Because of 8 foot tide rises, experienced travelers will only traverse the Georgia ICW during mid to high tide. Morning fog is now a travel factor too. We've learned that the fog thins about an hour after sunrise and then thickens about a half hour later. Sunrise has been around 7:00AM, so we were underway from Hilton Head on Monday morning at 8:00AM, two hours before high tide.
Used a "local knowledge" cut across a sandbar into Calabogue Sound to rejoin the ICW at the northern end of Dafuskie Island. Visibility dropped to less than 50 feet in the Sound. Several passenger boats leaving Dafuskie passed us. We talked to each and used radar to clear them, but the visibility was so poor that we moored at Dafuskie's Melrose Resort dock, waiting an hour and a half for the fog to lift. Now, past high tide, we only had about four hours of "good water". Things went well until we entered a small georgia cut aptly named "Hell-Gate". Temporary channel markers were laying on the visible sandbars. As we inched through, both depth sounders were below zero, but we scraped through. At nearly low tide, reaching Jekyll Island Marina was imposssible, so we stopped in Kilkenney Creek, at a very rustic marina which is really a fish camp straight out of the movie "Deliverance". We had stopped there five years ago, no improvements during that time. Actually, everything was more decrepit. With their abomnable toilets and showers, we showered aboard.
Kilkenney underway was fog-delayed until 9:50AM, still before high tide with a good travel window. Since we had to travel over 100 miles, we paid the fuel consumption price and opened the throttle; averaging 17 knots, faster with and slower against the falling tide's currents. It was a sunny, warm day in the low 80s. We're wearing shorts again. Made nice progress until passsing Red60A in a river/creek join, just above Kings Bay, GA. Very skinny water and an error in the GARMIN BlueChart led us into 1 foot water. We actually crossed land(on the chartplotter) as we worked our way through, with inches of water under the keel.
We quickly returned to 17.5 knots, reaching the Amelia River and the towh of Fernandina Beach by 4:15PM. Stopped at a commercial fuel dock and paid $2.96/gallon, lowest price we've seen. Moored for two nights at the Municipal Marina. Met Tom and Gerry Clare, just recently returned from doing the 5000-mile Grand Loop in their Camano31. Had dinner with them and Gerry gave us a tour of Amelia Island today. Tomorrow, we'll make the final leg to St. Augustine, where we'll leave the boat and drive home for the Christmas holidays.
Ebb Tide II underway
