Monthly Archives: July 2013

It doesn’t look like it, but we really are moving along about 5 or 6 mph.

And for you Sam, here is our one and only turtle picture. It’s a young loggerhead that was swimming around the docks at the St Augustine Municipal Marina.  FYI We also saw manatees and dolphins swimming around here also.

We left St Simons Island with every intention of going to Savannah, but somehow we ended up in Charleston, SC. This time though it wasn’t because of any (ah-hem) mistakes put into the chart plotter. Originally we had planned on meeting Jordan and Lyra in Savannah where they were going to jump on board and ride with us up to Charleston, but life got in the way for Jordan. (sure glad I’m retired) Jordan got a job and the employer said please start right away, so plans got changed. Then as we were headed north we figured we would end up getting to the entrance to the Savannah river around midnight, which meant hanging out until daylight to run the inlet in visible light. Or… we could keep sailing all night and hit the Charleston inlet around noon and have great light all the way in. Not to tough of a decision figuring we need to get some parts for and work done on Stray Catz, and Savannah didn’t have the facilities.

We had a nice following sea, good stiff breeze, what more could we ask for? Wait! We didn’t ask for more. The seas did get a little exciting. Occasional waves breaking over the side and stern of the boat, but nothing scary, and around noon we reached the entrance to the Charleston Harbor.

We motored most of the way once we reached the channel and because of the ebb tide it took us almost two hours to reach the anchorage. We found a nice spot across from the Charleston City Marina and it looks like we will be here for a few weeks as we continue to outfit Stray Catz to our liking.

We did see a nice big sea turtle here to welcome us as we turned into the channel, but sorry Sam we were dealing with the sails right then and didn’t get a picture.

As a bonus, the second night here, we were welcomed to a nice fireworks show. Apparently the River Dogs had a game. I don’t know if there are fireworks every game, or just this one, but we enjoyed the show just the same. I just hope we don’t get too distracted by all the things to do around here that we don’t get the vital things accomplished.

Now if we could just get consistent internet.

This post is supposed to be from Savannah, but it’s not. We were headed to Savannah everything going fine until… the auto pilot stopped working.

We were about 15 miles off the coast of FL roughly abeam of Jacksonville, and the auto pilot started going off course. We tried resetting it many times, but no luck. It would work for a while and then not.

After many hours of trying to hand steer Stray Catz in a quartering sea, we finally threw in the towel. We hove to and plotted a course for what I thought was St Simons Island, GA. It turns out I must have been tired, because it was St Marys, GA instead. Oops, but it gave us the opportunity to explore Cumberland Island, and rest.

After a day of rest and exploration, we took off for St Simons Island via the intra coastal waterway. This started out to be a very pretty trip. Lots of dolphins. Roseate Spoonbills. Kylan saw a stingray do a flip out of the water.  Beautiful country. Beautiful day.  Until St Andrew Sound. That’s where everything went down hill.

I had this great idea that we would scoot out to the ocean and go around the Atlantic side of Jekyll Island. According to the charts I had, it should have been ok. The charts were wrong. We headed out to sea, but the charts and the channel marks didn’t line up. When the depth gauge read way more shallow than it should, and way more shallow than I was with two miles from land, I did an emergency turn around and started following my tracks back the way  I came. While on the way back, I called TowBoat US and asked for some info. They said ABSOLUTELY DON’T go that way.    I wished I would have called them hours sooner.

Now the next problem. We have to go around the other side of Jekyll Island, and it’s low tide. Low tide was great for the one bridge we had to go under, but not so good for the narrow undredged channels we had to drive through. I do believe we were pushing a little mud at one point, but Stray Catz kept going.

We did finally make it to St Simons, GA and without any real incident, but for me, it was too much of the wrong kind of excitement for one day.