Kaimusailing

The overnight at our anchorage was peaceful and chilly and buggy. They were very active and annoying. We slept soundly in spite of the no-see-ums. It was not that early when we raised anchor and began the trip North again. We were past the St. Johns River in the ICW and South of Fernandina Beach. It looked like we would be in St Marys around noon. The owner took the helm as if it was his last chance. I posted a blog post using the cell phone.
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The procedure of posting to sailblogs with the cell phone is rather simple if you are writing the post using the phone and uploading a picture taken by the phone. I was writing on a linux computer and had to transfer the word processor file via bluetooth to the phone and then transfer it from the phone to the sailblogs site using the phone’s internet capabilities. During all this transferring, the word processor’s file tag, .abx, was not recognized at some point. I then had to convert the file to plain text, .txt, and then I could transfer it to sailblogs, but wait. The phone’s text editor was limited as to how much text could be copied onto the clipboard and then pasted to sailblog’s post editor. It was a tedious process, I just had to remember what portion of the post I was uploading each time. I ended up bravely clipping the portion from the text file and then pasting that to the blog site’s post editor. Then when I went back to get the next portion, the previous one had already been clipped out. Needless to say, we ran into a patch of no cell service and the whole thing had to be done over.
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I could transfer photos from the laptop to the phone using bluetooth. Sailblogs doesn’t recognize .png files, which is what screenshots get tagged as. A screen shot taken on the cell phone has to be bluetoothed to the laptop, opened in a program called image manipulator, manipulated if necessary, then exported as, and here you select the file type, .jpeg. Then the .jpeg image file is bluetoothed to the phone to upload to sailblogs.
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When I was done with the blog post I went on deck and the owner was fussing and moaning about how narrow the channel was. He decided to slow down so that we would come up the St Marys River and the North River on a rising tide. I looked ahead on the chart and I could see the channel opened up, nice and wide. Wide and deep. I was making breakfast and had already passed the cheese omelets up to the owner and crew on deck, now making that last and most important omelet, mine, when suddenly there was a crunch and we were aground. Quickly we were off after some maneuvering.
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I suggested to the owner to speed back up. He said no, we don’t want to enter the North River at low tide or before low tide. We didn’t have a working depth sounder, except a small hand held unit that they use in the dinghy. Shortly afterward we were aground again. Over the next 2 hours we did nothing but get the boat more firmly aground. The chart said 13 feet at mean low water. Mean indeed. It was an hour to low tide. Owner and crew went out in the dinghy and used the hand held depth sounder to see what the bottom was like. We were in the center of the channel aground, what was the real depth. While they were gone I took a shower and reviewed the charts. All agreed that we should have at least 10 feet under our keel.
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They came back and unloaded the dinghy motor on deck to be mounted on its rail mount, then the dinghy was hoisted. When a large power yacht went by on the righthand side of the channel it sent a wake that bounced us on the bottom. I suggested starting the engine, we might get another wake and get the boat off the hard. There were no other boats for a while, then a couple of power boats went by and we backed at full power. The boat was wiggling and maybe even moving. Just a bit. Then another power boat went by with another behind it. We moved more. A tug and barge came down the channel and we were now moving smoothly, not bouncing on the bottom. Around we went close to the right side of the channel and after a big U-turn to North we were on our way again. We bumped bottom a few more times. This area does not have much water in it.
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We did bump bottom again a couple more times on the way up to Fernandina. I’d caution not to travel this section of ICW unless at high tide. I went below and rested while owner and crew worked their way up through waters that were familiar to me. When I went back up on deck to tell them about the turn into the North River at “the green marker”, I was surprised to see we were already there.
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I was worried about our last little bit, coming up the North River without a depth sounder at mid tide. I had run aground for a bit with Kaimu a couple times and she only draws about 3 feet. Indeed we bumped on the bottom once on the first reach into the river. There are 3 reaches going to the boatyard, 3 turns. The first reach seems to be where there might be shoaling.
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The owner wondered if we could tie up to his floating dock right near the boatyard. He had rented his waterfront house out and the resident said he had a boat at the dock, however there was no boat at the dock when we got there, so we docked. The 44 foot yacht at a 24 foot dock, overhang, strange tie up. We did some organization onboard, my boatyard buddies were texting me about going shopping for groceries and I invited them to see the boat. I was called on deck when they arrived and they took a look at the Gulfstar.
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While owner and crew continued to neaten up down below I left to get bread and pizza ingredients. When I returned to the boat owner and crew dragged me along to go to dinner. Georgia had lifted their restaurant ban and now allowed dining as long as social distancing was observed. On my shopping trip I noticed the gas station restaurant was open. It would be good to give them a little business. I suggested their shrimp and grits, a Southern dish I never liked, but here it was gourmet quality, made with grits formed into a deep fried cake with a little jalapeño spicing and a sauce that was like shrimp alfredo, rich.
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We returned to the boat and in order to allow his tenant to have dock space the owner wanted to try one of the commercial moorings, like the one I had become ensnared recently. We had to first gauge the depth with the little hand held depth finder, so we went out in the dinghy and found all but one of the moorings too shallow for the Gulfstar. We returned and got underway. Crew brought the dinghy out to the mooring and owner and I the Gulfstar. We hauled the mooring’s hawser up on deck and tied a dockline onto it and cleated it down. We were moored.
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I bicycled back to the boatyard with my gym bag that held a few clothes and the computer bag that held GPS, SPOT, VHF, antenna, AIS, and various cables. The image is of our grounding right in the middle of the channel approaching Fernandina Beach.