeping.

Ihana's track - 12/19/2012
Jekyll Island, GA to Fernandina Beach, FL

Pictures - ICW through Georgia

Whoops!  New high bridge under construction at Skidaway Narrows, south of Isle of Hope,
south of Savannah on the ICW.
The beams did not line up where they met in midstream.
Bridge not open yet (back to the drawing boards).
We went through the old Bascule bridge here.

Georgia low country amid the sea islands.  

Sailing on a cool morning in Georgia.

Sunset photo taken out our starboard portlight, in the Jekyll Harbor Marina.

Bicycling on Jekyll Island, Georgia

BAD DAYS - the dark side of cruising

While most of our cruising has been enjoyable (or, at least tolerable), there have been SEVERAL days that we would not choose to do again.  These range from bad to really-bad.  Lest anyone think that cruising is all smooth sailing, here's a summary of the worst we have gone through:

Ontanagon-to-Keewenaw. Lake Superior, June. Great day of sailing on Lake Superior. Wind 18-22 knots off the port quarter, large but survivable waves. All day. Jim Kimmet aboard, who has had experience sailing in this stuff.  Full sail!  SCORE: Fun-1 Learning Experience-1  Did not enjoy-1.

Georgian Bay crossing. Killarney-to-Britt, July.  Large waves on our port bow. All day, about 45 NM, 10+ miles offshore.  Got to work the diesel. Lot of slamming into the big waves. SCORE: Okay but a lot of tension and hard work-1. Did not enjoy-1.

Trent-Severn Canal, Ontario. August. Got stuck aground and towed off. TWICE in one day.  1. Charged almost C$300 by a local marina for 10 minutes of towing, reimbursed by TowBoat-US [YES. You must have this insurance. ~15o per year, includes offshore, unlimited towing!] 2. Low water in Grass Lake. Towed off by local fishing boat.  Won't do the T-S again with anything that draws more than 2 feet. SCORE: Danger-0.  Not scared-2.

Lake Simcoe, Ontario. August.  Big waves from all directions for a couple of hours. This lake has a very uneven bottom – shallow, mixed with deep – for very confused and dangerous waves.  A bad couple of hours, on a nice day. SCORE: Okay but a lot of tension and hard work-1. Did not enjoy-1.

Lake Ontario Crossing. East side, Bay of Quinte, Ontario – to – Oswego, NY. August. Crossed from the Trent-Severn Canal to the Erie Canal.  Mast down, lashed on deck in a cradle - since we needed it down for both canals. Left at sunrise, dead calm; weather predicted "light winds, best day to cross for a week". Two hours out, out of seven, we got BIG waves off the bow. Boat was POUNDING for several hours into the seas.  Even though we had thoroughly tied the mast down, it was starting to bounce out of the cradle!  I had to go forward onto the pounding bow and use the docklines to add lashing lines over the mast.  Our harnesses/tethers/jacklines paid for themselves that day! A contender for our Worst Day Ever. SCORE:  Dangerous. OMG. Very scary. Will NEVER do this again. – 2.

Croton-on-Hudson, Hudson River, NY. September.  Nice pretty ride past West Point, then hard waves on the nose as we turned south towards the Tappen Zee.  Pounding, full power on diesel for about 2 hours.  Half an hour out of our nearest and chosen marina, Half Moon Bay, we heard a Tornado Warning (not a Watch) on the radio, for where we were at.  Nothing to do but hope that we didn't get hit for the ½-1 hour it would take to make port.  Fortunately (for us), the tornado hit New York City instead. SCORE: Scary, OMG with a lot of tension and hard work-1. Scary, OMG, did not enjoy-1.

Sandy Hook, NJ. September. Left New York City, planning to make an overnight run down the Jersey Coast (offshore, no ICW here) to Cape May.  A few hours out, about 4-5 miles offshore east of Sandy Hook, we got hit with about 8-foot BREAKING waves.  Sails down, full engine – headed directly (fortunately, running before the wind) for an hour or two into the shelter of Sandy Hook bay. Anchored overnight, then continued on the next day. Many boats joined us in the anchorage. [Met a guy later who had done the overnighter; he got knocked down several times, had his bimini and dodger shredded, was bruised from head to foot.] Another contender for our Worst Day Ever. SCORE: Very scary, OMG, dangerous – 3 (with Tom Cronmiller).

Atlantic City, NJ. September. The next day was a long run, wind behind us.  All day.  Turned west into Atlantic City just at sunset, catching the strong winds and waves on our starboard beam.  Exciting for about ½ hour. SCORE: Scary, OMG with a lot of tension and hard work-1. Scary, did not enjoy-1.

Delaware Bay, NJ-DE. September.  Fighting the tide/current for most of the day, up from Cape May to Delaware City.  Rough but not a serious problem. SCORE: A lot of tension and hard work-2. Did not enjoy-1.

Hurricane Sandy, NC. October.  No problem as we were safe in a protected marina. See separate blurbs.

NOW - south Georgia, ICW.  We are only able to travel about 1/2-2/3 of the days.  Fronts come through - strong winds and waves - and we hole up in marinas; then we get a day or two when we can move on.  Definitely are timing our cruising days now.

-- figured we should report this. Most of our blogs make it sound like we are having a great time. Mostly, we are.  But did need to share the dark side.

Cruising Guides and Information

Here's a big thank-you and recommendation for the cruising information put out by Managing The Waterway / On The Water Chartguides. These are developed, published and updated by Captains Mark & Diana Doyle (who made presentations to our Northern Lights Sailing Club a few years ago).  

We can't thank them enough for the information we really needed to make this trip:

1. Managing The Waterway – IntraCoastal Waterway cruising guide. We use this every day. Easy to follow, easy to find info we need quickly, really complete.  Well worth the price.

2. Anchor Guides – their new Anchor Guides for the ICW provided us with information to pick out, use (and survive, or avoid) several shallow (and deep) ICW anchorages.  One night at anchor instead of at a marina paid for the books!

3. E-mail alerts.  Since we bought and registered our chartbooks, we receive e-mail alerts about important updates that we need to know about. Things like bridge closings, and especially warnings about new or changed danger areas because of shoaling (some of it shifted by Hurricane Sandy?). 

4. Camp Dowry Creek Seminars – while trapped for almost a week at the Dowry Creek Marina near Belhaven, NC, waiting out Hurricane Sandy:  Besides being held hostage along with about 30 other boats, we enjoyed swapping sailing and cruising information with the other boats. And, Mark Doyle ran a series of impromptu discussions about navigating south on the ICW (if and when we got out of there).  Imagine 4 days of information coming at us by the ICW full-timers who know the most about it – and FREE (excepting marina dockage fees).  Punch line: Their information on how to get through the worst trouble-spots helped (or enabled) us to make it through places like Fields Cut, Little Mud River, and Jekyll Creek without even hitting bottom ("shoaly-hit!").  Advice on timing the tides and which nav aids to follow – or avoid – was great.  I wish they would put on these seminars again – we lucked out in getting all this info at one time, while not being able to go anywhere anyway. Something good did come out of Hurricane Sandy - for us.

Active Captain

Many sailors and most cruisers know about ActiveCaptain.com

This internet-based system is invaluable for cruisers, showing information on marinas, anchorages, hazards, and local knowledge – everything from shoal reports to bridge-opening schedules. Information is not only published by the site developers/owners/maintainers, Karen and Jeff Siegel, but is contributed by all of us cruisers.  

We would have had a much harder time navigating our way south without this resource.

Take a look.  

And please read our next blog (below) about something that makes this even better!

Garmin Bluechart Mobile - Greatest iPhone/iPad App Ever

You gotta hear about this!  The one problem with Active Captain is that you needed an Internet connection to access it.  

No more – Garmin now has an app that includes BOTH its navigation charts AND the complete Active Captain database.  You download all of this, so it runs without an Internet connection!  Of course, the charts and Active Captain data is only up-to-date as of the time of downloading [it can be re-downloaded later, if suppose], but that's close enough to be free of the need to be hooked to the Internet.

The price:  App-free!  Active-Captain database-free!  Garmin US Bluecharts-$30, one time payment (in-app download and payment).  Tide data-$4, one time download. TOTAL COST - $34 initial, $zero after that.

It also communicates things like your own waypoints and routes with some of the more expensive Garmin chartplotters & networks (but not with ours) – but you do NOT need to do this to use the rest of the app.

Off-line. Active Captain. Nav Charts. – CHEAP.  And WOW!!!