We left Titusville on March 21 and are headed north, homeward bound! We have been living on Catan for 10 months and one would think the learning curve is pretty much ascended… ahhh not so fast grasshopper! Although we have been in salt water for 5 months now, the tides have been rather benign and frankly we have just been chilln’ in Florida marinas for most of it, (although during that period we did traverse Florida via Lake Okeechobee).
We are far from home free! In a previous log, I mentioned about the need for contingency planning and to ensure adequate time is available to exercise Plan “B” or “C”, if/as required. We recently had a good day on the water and were coming into Daytona Beach on the ICW, looking to anchor for the night. It took 7 attempts at 4 different anchorage locations before we could get the hook to bite. After an anxious 1.5 hours attempting to set the hook, our good day on the water morphed into a somewhat frustrating conclusion.
That experience was a good wake up call for what lies ahead of us. The Georgia coast is famous for its tides changes of 6 feet on a regular basis (both the wind and moon can add an additional 4 feet of tide swing), throughout the length of its extensive meandering salt water marshes. Now imagine the current created by 6 feet of water flowing in and out of the ICW. Sometimes it is working for you and other times it is working against you. Oh and now contemplate that tide working on your anchor while you are trying to sleep. Will your anchor hold through the night or maybe you wake to the boat resting on the bottom during a particularly low tide? Some boaters will not attempt to anchor in Georgia and only run from marina to marina. Ideally you do not want to anchor in the channel, you want to find a “cul de sac” off the main channel in order to mitigate the current variable.
Today we are staying put for the day just north of St.Augustine (cruising past St. Agustine in photo below). There are high northeast (NE) winds today, which are not such a big problem on the ICW, being somewhat inshore and protected, but crossing the St. Augustine Inlet is another story. The inlet is oriented NE as well, which means the waves coming in from the ocean could be rolling in 6 to 7 feet high. No recreational boater want to expose his boat’s beam to those conditions, even if the inlet is less than a mile wide, so here we sit until more favourable conditions tomorrow.
We will have to traverse approximately 40 inlets between here and entering the Hudson River. Each inlet crossing will have its own unique set of variables to assess, but it is the recreational and commercial boat traffic moving through the inlet which you cannot forecast their actions (and fast, big boats typically adopt the get out of my way attitude or they won’t hesitate to wake you with their 5 foot wakes).
All that to say…stay tuned for more adventures!
