Jacksonville Free City Dock

Right off Sisters Creek as you approach the St. Johns River outside of Jacksonville is a series of relatively new floating concrete docks.  We arrived here at 1100 hours after a very short (less than three hour) run from Fernandina.

The south end of the mooring field at Ferandina. There is a sunken ketch as evidenced by the spars sticking out of the water and a live aboard with his makeshift shelter.

When we got to the free dock we found it completely empty so we got to choose where we wanted to be.  You can tell that only one side of the dock can be used as there are no cleats on the other side.  They have a 72 hour limit which is more than enough as this is really out in the middle of nowhere.  Fisherman use this area and there is a large building that seems to be the headquarters of the Greater Jacksonville Kingfish Tournament.  OK I guess.

When we went to put out the trash we found the close-in trash cans overflowing.  It doesn’t take Sherlock Holmes to figure out who was here before us.  Tons of beer cans (at least they were in plastic bags) and a few plastic bottles of used Shell Rotella Oil.  There was five quarts of oil in the bottles, a sure sign of a small diesel engine that would be in a sailboat.   Later, while doing our computer work for the day we happened upon the daily blog that is being kept by the leader of the Sail to the Sun group.  He happens to have a location transmitter similar to ours so we can track his location and by picking on the bread crumb trail see where he (they) are or have been.  Sure enough, they were here last night and left for St. Augustine early this morning.  The only issue I have is that you don’t dispose of old oil by simply leaving it by some trash cans.  We have bookmarked his site so that next year we can keep better track of this group hopefully staying out of phase with them.  They actually left Newport News, VA fifteen days ahead of us and we are having to be careful not to pass them by.

Browne, the self appointed greeter stopped by to introduce himself to us (he likes to talk).  He is a fixture here who will give boaters a ride to where ever they might need to go.  He told us there are more free docks in Jacksonville itself and when we looked at Active Captain we found the Metropolitan Park Marina having 78 free transient docks (72 hour limit).  Power is $8.  We might need to detour up there on our way north, it is only 15 miles (two plus hours) out of our way and we can visit Jacksonville.   Evidently there is a security guard that lives on-site here but we haven’t seen him.  Today as we got here we found the Florida Waterway people out patrolling as well as the USCG.  We were following a few Canadian flagged sail boats the last few miles before we got here and noticed that the Coast Guard was boarding them as they slowly motored south.  They finished with those boats, turned around and motored by us before boarding a trawler cat that was behind us.   Maybe we look harmless.

The skipper spent the afternoon working on the computer, updating the Pilgrim 40 Wikidot web pages and owners data base while the mate worked on her puzzle.  The bird was busy chirping her little head off, after ripping one of keys off the computer keyboard, which got her sent back to her cage.

Later a few more sailboats came in, the last guy about ten minutes before it got dark.  There was enough people around to tend his lines and we were in the middle of cooking dinner so I didn’t need to go out to help although it would have been interesting.  On his first pass he botched the landing, tried again and ended up cross wise to the dock.  He then came in again (no fenders over the side) and pretty much bounced off the side of the dock.  We think he bought the boat yesterday.

Tomorrow we will be at Fish Island Marina in St. Augustine where our friend Mike (former Pilgrim 40 owner) keeps his PDQ Trawler Cat.  It will be good to see him again.

Today:  23 miles in 2.9 engine hours.  Total:  1992 miles.

Dave

Fernandina Harbor Marina, FL

Crossing St. Andrew Sound was a non event today.  We waited for the tide to come up some before we left the dock.  Winds were NNE at 6 to 8 knots, and we crossed on a flooding tide two hours before high.  The swells off the Atlantic still rolled us around a bit but we can now say the we are 3-0 crossing this sound.

When crossing St. Andrew Sound, the so called Magenta Line takes you out to R32 (lower right corner). The general consensus now is to follow the black line which has you cut across the shoal about a half mile inside R32 which is what we did. We never saw less than 14′ of water on this route.  It keeps you out of the worst of the rollers.

Coming down through the Kings Bay area we finally saw a sub being worked on.  We don’t know our subs well enough to know if was an attack sub or boomer.

The security patrol boat always stayed exactly between us and the sub as we came down the river.  We kept to the “wrong” side of the channel as we weren’t interested in having the patrol boat approach us for any reason.

We could have made the free city dock at Jacksonville today as it was only another 23 miles but figured that by the time we got there all the spots would be taken and then we would have to hunt for a spot in a nearby anchorage with daylight fading fast.  Tomorrow is another day so we took on 44 gallons of diesel at Fernandina and grabbed one of the few remaining mooring balls.  The balls are $20/night and we don’t have to be concerned about where to anchor.

On the mooring ball.

We took the dinghy into shore and walked the town so the mate could duck into all the little shops.  The skipper hung out on the sidewalk benches.

One of the stores thoughtfully provided some seating and a TV set at the entry into their store. Of course it was a store where all the merchandise appeales to the fairer sex so this area gave the males some place to hang out. I watched part of a football game while waiting.

While killing some time the skipper took a selfie while sporting his Panama hat with a palm tree in the background. Since we are officially in Florida now we can go back to wearing this hat.

We did go int the local Atlantic Seafood (and bait) store to purchase some fresh shrimp and swordfish which became this evenings dinner.

It turns out that Destiny, Pilgrim #8 is hot on our heels.  They showed up at Jekyll Island today and were told that we had just left this morning.  We didn’t know they were that close.   They will be staying there tomorrow so I expect that we will be running into them before too long as we will be dragging our feet on the way to St. Augustine so as to keep the sailing swarm ahead of us.

Distance today:  31 miles in 3.8 engine hours.

Dave

Jekyll Harbor Marina, Day 2

As “planned”, we didn’t leave this morning allowing us to sleep in a bit.  Actually, for the second day in a row, the mate was up before the skipper; at 0700 hours, normally the starting of the engine rousts her out.  A small turkey went into the crock pot this morning as it was our back up plan in case we didn’t get to see Amy and Robb on St. Simons.  A bit of boat cleaning and engine maintenance was done at a leisurely pace.  Batteries were watered and we changed the zinc in the engine heat exchanger.  We also gave some boat tours, and a couple that was traveling on a sailboat said this is their idea of a cruising boat.  I mentioned that there were two Pilgrims for sale at the moment.  When they left the said to let them know if we decide to sell in the next couple of days.  I doubt that will happen.

The ships mascot supervising some engine work.

Almost a month of salt water reduces the zinc by about half.

Early in the afternoon a sailboat got towed in by BoatUS Towing.  It was a sailboat that left Morning Star Marina a few hours after we did yesterday.  We heard some radio chatter about them having engine problems and it turns out he has a major problem.  The engine threw a rod and broke a fist size hole out of the side of his engine (Perkins 4-108).  What is really bad is that he just spent a lot of money on replacing the injection pump and on top of it he has been trying to sell the boat.  Now he gets to do a re-engine job away from his home port while spending money on transient dockage,   I hope he didn’t have to be somewhere soon.  The boat won’t be worth any more after he replaces the engine so he will be eating the cost.  That is just the thing we wanted to avoid when we decided to re-engine Liberty this summer.

Interesting boat, unfortunately the engine is shot.  1982 Freedom 44 cat ketch

There is good and bad news on the cell phone front.  For what ever reason we now have our wireless hot spot back on the phone after days of having to use a USB cable.  Maybe the people at Verizon where having a bad couple of days.  The bad news is that we got this months cell bill and sure enough, Verizon has upped our data charge by $20/month due to us having unlimited data.  It is not all that bad as we get a 23% discount as we are associated with PSU so it only costs us about $15/month more.

Our data usage since we have moved aboard.

Actually, we generally use a little less than 20 GB/month (except for the time in Key West when the mate was addicted to some Netflix serials).  Under Verizon’s new cell plans, for the same price as we are now paying for unlimited data (plus the mates phone and data plan) we could be on their 20 GB plan.  This would get the skippers phone unlimited texting (which he doesn’t use or do very often) but probably allow us to upgrade phones without worrying about fouling up the unlimited thing.  We will stick with what we have at the moment just so we don’t have to keep track of data.

The afternoon and evening was spent in the historic district where we looked at some art and listened to some Christmas carols in one  the “cottages”.

Next it was off to to North Beach where they had an artificial ice rink set up.  We did a little research before hand as we never had heard of artificial ice.  It turned out that this stuff is virtually indestructible, even figure skates with the teeth on the front don’t effect it.  It is used for training purposes both by hockey and figure skaters although it is “slower”.  It does require more frequent skate sharpening and it really showed when we watched the people trying to skate.  Admittedly, probably most people that were skating probably had never done it before but it was obvious that the “rental” skates hadn’t been sharpened since they left the factory.  When people tried to push off with the skates, they just slid sideways.  They didn’t have any figure skates and we didn’t bring ours coupled with the fact the rink was really, really small we decided to pass.  If they had sharp skates we might have given it a go just for the cultural experience.  Places like this give ice skating a bad name.

We watched the Christmas Golf Cart parade, the highlight being two pigs in one of the carts.

The Jekyll Island Club Hotel was frequented by the Morgans, Rockefellers, and Vanderbilts. You had to be a member of the “club” to even get on the island.

Take a tour in a horse drawn pumpkin (we didn’t).

We stayed around for the evenings festivities.  The mate got nicked $14 for some lobster pieces over potato chips while the skipper rode one of our bikes back to the boat to get our canvas chairs.

A fair number of the live oaks on the grounds were lit up.

The highlight of the evening was the lighting of their Christmas Tree (28,000 bulbs) and some fireworks. Of course a live band had been performing for hours.

Back to the boat we had a late dinner of turkey, stuffing and potatoes.

Today:  0 miles by boat, 6.25 miles on the bikes.

Dave

Dave and I have had some really fun days on our trip south, today was one of those really fun days!!!!  I love Christmas and today was the kick-off!!!!!  We rode our bikes to the historic district and heard the Jekyll Island Singers.  It was very special looking at the wonderful artwork and listening to Christmas carols!

We then rode to the beach to check out the ice-skating pond!  Very interesting!!!!!  We then rode our bikes back to the historic district to see the golf cart parade, check out the shops, listen to more Christmas music and watch the lighting of a huge Christmas tree.  To top off the festivities we watched fireworks to Jingle Bells!!!!

We will have to leave Jekyll Island tomorrow morning!!  Thank-you Jekyll Island for some wonderful memories!!!

Bobbi

Jekyll Harbor Marina, GA

We moved the boat all of nine miles today, down to the Jekyll Harbor Marina.  The cost to stay at the dock is essentially the same as Golden Isles but it positions us close to St. Andrew Sound so we can get across in the morning before the tide turns and the current opposes the NE wind and the corresponding swells coming in the inlet.  This marina is a lot smaller than Golden Isles and has a fair number of live aboards so they are a real friendly group.  Once couple that used to live in Annapolis now lives aboard their boat here and works as a dock hand at the marina, just to stay busy.  They remember the Pilgrim 40 Gatsby when it was kept in the Bert Jabin Yacht Yard in Annapolis over the winter.

The Spanish moss hanging from the trees here reminds us that we are getting south. The 70 degrees temperatures also help.

They “restrict” us to 1-1/2 hours of golf cart time here, but it is enough time to tour parts of the island.  Today we did the southern part, and checked out the shops at the town square (which is really only 10 minutes away on foot).

Here we are required to drive the cart on the street and not on any of the bike/walking trails. There are a lot of carts running around so car drivers are used to seeing them on the road.

The Atlantic shore at low tide. While the ocean appears calm, is because the wind is almost off the beach.

Some of the live aboards organized a little get together on the dock this evening where everybody brought a dish and something to drink.  One of the sailboats here is part of the Waterway Guide sponsored Sail to the Sun Rally that has about 30 sailboats being herded south down the ICW.  The main group was anchored in St. Marys River, off St. Marys (of course) where the town provided a Thanksgiving dinner last evening.  Since this function attracts a lot of new cruisers (I believe power boats are excluded), there is not a lot of anchoring experience among them.  As a result, boats were bouncing off each other last night with two boats losing their anchors.  They headed off for Fernandina today where they will be spending tonight and tomorrow night.  Evidently the Sail sponsored rally is also there at the same time.  The guy that is part of the group that is here didn’t want any part of that action (which is why he is here) but is going to catch up with them tomorrow.  Evidently, the reason the sailboats don’t make much progress each day is because they limit their movement as much as possible to mid to high tide times due to the shallow nature of the ICW.  You really have to want a sail boat really bad to put up with one on the ICW.    If it isn’t your keel getting stuck in the mud it is having to wait for bridge openings due to the mast height issue.

Our plan originally was to be in Fernandina tomorrow, but the last thing we want to deal with is almost 60 sailboats in one location.  We don’t mind passing one or two boats during the day, but we don’t want to be stuck in a group of 60.  Needless to say, we won’t be moving on tomorrow as we need to let them stay one day ahead of us.  The weather is also supposed to improve a bit wind-wise, with the NE winds dropping a bit as the days go by.  Since the tide times move about 40 minutes/day, when we leave Sunday we won’t have to worry too much about getting caught in a wind against the current situation going across St. Andrew Sound.  That and the fact that winds are supposed to drop to less than 5 knots tomorrow night makes the crossing the following morning that much easier.

The ladies around here convinced the mate that there is a lot going on around here tomorrow so she is content to stay.  They even have ice skating (on synthetic ice) they we might try.

Dave

Morning Star Marina, St. Simons Island

Since we only had a 29 mile run to Morning Star today, we didn’t leave until 0800 hours which allowed us to get in by 1130.  As today is Thanksgiving there are no marina workers here.  Yesterday we were told to dock Liberty in front of a 26′ Searay powerboat on the north end of the transient dock as they needed room for an 83′ boat on the extreme north end in front of us.  Well, there was no Searay so we tied up close to a sailboat, leaving 120′ for the big boat.  When they came in they stopped on the south end with about 30′ of the boat overhanging the end of the dock.  I walked down to talk to them to tell them there was room in front of us but they were happy to stay where they were.  Later a sailboat came in, found the big power boat on the south end where they were told to go so they came up to the north end.  Musical boats.

This guy was hanging out by the boat today. Evidently he has been here before.

We are not saying that the tidal current runs fast through here but the knot meter registers 1.3 knots while we are tied to the dock.

Dinner was at Amy and Robb’s beach house this evening.  It was great to see them again as well as their children. We needed to take a walk on the beach after a fabulous dinner to make room for desert.  I guess two years in a row makes it a “tradition”.

The table wasn’t big enough for all the food, some of which was staged on their mobile kitchen island.

The sail boat in front of us expressed concerns about St. Andrews Sound, about 15 miles south of us.  Active Captain says not to attempt the crossing if the wind is over 10 knots from the NE and the tide dropping.  Evidently this sets up some pretty incredible waves and we have read that the towing people are prohibited from operating here as it so dangerous.  Well, the forecast is for NE wind above 10 knots for the next week, and the tide is such that it is dropping most of the day during this time.  There is supposedly an alternative route that bypasses this area and we might need to investigate this.  The Jekyll Harbor Marina is a few miles from St. Andrews Sound so we probably will go there for some local knowledge.  The last two times we crossed this sound we must have been lucky as it was pretty much flat calm.

Today:  29 miles in 3.8 engine hours.  Total:  1929 miles

Dave

North River Anchorage, GA

Since we realized we would not be able to make St. Simons today we needed a good anchorage for the evening.  It has been blowing out of the North East for days and is supposed to continue so we wanted a place where the shore would provide us with some protection.  Of course this is  Georgia and there is really no hiding from the wind, but you can get protection from the waves in one of the creeks that exit the marsh.

Looking at the charts for an anchorage about 50 miles from Delegal Marina we came across a place labeled North River Anchorage.  It had good reviews on Active Captain so we set this as our destination for today.

Leaving Delegal was more interesting than it needed to be.  We record all of our tracks using Coastal Explorer on our tablet PC.  We waited until 0800 hours to leave this morning as we wanted to pass through Hell Gate (aptly named) at high tide.  Every once in a while, either Coastal Explorer or our tablet with the built in GPS fails to initialize for a period of time.  Continual re-booting doesn’t see to help and we are at a loss on what the issue might be as all of a sudden it starts to respond.  Well, today was one of those days that it was acting up, and it wasn’t a good day for that.  To enter or leave Delegal you have to follow a rather torturous path.  Even up to date charts do not locate the buoys correctly and there are permanent marks that are now in the wrong place.  The charts show shallow water where it is deep.  As a mater of fact your proper course takes you over charted land.  Coming in (which we have done twice before) was not to difficult as it was at low tide and the channel is clearly seen.  This morning, when we wanted to leave, the reeds at the edge of the channel are under water, making things look a lot different as there is a lot of water when yesterday it was dry land (the 10′ tide thing).  With out our position on the chart plotter, leaving was going to have to be done by memory.  We don’t use the breadcrumb trail on our Raymarine as it is 10 years old and the points are so far apart to be worthless.  Anyhow, we crept out  and of course once clear of any shallow water the GPS came on line showing us where we are.  Thanks.  Actually, I believe the exact same thing happened last year when we left.

We got in line to go through Hell Gate and a lot of people had the same idea that we had.  There was one sailboat ahead of us, two more behind and two power boats bringing up the rear.  As we went through we noticed the depth finder read a low of 8.5 feet under our keel.  Since the tide was up about 10′ over low this means that at low tide we would have been aground going through here.  You can see why people wait for high tide to pass through.

We had a slow slog through St. Catherine’s Sound as we were fighting a 2 knot current with a 20 knot tail wind which built up some pretty good waves.  Fortunately we were going down wind which meant that it was a dry ride, although pretty slow at 5 knots.

St. Catherine’s Sound. Pictures of waves are difficult.

The birds think we are a shrimp boat.

When we reached the turn off for the North River Anchorage off Doboy Sound we realized we had been here before.  It was last spring on our way north that we stopped to overnight here.  This year we are the only boat here so we got to choose what ever spot we wanted.  The wind is still blowing around 20 knots but the boat pretty much lies to the current as the water goes through here pretty quickly.  This means we aren’t tacking around at anchor like we usually do but are maintaining a pretty much constant heading, at least while the current is running.  Of course during the tidal change the current stops and the boat starts to swing in the wind.

At high tide the reeds will be almost under water.

Tomorrow we have a fairly short 25 mile run down to Morning Star Marina on St. Simons Island and will be able to keep our Thanksgiving Dinner date with Amy, Robb and crew.

Today:  52 miles in 6.9 engine hours.  Total:  1900 miles.

Dave

Delegal Creek Marina, GA

We hated to leave Port Royal Landing so early.  We wished we could have gotten in there a little earlier the previous day.  We had borrowed their courtesy truck and drove over to Beaufort (about a 10 minute drive) to go to Walgreens for a prescription, Piggly Wiggly for some odd food items,  Advance Auto Parts to re-stock our oil supply for the next oil change and even treated our self to dinner at Chic fil A.  It would have been nice to have had the time to wander around Beaufort for a few hours, but that is the price you pay when you are moving the boat long distances every day.

Again we were away from the dock at 0715 hours, with the idea that we would land in Delegal after a long run, which we did.  Last year we broke this distance into a two day trip and stayed here two days.  Port Royal Sound is about 3.5 miles across.  Fortunately the 10 knot breeze was at about 45 degrees to the current so the waves weren’t too bad.  Our course had them off our stern quarter so we didn’t get rolled around very much.  These sounds can get nasty especially if there are swells rolling in from the ocean.  There were a few skinny water creeks we traversed at dead low tide which always makes the day more interesting as well as crossing the Savannah River with it’s big ship traffic.

This guy passed by just after we crossed the river. We of course saw him coming via AIS so we could determine exactly how far he was from us when we crossed his path.

We are now in the land of big tides and as a result fast current.  The tidal range here is 10′ for tonight and the current runs past the docks at about 2 knots.  We of course approach the dock facing into the current, we watched a big powerboat come into the fuel dock and make a down current landing.  He didn’t earn many style points for that one.  After leaving the fuel dock to go to another face dock for the evening he decided he didn’t want a repeat performance so moved off to switch over all his dock lines and fenders.  Imagine that, a great big powerboat short of lines and fender.  Well, I guess only one side of the boat faces the dock at a time.  We are rigged with lines and fenders on both sides of the boat at all times.  His second landing (up current this time) still had some issues.  These guys make us look real good.

Our overnight berth at Delegal.

Even though we didn’t get in until late afternoon, we used their loaner golf cart to run into the town square (4.2 miles distant) grocery store.  While we went grocery shopping yesterday, there is always something we “need”.  The dock master here, “Billy” is the nicest guy.  People like him are the reason we keep coming back here as he is genuinely glad to see us when we arrive and treats us like old friends.  I am sure we will be back in the spring and will stay for more than just overnight.  The price is also right also as we are charged $43/night.

Today:  63 miles in 8.4 engine hours (boat), 8.4 miles (golf cart).  Total so far: 1848 miles.

Dave

Port Royal Landing Marina, SC

The mate really wanted to make it to Port Royal Landing this evening which required a 0720 hours start as we needed to put 67 miles under our keel.

Sunken sailboat just outside of St. Johns. When the tide was down yesterday we could see the hull.

Port Royal Landing (not our picture)

There are quite a few twists and turns along the ICW in this area, so you never know what your speed will be as you transition from river to canal and back again.

The red line is a linear regression of the blue line which is our speed over time. It is interesting to note that it is about 7 knots, our flat water cruising speed.

The Ashepoo Coosaw Cutoff is a short section of canal that is a traditionally problematic due to shoaling.  We came through at dead low tide and at both ends of the canal we had just a little over one foot of water under our keel.  A sailboat would have had to wait for the tide to come up some more.  The interesting thing is that our charts indicate a controlling depth of 12′ in this area, meaning at some point in time there was 12′ of water at low tide.  Not any more.

One of the channel markers., pretty much aground  in a few inches of water at low tide. You don’t want to pass too close to this guy.

We are actually making pretty good time at the moment, hoping to reach St. Simons Island, GA on either Thanksgiving or the day after.  A holiday invitation was extended by Amy and Robb, daughter and son-in-law of the owners of Gatsby, Pilgrim hull #27.   They had us over for Thanksgiving dinner last year when we were in the area and we are looking forward to seeing them and their children again this year.  Now, if only Amy’s parents would drive down (hint).

There is a new raw water pump on order from the UK for the engine.  Ours seems to be leaking both sea water and a bit of oil which seems rather odd for something that has only 200+ hours on it.  Most marine engines use a standard, off the shelf pump, but not this engine.  They tell us that the pump shouldn’t suffer a catastrophic failure leaving us stranded someplace.  I hope they are right.

Liberty leaving the Topsail Sound anchorage a few days ago.

Heading down the ICW a few minutes later.

Today, 67 miles in 8.7 engine hours.  Total:  1785 miles.

Dave

St. Johns Yacht Harbor, SC

There was no hurry to get going this morning as we wanted to wait for the tide to come up in the Isle of Palms area due to the shoaling in the ICW.  0830 hours was early enough to get started.  A few miles from Isle of Palms we came across a disabled Boston Whaler type craft anchored in the channel.  Aboard was a father and his young daughter and they needed a tow to the Isle of Palms Marina, which was on our way.  If it wasn’t for the young daughter we (I) might have just made a phone call to Towboat U.S. for him but took him under tow.  Landing the disabled boat at the marina was a bit of a challenge as there was some current running but was accomplished with out any problems.  We then picked out way though the shallows of the ICW at mid tide with out incident.  On our return this region will be dredged and will hopefully stay that way for years.

I am sure a little scrubbing will get this guy cleaned up enough to sell.

 

The kite board sailors were out as we crossed Charleston Harbor. What was interesting about these was they were foiling boards, and these guys were going fast. There was also a foiling Moth (11′ sailboat) out running around. He was traveling so fast that he looked like an iceboat from a distance.  We didn’t get close enough to him to get a picture.

 

Our spot at the dock.

St. Johns is a fairly new, modern marina.  They have concrete floating docks and amazingly the price was cheaper ($53) than what we paid at Leland Oil last night.  Their laundry and head/shower facilities are first rate with the washers and dryers being virtually new front loaders that only cost $1/load.  They also have an outdoor pool, captains lounge, free dockside pump outs and a free loaner car.  Needless to say, during the “season” it is difficult to get a transient dockage here but at this time of the year it must be easier as we noticed a few empty slips.  If there is any downside it is the current that runs through here while docking.  We needed to make a down current/cross wind landing.  It took a few tries before we were able to square ourselves up enough to get into the dock, but we got in OK.

We managed to take a picture in the head without getting arrested. The showers and toilet rooms were equally impressive. This is a far cry from the facilities as Leland Oil where we didn’t even want to walk past the door.

We changed our engine oil, filter and also changed the oil in the transmission today.  We can do the engine in one half hour, the transmission takes about the same amount of time.

Not wanting to have to fill the transmission through the dip stick hole again, we decided to put our 16″ crescent wrench on the fill/lifting lug that we weren’t able to remove during the last oil change. Applying some muscle to it we broke it free making filling a lot less painful.

43 miles today in 5.8 hours.  Tomorrow promises to be a longer day.

Dave

Leland Oil Company Marina

This morning the mate got up and dressed before the skipper.  The reason was that we had guests overnight and she promised them breakfast so she figured she better get up and get the coffee started.  We had egg omelets, cinnamon french toast and bacon.  While the ladies were slaving over the stove, the Daves were trying to sort out some computer issues on Liberty’s PC.  We use a third party software package (PdaNet+) on our phone which turns it into a wireless hotspot allowing the PC to use the phone to access the internet.  At least we did until yesterday.  When we start the application we need to make a few menu picks to start it up.  The phone then polls Verizon to see if we have an account before starting.  Well, now we get a message from Verizon telling us this service requires a subscription to Mobile Hotspot (at $30/month).  A little research  finds that Verizon is trying to make life difficult for the fewer than 1% of their customers that are still holding on to the unlimited data accounts that were phased out in 2011.  Any changes to our account will cause our unlimited data privileges to go away and I assume that if we paid the $30/month that would be enough of a trigger to knock us out of the unlimited data account.  If you have a phone on a tiered data plan (99% of users), the wireless tethering is “free” (built in).  At the moment, we are back to 2009 when we had to hard wire our phone to our PC using USB.

Now, if we use our powered cell antenna with our phone we have to have the computer right next to the antenna/phone cradle which means no more posting of the blog from the comfort of our stateroom.

When we kicked the Howell’s off our boat this morning we sent them packing with a few empty wine bottles and a bag of trash. For putting up with us overnight we gave them one of our almost free boxes of Black Box wine (unopened).

The day started off better then yesterday, boat speed wise.  For the first forty five minutes we were going down the river at over 8.5 knots.

Here we are going 9.4 knots (10.8 mpg).

As soon as we turned into the Estherville Minim Creek Channel our speed dropped to 5.7 knots but an hour later we were above 7 knots for the rest of the trip.  Some days the current is with you, some days it seems like it is always against you; just like life.

This is a shrimp boat harbor (creek) and the space between where a bunch of the smaller shrimpers dock and us is reserved for fueling.  These guys can make you real nervous when they are coming in for fuel.  It is amazing what they do with these boats given that they are single screw boats with no bow or stern thrusters.  Of course it takes a powerful engine with a big prop and a lot of throttle (and experience) to make the maneuvers necessary to put one of these boats alongside a dock with not much room on either end (us being one end).  If their gearbox failed at an  inopportune time there would be a lot of mangled fiberglass (us).

These boats are actually a lot closer to us than is represented in this picture.

A neat picture of the shrimpers lit up at night.

Of course there is a seafood store a short walk from the marina.  We went up and bought some real fresh shrimp and crab dip.  The shrimp got cleaned and cooked as soon as we got back.  Dump them into boiling water for a real short bath, remove, pat dry with a paper towel then into the freezer to keep them from over cooking themselves.  Remove when cool,  nice and firm; delicious.  Freeze what you don’t eat immediately.

Somehow the TV in the stateroom has decided that neither the remote nor the physical control buttons on the TV are going to work.  We suspect the circuit board that controls the IR sensor and control buttons is shorting out, maybe the salt air has gotten to it.  An repair attempt will be made before we drop it in the trash, but not tonight.

Cousin Jennifer and family are on vacation so we won’t be stopping in Charleston, SC this trip.  We will continue about ten miles south of Charleston tomorrow before calling it a day, assuming we get by the Isle of Palms region of the ICW without sticking the boat in the mud.  The dredges are showing up on Monday to start cleaning up the channel so it is good we get past there.  The ICW is now so narrow in that area that the dredge will probably be blocking the channel part of the day.

Total mileage to date:  1675 sm.

Dave

We’ve had a busy three days!!!  Wednesday and Thursday we stopped in Myrtle Beach and spent some time with Dave’s Uncle Dick and Aunt Marlene.  We had a wonderful time with them.  We had a great dinner out on Wednesday and Marlene made a terrific dinner on Thursday.  They even left us a car to use on Thursday afternoon.  Uncle Dick and Aunt Marlene you two are the best!!!!!

On Friday afternoon our Lord Nelson Tug buddies, Bicky and Dave, met us in Georgetown.   We just laughed and had fun!!!  Thanks guys!!!  We look forward to more fun in Florida after the holidays!!!

We are at a quaint little marina tonight with shrimp boats everywhere!  Watching the shrimp boats moving in and out of the harbor with the pelicans following close behind their boats was really neat to watch!!!

Well, I guess we’ll see what tomorrow brings!!!

Bobbi