Sights from an offshore passage.

Once again we decided to skip the shallow waters of the ICW in Georgia and head “outside” for the next leg of our journey. We left Fernandina FL and headed out the St Mary’s inlet. This time we were going 125 miles and were planning on a 20-24 hour trip.  So at 10 AM Tues we pulled up the anchor hoping to arrive around the same time on Wed morning.

We passed Fort Clinch on the way out of the St Mary’s inlet. It was built in 1864 for use during the Civil War and is on Florida’s northernmost barrier island, Amelia Island.

We put out 3 fishing lines….

And now you will notice that there are still NO pictures of fish being caught!!   That’s right, no fish, again!

 

 

These are pictures of some of the wild life we saw. There were lots of turtles, and many, many dolphin!

This is the Savannah River bridge, a suspension bridge that we could see literally for miles! We watched it for hours! But then we are going at 6 miles per hour!! It is 10 miles away in this picture but still very visible.

 

We saw a few ships during the day, which is no big deal. We watch them and might have to alter our course to keep a safe distance but pretty easy. At night it’s another ball game! What we learned on this passage is that lots of ships come in and anchor off shore at the Tybee Island Inlet, which we passed at 2:30 to 3:30 in the morning. At 2:30 a boat came out with a pilot to drive one of the ships in the channel to the harbor. A half an hour later the boat came out with another pilot to drive another ship in. While this was going on we are on our radar, yes, Keith and Jenny we have radar now and we can see the ships and we even have AIS (tells the name of the ships and their location and speed).  Oh yeah, there was no moon so it was VERY dark out. All we could see were navigation lights out in the distance – LOTS of fun at 3 in the morning!! Finally we just altered course to go further offshore to go out around all of them!

 

When we left, the wind forecast was for variable winds about 3-6 kts all night and we were expecting to have to motor all night. But at about 10:00 the wind started to freshen and fill in from the west. By 10:30 it was a steady 15-18 kts. So we hoisted the sails and shut down the engine thinking it would be a brief sail. Not so brief! The wind held steady all night and we had a beautiful sail. We’re sorry to say – almost too good. By 3:0o in the morning, it was apparent that we would arrive at the sea buoy at the Port Royal Inlet way too early, before dawn and before the current started flowing into the inlet. So we shortened sail quite a bit to slow the boat down.  It’s a rare and frustrating thing to work to slow down when sailing. At any rate, we arrived at the sea buoy at 6:15, just 15 minutes before the current turned and right as the sky started to lighten up in the east.

 

We found it interesting that we left an inlet with a Civil War fort at the entrance and came in an inlet with a modern day Marine Corps base at the entrance.

Just after we were anchored at Beaufort SC this cruise ship came passed us and tied up over at the Town Dock. So there is more that one way to see the Intracoastal Waterway.

 

Our offshore passage was so beautiful. Because it was so dark the stars were just amazing! It helped that we were sailing in company with an astronomy buff on another sailboat. We passed some of the nighttime hours with him pointing out several constellations. Very cool!

 

 

He quieted the sea with His power