2010.11.22 Thunderbolt - St Simon's Island

St. Simon’s Island ………….

The last few days of our stay in Thunderbolt  was a flurry of activity…..   preparing  the boat, cleaning and preparing our dinghy – Catherine doing her provisioning and making sure that her herb garden was arranged to her specifications.  The market garden which has prepared all her herb gardens have really done a super job this time !  We complained that over last voyage much of the soil/peat moss was blown into the cockpit by the wind, this time we have small pebbles covering the soil and we think that this will prevent much of the soil blowing in the wind!

Our new herb garden safely tucked away in the galley sink ready for our first sea passage

.

We stowed VV in a locked garage and bid her farewell.

Looking good

On  Sunday at 07.00 hrs we finally cast off our moorings and sailed alone down the Wilmington River.  “Indian Summer” looked forlorn, alone in the yard, but we have had nothing but encouraging news of our friend Steve and his battle, so are confident that we shall indeed sail together next year. 

Instead of turning out of the Wilmington river into the ICW, we kept going, as we did last year, and headed for the sea.  It was a picture perfect day…..  hot sun, clear blue sky and unlimited visibility.  The wind from the NE was gentle at maybe 10 knots most of the time, and pretty much astern.  Since we were wanting to make time I am afraid that we did not sail (or motor sail) but motored and made a very steady 7.5 knots over the ground.

Consequently our arrival in St Simon’s Island was well before dark, which had been worrying the Admiral somewhat.

An interesting tidbit we found that we could use Catherine’s Blackberry most of the time even though we were between ten and twelve miles off the coast on the voyage.  Impressive !!!

Another interesting tidbit was to see the thousands (maybe millions) of jelly fish in the water….  We have never seen so many in a constant stream between the entrance to the Wilmington River in Wassaw sound and the entrance channel to Brunswick Harbour just floating along .  They were a dullish brown in colour with a dark purple fringe around the bottom where their  tentacles would have been, although they did not seem to have any tentacles.  Not nice and slightly unnerving as had heard a story some time ago of a boat which had sucked jelly fish into its water cooling resulting in the engine overheating and eventually stopping.  Not sure whether this is an old wives tale or not but thankfully it did not happen to us!

We were also treated to the spectacle of a very large fish – no idea what it was  - and by the time Catherine was primed to take a snap, it disappeared.   It was large – I thought that it could have been a shark by the shape of its tail but don’t really have any idea.  It was clearing the surface of the sea by some four or five feet, we would estimate.

Did not catch the flying shark ...this awful looking car carrier is poor substitute....sorry!

Sunset over the Brunswick bridge.

New moon smiling down on us at Golden Isles  marina

Our arrival at Golden Isles Marina was uneventful and it was nice to be greeted by Melissa the dock master par excellence !!   A quiet night with an early turn in time. 

This morning we started the engine for our normal fridge temperature reduction…  remember our electrical refrigeration is still not working, so we must run the engine at least once a day to keep the freezer frozen.  All was well for fifteen minutes or so but then disaster – no water coming out of the back.   Switch the engine off quickly to avoid overheating and then start looking for trouble.

Open up the raw water strainer hoping not to find too many mashed up jelly fish  (see above) – all clean and actually remarkably so considering some of the junk that is floating in the rivers around the Georgia marshes.  The next on the list is the water pump which we chose to have looked at professionally .   Wayne arrived this evening and removed the pump and although the impeller looked to be not totally destroyed it was condemned as being shot.  We produced the four spares that we have kept aboard for just this eventuality and …oh no….  all were condemned as being used or too old for use !

So here we are …. Tomorrow our first telephone call is to West Marine to order (we hope) a new impeller or two actually and have one of them fitted in the evening by our friend Wayne.   After that it is onwards to the south……  we are running afoul of the Thanksgiving holiday in the USA, which is almost as big or bigger holiday as Christmas, and consequently all our gentlemen and women who are to descend upon the boat in St Augustine are busy celebrating until Monday 29^th.

So……..present plans are to dawdle to St Augustine and get there on or about Saturday  so that we have the weekend to gather ourselves for the hordes to board “Solitaire 1” on Monday and complete the bits and pieces that need to be completed…..  hopefully we shall have a fully working refrigeration working before we leave !!!

Bi 4 now.