Thursday April 19, 2018 - Fernandina FL to Brunswick GA
The town of Fernandina is about a mile south of the St.
Mary's River - a fairly big inlet into the Atlantic Ocean. The river divides Florida from Georgia. I had thought about leaving later in the
afternoon for St. Catherine's Island but my friend and fellow cruiser Keith
suggested I not anchor there tonight because there was supposed to be a strong
North wind that would make the anchorage and travel north the next day very
rough. So I decided to leave earlier and
ride the current north from the inlet.
It worked out pretty well. The
wind was from the west and I used the jib when I could to help my speed. Until later in the day, I made between 6 and
7.5 knots most of the time. Considering
I didn't leave Fernandina until 10:30am, I did well to make it the 36 miles to
Brunswick by 5:30pm. Of course, nothing
is easy and the last mile before I made it to the Brunswick River, the depths
were getting VERY shallow (like around 5 feet - two hours below low tide). The tides in GA are 8 feet. If I had been there an hour later, I wouldn't
have made it. I came into the Brunswick
City Marina at 5:30. It is a really nice
marina with floating docks.
When we did our Georgia passage North, we tried to always time our travel to corespond with at least a mid rising tide. Of course, depending on the phasing of the tides vs the daylight, this sometimes meant only having 4 or 5 hours of travel time per day. But we were in no hurry going North, as the longer we took, the warmer it got.
ReplyDeleteYou're a bit ahead of where we were at this time a year ago, so I imagine you're pretty chilly at times. I recommend a stopover at Charleston to enjoy the shrimp & grits and wait for it to get warmer! :)