Lorenzo & Delois Johnson

We had a good travel day today and covered 88 miles in order to reach a good stopping place.  We are docked at Lady’s Island Marina, in Beaufort, SC.  This is a really beautiful and convenient place to stop.  The 9 foot tides are to be accounted for and plan accordingly, but overall it is a great stop.  The marina has a good restaurant on the premises.  Within three blocks walking distance:

1. Publix grocery store

2. Walgreens Drug Store

3. Ice cream store (Dairy Queen)

3. ABC store, and many other stores that boaters like to visit.  The best of all is that You pass the Dairy Queen going and coming when You go to the Publix or Walgreen.

We have put this stop high on our list of places to visit again.  The town is very pretty with lots of big live oaks and really beautiful old houses. 

Overall, a very good day for us.

Tonight we are anchored in one of our favorite places, Kilkenny Creek.  We are about 35 miles from the SC/Ga border, so we have traveled almost across the state of Ga. today.  We travelled 98 miles today.  We left the Cumberland anchorage at 7AM, and dropped anchor in Kilkenny Creek at 6 PM.  No rest today for Portia and Starrie.

We now have the most challenging portion of the trip behind us.  The Georgia ICW is challenging due to shallow water, extreme tides and resultant tidal currents, and the many many narrow and twisting channels.  We looked at everything (tide times at different locations, expected weather, etc.) yesterday and decided not to go to St Marys for the shrimp diner, since that would make us an hour later arriving at a key destination.  It all worked out perfectly, and we had a great travel day with high tides when and where we needed it.  We covered the same distance today that required two travel days when we were heading South in January.  The stress level was much lower, because we did not have to slow and search for deeper water. 

Tomorrow, we will travel to somewhere around Hilton Head, SC and spend the night there. 

The cooler weather has been really appreciated.  It makes anchoring a lot more enjoyable.

We are anchored at Cumberland Island, Ga.  We are in Ga.  but just barely.  We had a good trip today; no mishaps and no problems. 

We shopped on the internet for fuel, but the best we could get was $3.97/gal.   Took on 453 gal, but now all tanks are full.

We are anchored near Cumberland Island.  We are anchored near the Rangers Station and the dinghy dock.  We were happy when we spotted a herd of the wild horses that inhibit this island as they came to the beach.

There are 12 other boats anchored here for the night.  It is quite a sight to see the boats sitting at anchor, approximately 200 yards separating them, and glowing from their anchor lights and the sparce moonlight.  We sat on the bow for quite  a long time enjoying the view and the absolute quite.  A glass of good wine makes it enjoyable enough to make You wonder should You really be planning to give this up, even for a short time.  If I could have this and the grandkids with me too, I know what the answer would be.

 We are enjopying the cooler weather as we travel North.  The 90+ degree days were beginning to lose their charm.  The water temperatures were in the mid 80’s, so at night the boat was sitting in a large body of warm water.  I do not like to leave the generator running while we sleep, so we depended on electric fans to keep us comfortable while we slept.  No problem when we spend the night in a Marina.

Tomorrow, we will travel to Killkenny creek and anchor there.  It is one of our favorite places to stop, and this will be the third time we have have spent the night there.  It will be a long day to reach KillKenny Creek.

Thursday should find us in South Carolina.  We are pushing ahead a little bit, looking forward to spending the weekend in Charleston.  We should arrive in Charleston on Friday evening.   We are expecting my oldest brother and His wife to join us there for the remainder of the trip home, and Lois and I are really looking forward to having them onboard, even though it is for just a few days..

We are in St Augustine Fl tonight.  Arrived rather late (5:30PM) due to the manatee zones requiring us to run at basically idle speed.   Traveled 82 miles today.

We are going to relax tonight and get an early start tomorrow morning.  The call of home gets louder as we get closer.  We are hoping to stop and fuel and then continue on into Georgia.   

Georgia is approximately 64 miles away.  We will have to anchor or travel extra miles to find a marina in that area.   That area is near the Kings Bay Submarine  Base, and lots of restrictions apply.

The boat is running very good.  Portia and Starrie seem to sense that we are going home, and they are really getting the job done.  We are having a very good trip.

First of all, let me say that as of now, I really believe that if a place is named after mosquitoes, You will in all likelyhood find lots of them there.  Even in early April.  Even with a stiff breeze blowing.  Even if You have lots of the latest mosquito repellants on board to burn, smoke and spray.  Enough said.

We stayed inside, ran the A/C and watched television.  No sunset watching today.

We had a good day, and traveled 80 miles.  We are trying to adjust our travel to allow us to spend nights at several of our favorite places.  Tomorrow night, we will spend in Saint Augustine.  On Tuesday, we want to be at Nassau fuel distribution in Fernandina Harbor before closing time.  I switched fuel tanks today, which means it is time to start looking for fuel.  The prices vary widely, so price shopping is worthwhile.  We will need close to 500 gal to top off.   We would like to spend Tuesday night in St Marys Ga.  The seafood restaurant there has the best fried shrimp platter I have ever tasted.

Charleston by the weekend looks doable.  Mostly depends on how much time we lose in Ga due to shallow water.

We spent two nights in Fort Pierce, and really enjoyed our stay.  The couple on a sailboat docked next to us made our stay much better.  They are starting on a Med cruise  that will soon become an around the world cruise.  We really enjoyed their company and hospitality.

Saturday, we went to the long awaited farmers market along the seawall at the Fort Pierce City Marina.  It again more than met our expectations.  After our shopping was over, we made prepartions to get underway.  We left the marina around 1 PM, and traveled 20 miles to the Jones Fruit Dock where we spent the night.

Mr Jones died last week.  He had not sold fruit at His dock for a long time.  He enjoyed having the traveling boaters spend the night on His dock.  The only power available was a drop cord.  His dock will accomodate 3 to 4 boats.  His usual charge for a stay was only $10, and He was disappointed that lots of days, no one stopped.  He really enjoyed siting on His “welcome bench” and visiting with the boaters and sharing the tales of their travels. 

He said that He had sold His property to the county to build a public park, and that He had lifetime rights.  He also said that the agreement included keeping the dock available for transient boats. 

We were happy to see that there were no barricades or anything to prevent docking.  We also noticed that the County has installed a steel box with envelopes and registration forms for those who chose to stay.  The new price is $20.  We were happy to see that at least part of what Mr Jones wanted is actually happening.    

We arrived at Fort Pierce Marina today at around 2 PM.  We had a good travel day, all things considered. The low point of the day was being waked by a high speed sport fisherman who passed in a narrow channel at a speed in excess of 30 knots, at a distance of about 10 feet.  I am glad that we do not carry weapons onboard.

We spent a lot of time at idle speed while passing through the Manatee zones.  I am still amazed at how the manatees always live in front of the high dollar developments.

We are going to hang out here until Saturday evening after the Farmers Market ends, and then we will travel as far as Jones Fruit Dock and spend the night there.   Sunday morning, we will continue on.

We will load provisions tomorrow to take us home.  We are planning to spend a few days in Charleston, but that depends on our progress.  We are going to spend a lot of time passing through  The Little Mud River area in Georgia.  The water depths are so shallow that we will have to travel when the tide is high enough to give us enough water under us.  Waiting on tides can be time consuming, but we are planning to maximize the daytime high tides and not travel at all during the night time high tides.  We will take what is there, and make the best of it.  

We are really having a good time.  The boat has performed flawlessly, and everything is going real well.  The weather has cooled much more than we expected considering we left Marathon less than a week ago.  Marathon was getting uncomfortably hot when we left.

This morning, we left our friends behind.   C-Life  and Precious Time  will be spending a few more days in this enjoyable town.  We got off to an early start, and timed the bridges perfectly.  By 2 PM, we had passed through all 13 of the bridges that needed to open to let us pass.  Lois thinks that it should have been 14, becaused we had only 4″ clearance under one of the bridges.  Her sense of adventure diminishes with birthdays.

We anchored at about 3 PM in a very nice anchorage.  This anchorage is the North Palm Beach Lake Worth North Anchorage. This location rivals any other location we have ever anchored.  We rated it a 10 in our log.  The night view was really great.  The bottom was sandy and provided good holding.  Lots of room, and good protection from the wind from all directions.

We made dinner on the grill, and spent the evening on the Sun Deck, enjoying the moment.  Added more wine to our shopping list.  Fort Pierce is only 55 miles away, so we should have a short day tomorrow.

We had a good travel day today.  There were three boats traveling together (C-Life, Precious Time, and Lil’ David).  We covered 54 miles in a short time, and arrived at the New River Downtown Marina around 2 PM, thanks in great part to Robert Creech .   His knowlege and experience in boating was often the difference between a bad day and an enjoyable day on the water. 

 This is a really great place to stop.  The staff really does a good job in making You feel welcome. 

We are planning to spend only two days here, then we will move on to make sure we make the Farmers Market on Saturday.  We need to arrive in Fort Pierce in time to do some grocery shopping before we leave there on Saturday afternoon.     We would like to be home by Easter.

We didn’t leave the anchorage this morning until around 11 am.  Our destination was Bocha Chita State park.  This is an Island that has been converted into a state park.  There is no power on the island, and all water is salt water, not suitable for drinking.  There is 200′ of dock in a small basin.  Lots of palm and coconut trees makes a beautiful setting, and picnic tables and barbecue pits make this a favorite hangout for the local population.  From past experience, we knew that the place would be deserted before dark.  A late arrival improves the chances of finding dock space for the night.  We were about a mile away from the park when the radio came to life with a familiar voice.  One of our Marathon dock mates had arrived ahead of us, because they traveled here via the ocean route (Hawks Channel).  When they recognized us in the distance, they proceeded to find us dock space.  Other boaters agreed to allow us to raft to their boats until dock space became available.

Lois prepared a really good dinner meal.  She was initially expecting four of us for dinner, but now the number had swelled to seven.  I don’t know how she did it but everyone had enought to eat, and we even had a little left overs.  The wine was plentiful and the conversations were top notch.  We toured the Island again, and went looking for sprouting coconuts, but no luck.  It just doesen’t get any better than this.