Jekyll Island 2007.11.27

We were afraid to wake up to a dense fog at Jekyll Harbour Marina like last year when we were stuck there for 2 days and still left in somewhat foggy conditions… but visibility was good so we cast off with the expert and friendly help of marina staff.
We are now underway and I will catch you up a bit on yesterday…

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The day started off well enough, we picked up our hook and left New Teakettle Creek where we had a wonderful sleep… well most of us, most of the time, I was accused of going crashing on deck at 03:30… just checking on the anchor, the chain was hitting the hull as the tide turned us around!

Within an hour or so a very thick fog bank enveloped us in a white cocoon where we could not see anything and even sounds were muffled… I was at the bow looking out, or trying to, for anything and could see buoys appearing out of the fog just a few yards away… but most importantly listening for any sound of motors approaching us. On several occasions I blew our horn to warn boats of our presence….

One was a little crab boat and the fishermen stopped by to have a chat with us… they were picking up their crab pots and I had heard them talking and laughing, no radar on board so fortunately they heard our horn and did not ram into us! We had finally given up trying to navigate blindly except for the chart plotter which we can trust 90% of the time but it’s that 10%, when if you followed the magenta line, you would be taking a shortcut on land that had us worried! So we dropped anchor and decided to wait it out. The problem was we were pretty much in the channel so after a while we moved to a better spot to wait for L’Equipe which had also anchored on the other side of the Sapelo Sound.

We resumed our meandering through Georgia, the sun was shining, we had hoped going much further down and anchor again in some little creek but after the fog delay we decided to stop at Jekyll Harbour Marina… the last bit of the way was Jekyll Creek and it looked like someone had pulled the plug as there was so little water… we saw 3’8 (+2’ for the keel) which is not very much since we draw 5’, needless to say we were crawling along so that if we hit bottom it would be a gentle hit, to the despair of Heinz who was following us and plowing through the mud a good part of the time and needed speed not to loose momentum and steerage!!!

Anyhow no one went aground although the tow boat from “Boats Us” was lurking around figuring they had a couple of potential customers….sorry guys not today!!!

We had dinner on board and were invited to L’Equipe for a counsel of war as Jacqueline had found a bottle of Babancour (a delicious rum from Haiti which we discovered last year) and I brought some baklava from Marche Akavan which unbelievably has not gone stale yet… so this was our first cockpit party!

We should be in Florida by now, although we have not seen any sign of welcome, David is still wearing his watch cap and neck warmer…. but no socks or long underwear so that’s a good sign!

It’s only 12:20 and I think I will go and search charts and guides to see if I can find another anchorage further than Fernandina Beach.

ttfn