En route to Cumberland Island
07 April 2010
• At sea off the coast of Florida
by Mike
This morning we walked Peri and did an eyeball recce of the Ponce de Leon Inlet. There seem to be a fair number of large boats on the inside so it would make sense to me that we should be able to get through. We have decided that it would be less stressful, given the weather forecast, for us to take the outside route and let A/S Otto do most of the work, than to try to navigate the shallow bits in the AICW and make two 10 hour days out of it.
We got through the inlet at about 10h30 came about the breakwater and headed for the border of Florida and Georgia. We have a beam wind so with the engine barely above idle we are making about 6.5 knots. This means that we will arrive at our planned destination at about 03h00 so Barb and I had been thinking about skipping St Helen's Inlet and the gap between Amelia and Cumberland Islands and head straight for the northern end of Cumberland and a small anchorage and dock that I have recced out on the chart there, but in the end we elected to head for the anchorage that we are familiar with at the south end.
So far the day has been absolutely gorgeous with bright sun and a two foot rolling swell coming from the SE. The only strange thing is that there is almost no one else out here - nada! On a day like today even though it is a weekday I would have thought that there would be folks out enjoying the sunshine or fishing or something! I know that Screech is out there about 2 hours behind us, but that's sort of us answering our own question, isn't it? We have seen dolphin, some other kind of fish feeding at the surface and loads of birds but no people and almost no other boats. It is kind of interesting listening to people on the radio who are obviously going down the AICW as they are calling for bridge openings and one poor fellow who was aground somewhere and was waiting for TowBoatUS to come and pull him off.
We made pretty good time down the coast and by midnight we were past the Jacksonville approaches and heading for Amelia Island.
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