Unexcused Absences East Coast Cruise – Week 4 (he said)

East Coast Cruise – Week 4 (he said)

by Kent 24 Nov 2015

November 15 to November 21, 2015. First thing Sunday morning we said goodbye to the nice folks at Hidden Harbor Yacht Club and repositioned back to our anchorage off Fort Frederica, on St. Simons Island.

Our friend Dave had a day of activities planned for us. He’s a very early riser (as in 5am typically), so when we told him we were getting up early to move the boat back to the anchorage, he laughed and said, “what’s early for you guys, 7:30?” Well, actually, early for us is more like 8:30, but there you have it. In any case, we were anchored by a little after 10 and Dave picked us up and we drove to Jekyll Island for a long, leisurely bike ride.

Bike ride on Jekyll Island

The 5,700 acre Jekyll Island is a terrific spot and well worth a visit. It’s currently a state park, but includes places to stay, eat and play. A (mostly) paved bike trail circles the island, and loops through forests, fields, and swamps. The island was occupied by the English in the early 18th century, on the frontier with Spanish Florida. The plantation era followed, and lasted from the late 18th century until about the Civil War.

Salt marsh at the north end of Jekyll Island

At the end of the 19th century, the Jekyll Island Club opened as a winter retreat for the wealthy. At its peak, from the late 1880’s through the beginning of World War II, it was home to the winter “cottages” of the world’s wealthiest people. Many of the cottages still stand, which originally belonged to folks like J.P. Morgan, Joseph Pulitzer, Cornelius Vanderbilt, Marshal Field, Frank Goodyear, George Macy, and William Rockefeller (although, interestingly, not his older brother John D.).

One of the winter “cottages” of the 19th century 1%

Most amazingly, Jekyll Island was the site of the very first transcontinental telephone call, placed by Theodore Vail (president of AT&T) to Alexander Graham Bell in 1915. His second call was to President Wilson.

For lunch, we stopped at a delicious waterfront taco shack, then continued our bike ride to the northern tip of the island, to Driftwood Beach. It appears that the area used to be a forest, but the shifting sands of the barrier islands undercut the trees and now they lie along the beach, bark long gone, trunks bleached in the sun. That evening we went back to Dave’s condo where his wife Suzanne served a delicious home-cooked dinner (catfish, crab-stuffed salmon, and pork), and then it was time for us to get back to Miss Adventure.

Driftwood Beach

Monday morning we detoured into Brunswick Harbor to pick up fuel (one of the best diesel prices on the east coast is at Brunswick Landing Marina), then motored back out to the ICW and continued south. The hardest part of the trip was off Jekyll Island, with numerous shallow spots, tricky navigation, and strong current. The tides in this part of the south-east, as was the case last week in Charleston, are still in the eight-foot range.

The most I’ve ever spent on fuel at one time

Monday evening we anchored in Cumberland Sound, just north of the Florida border and directly across from the enormous Kings Bay Submarine Base, home to the US Navy’s east coast ballistic missile submarine fleet. It goes without saying that the area was thick with patrol boats and men with automatic weapons. But the anchorage was perfect, 12 feet of water with great holding and not much current.

Fishing trawler in southern Georgia

Tuesday’s adventure was leading a pack of 4 other boats (including the Down East trawler Daybreak – more on them later) through the tricky shallows and turns south of Fernandina Beach. I offered to let the other boats pass me near the entrance to the tricky spot, and the general agreement after some discussion on the radio was that it looked like I knew what I was doing, so they decided I should lead the way. I finally broke the news that not only was it my first time through the area, but also our first cruise in the US. That got a good laugh from everyone. Once out of the shallow spots everyone took off ahead of me – remember, we’re a very slow, old boat. The rest of the day was uneventful, and we dropped our hook just south of St. Augustine, Florida.

Definitely in Florida; condos and more condos

Things are starting to feel distinctly tropical. The water temperature has warmed to the high 70’s, the ICW is full of dolphins and pelicans, and the evenings have that delicious, warm, breezy humidity typical of all those nights at anchor in the islands back when we had real jobs and were chartering sailboats during our hectic two-to-three-sailing-trips-per-year vacation schedule.

Wednesday we had another nine-hour day of motoring, this time against the tide almost the whole way, unlike Tuesday when we had a good following current. But just like Tuesday, we got passed again by Daybreak, and eventually anchored for the night in Rockhouse Creek, near the Ponce de Leon ocean inlet. The anchorage was almost perfect; shallow water, beautiful scenery, a nearby lighthouse, terrific anchor holding, and a current that flowed only one way, during the outbound tide. Can’t figure out why, but the inbound tidal current was almost nonexistent.

Pelicans

This part of the Florida waterway is really really flat country, wide open, and not terribly interesting. There were two things we saw of note, though; our first manatee (a large water-dwelling mammal), and the VAB (Vertical Assembly Building) at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.

Thursday evening’s anchorage wasn’t scenic in any way, but it served its purpose. We needed to anchor in a spot with some protection from north and west wind, and this part of Florida is known for its lack of protected anchorages. The terrain is mostly miles and miles of shallow water, so there’s no way to get close to any trees to block the wind. The trick to finding protection is to snuggle up to a tall bridge (really) and park in the lee of the big earth berm that carries the roadway up from sea level to where the bridge starts, so that’s what we did at the Pineda high bridge.

Friday we cruised south to Vero Beach, home to lots of rich people, at least judging by the houses lining the waterway. Lots of man-made waterfalls, backyard putting greens, large boats, and outdoor dining rooms. Our plan was to get a mooring at the Vero Beach City Marina, so we called ahead and were told that they currently had 96 boats parked on 45 moorings (do the math), and we would have to raft up with someone. As we were about to pull in, I heard Daybreak call on the radio for instructions to their mooring, and since we had to raft up anyway, might as well be with someone we “know”; even though we’ve never met, we have had our daily pass and radio chat with the boat for the past few days.

The packed mooring field at Vero Beach City Marina

We called Daybreak and they said sure, come alongside. So we tied up and finally got to meet Captain Kenny and his friend Bill. Apparently Kenny’s wife was more into living on the boat, as opposed to actually boating on the boat, so Bill was along to help Kenny get the boat from Delaware to the Florida Keys. Really nice folks, and we’re so glad we finally met them – they sounded really nice on the radio.

But we had to cut short our jawboning because we had to host our friends Jack and Susan, who live in Vero, for happy hour on the Miss Adventure. We met them on the Canal de la Garonne (in the south of France) during the first summer we owned Après Ski. After happy hour and a tour of our boat we went to a local pizza place for a delicious dinner.

Us with Susan and Jack

Saturday was a packed social schedule. First, we hosted breakfast on the Miss Adventure for our mooring neighbors Kenny and Bill, then went to Susan and Jack’s house for a home cooked lunch, then got back to our boat in time to host happy hour for Kitty and Scott of Tamure, whom we met a few weeks ago at ICW mile 346 in South Carolina.

Very busy dinghy dock in Vero Beach

This cruise is so different from our cruises on the French canals, and not just for the obvious reasons (the lack of abundant, inexpensive, and delicious wine and cheese). Our pace of travel is much faster. In France we average between 17 and 18 hours of cruising per week; the past four weeks of ICW cruising is equivalent to two months of time on the canals, in terms of hours driven. And in terms of distance covered, we’ve already gone farther than during our typical three-month summer canal cruise.

Another difference is the paucity of places to stop and wander and visit. In France we can basically park the boat anywhere along the canals, get out, and take a walk through the countryside or a bike ride down the towpath or a stroll through a village. Here, access to land is tightly controlled – not that we’ve had much time to stop and smell the mangroves anyway, since we started our cruise almost three weeks late. So aside from the differences, and in between all the boat projects, we are indeed having a great time. And, somehow, we got through an entire week on the Miss Adventure without an MPOD (Mechanical Problem of the Day). I probably shouldn’t have mentioned that.

East Coast Cruise – Week 4 Numbers