Down the St. Johns River

It's Thursday, June 3, ODYSSEE and crew are poised to cast off for a three week trip. We're anticipating a noon departure. We will update as we go and as we find Wi-Fi, we don't have phone access to the internet as we did while we were on our big trips. It's Friday night, and we are at Golden Isle Marina in St. Simons, GA. Yesterday we didn't cast off until about 4:00 pm, traveled until 7:30 pm, and anchored in the New River behind Dufuskie, Is. Today we fueled up in Thunderbolt, took the Wilmington River outside and travelled 42 miles off shore, coming back in to the ICW at Doboy Sound as the afternoon thunderstorms started to develope. we logged in 104 miles. Tomorrow we plan on visiting Cumberland Island and then anchoring for the night about 40 miles from downtown Jacksonville. On Saturday we got anchored and dingied into the campers dock on Cumberland Island just as the dailey afternoon thunderstorms rolled in, which delayed our hike around the southern end of the island about an hour. On Sunday we arrived at Jacksonville Landing free dock just as the Sunday afternoon storms arrived. Met with some boating friends who were traveling with us on the Down East Loop last summer and had a delighful afternoon chat, some Gin and Tonics and dinner at one of their favorite places in Jacksonvill. Today we are off to go up river, expecting to arrive in Sanford on Thursday. We may not have any internet until we get there so don't get excited if we don't post for a couple of days. Just a quick post, I hope! Did a complete update last night on our trip up the river to Sanford, went to publish, computer picked up a weaker wi-fi signal, which dropped my post when I clicked on "publish post", all was lost. Will fill in details when time allows, have a full day planned with boating friends who are also Hatteras owners. Sorry, been to busy when we have had internet access to do much posting, and tonight, Monday June 14, is not going to be much better. It's already 10:30pm, I've just completed answering some e-mail, and it's time to call it a day. We are back in Jacksonville, been very hot down here and so we haven't wanted to get off the boat to do much walking around. Did go to three of several of the springs that that feed into the river, and waded in the cool, clear, water. Probably won't get a full report posted and some pictures downloaded until we get home by next weekend. Tuesday, our first day as we head home, was cut short by the weather. Afternoon thunderstorms got active about 4:00, and we were in the path of a storm reported to have 60 mph winds. We quickly found Crooked River just a little north of St. Mary's, GA neuclear sub base, dropped two anchors, tied up the flags, and felt ready to handle whatever came our way. Got some rain and maybe 30 mph wind. Wednesday we continued north up the ICW, taking an alternate route north of Brunswick, up the Fredrica River past Fort Fredrica, constructed when Oglethorp settled in Georgia. We anchored for the night just south of St. Catherines Sound in Cattle Pen Creek. We are 82 miles from home via the ICW or 70 miles if we go outside. We got up early on Thursday so we could go outside if the weather was acceptable. It looked good so we went out through the St. Catherines entrance, set our way point on the sea bouy at Port Royal Sound, and let the boat follow the magenta line to the way point. The waves outside were 1-2' in a light NW breeze, forcast to shift SW by noon. The forcast was right, as the light breeze filled in from the SW it knocked the wave down to less than 1', so we had a comfortable ride. We'de been running at hull speed all day, running the engines at 1350 rpm. At that speed we get almost 2 mpg. Once inside the entrance channel, we put the throttles down, ODYSSEE climbed up onto a plane, cruised comfortable at 14 KTS, 2450 RPM, for the next 9 miles. As we entered Chowan Creek, slowed back down to hull speed for the last two miles, turned to the west into Distant Island Creek, slowed down to closed throttles, and snuggled up to our dock, trip over. We were gone 15 days, traveled 745 miles, and had another succesful trip on ODYSSEE.