AquaFennatic Great Loop Blog: Florida to Georgia to South Carolina

May 6^th – It was a sunny cool and extremely windy day. We left our mooring ball in Fernandina Beach FL and headed 42 miles north to Brunswick Georgia to stay at Brunswick Harbour Marina. Did you catch that … we are no longer in Florida. During our travels we had to get through Jekyll Creek which should only be traversed at high tide BUT we got there close to low tide and we should have anchored to wait for the tide to go up however we did it anyway. We thought we were going to get stuck but luckily enough we made it through … Next time we’ll pay better attention to the warnings that are available for some of these shoaling areas. We decided to go to Brunswick Landing Marina since it has the cheapest diesel in the area. When we got there the wind was blowing so hard it pinned us to the fuel dock thus they let us stay there overnight. A notable thing about Brunswick Landing Marina is that they have free beer available 24 hours a day! What?! I washed the boat to get the salt off and then I had to tighten an alternator that became loose and then off for free beers. When we got to the yacht club there were a number of people taking advantage of this Exxxcellent perk. We sat with a group of them and drank our slip price worth of beer … LOL. We met some great people at this marina including Canadian Loopers Danny and Beth from “Dragonfly”. We had a great time with them and hope that they catch up with us when they start heading north.

May 7^th – It was a sunny cool day with moderate winds. As much as we would have liked to stay at Brunswick Harbour Marina we decided to move on and travelled 73 miles North to an anchorage in Kilkenny Georgia. During our travels we encountered so many horse flies that it was unbelievable! Maria kept killing them with the Terminator racket but they kept coming. We finally gave up and ensured the cabin was closed up so our internal living space isn’t invaded by these beasts. We had to go through another well known shoaling area called Little Mud River. We did better this time … as we approached it a trawler in front of us stopped and let us pass him. He then followed us closely so we could guide him through … the big Chicken! Well we made it! One other interesting fact about where we are is that the tide is about 8 feet thus the currents are quite strong when it’s rushing in and out. Everything needs to be timed properly especially marina entrances and exits.

May 8^th – It was a sunny cool day with low winds … yes, that’s right “LOW” winds finally! We got up extra early this morning to pull up our anchor from Kilkenny Georgia to travel 73 miles north along the ICW to Beaufort South Carolina and dropped a hook in Cowan Creek. The reason that we got up so early was to ensure we went through a passage called “Hell Gate” at high tide. Apparently this passage only had 2 feet of water in some spots at low tide. We were successful traversing this passage … yea! Most of the horseflies disappeared during the day however we have a new type of bug that looks like it has 2 bugs linked together as one but they don’t seem to bite. We had a great BBQed dinner in the anchorage and relaxed after a long travel day. We’re planning on going into a marina tomorrow that has a courtesy car so we can get some oil to do an engine oil change.