St. Somewhere

The wind continued strong as we wound our way down to Jacksonville. The ICW crosses the St. Johns River at ICW Mile 740, but we turned right and went up the St. Johns another 12 miles to our marina in the Trout River. As we got to the marina we could see blue sky to the west- the end of the cold front- and the return of good weather. The marina is, shall we say, "basic", but the owners are very nice, and most helpful. I've come down with a cold, and Henry, who runs the place, immediately took Barbara to a drugstore to get me some medicine. They've also volunteered to take us grocery shopping and to the airport for our flight home!

Some final statistics: 925 miles from Middle River, about 123 hours on the engine. We've purchased 77.7 gallons of fuel and used roughly another 20 gallons- call it 100 gallons used total, or a little over 0.8 gallons/hour, at about 9 miles/gallon (helped by a little bit of sailing). Sort of like driving down U.S Route 17 (which goes through most of the towns we visited) in a Hummer (or a small RV!).

This is the last blog entry till St. Somewhere resumes her adventures heading to the Bahamas in January, although will add pictures when/if we ever get them organized!

We opted to anchor in Bells River across from Fernandina Beach- I guess we've seen our share of historic waterfront towns, and wanted a peaceful and quiet evening at anchor. Well, that's not exactly what we got. It had been cold and rainy all day as a cold front approached, and after we had anchored the front started to come through with a vengeance- 20 knot winds, gusting to 35! Wind pressure on an object is proportional to the square of the wind velocity, so 35 knots is three times the pressure of 20 knots. No problem however, and my penchant for what some consider over-sized anchors paid off once again. Nonetheless the wind moaning in the rigging, and the waves slapping us around, did not make for a restful night.

We walked around a little before the rain came, but basically we lazed around the boat all day because of the weather. We invited Owen over for cocktails and hors d'ouvres- he brought a box wine that was much better than our box wine- and pointed out that the box method of wine packaging was an Australian invention. A good time was had by all, and his box was much lighter when he took it back to his boat.

A longish day of travel today, to get to Jekyll Island and a friendly small marina. Rain is in the forecast for tonight and tomorrow, so I think we stay put and continue on Wednesday. Shortly after we arrived, Owen, our Australian friend we last saw in Belhaven, NC, came by to say hello- I'm sure we'll get together later for a couple of cold ones. He's been here a couple of days, and says it a great place to explore (the marina provides bicycles), but we probably won't venture out in the rain.

The ICW through Georgia is "a maze of twisty little passages all the same" (and if you recognize that quote, you're an old geek like me!). The course goes up one serpentine river and down the next, the boat heading on all points of the compass along the way. The rivers cut through grass marshes, so you can look for miles across the marsh and see other ICW boats heading in all directions, even though all are going southbound down the ICW.

Tonight's anchorage is in a bend of the Wahoo River, a couple of miles off the ICW path. We picked a spot near one of the few clumps of trees in the area, with a little bit of solid ground. Some folks are camping nearby, with a nice campfire going- it smells good- with their skiff pulled up on a little bit of "beach" nearby.

We took the local bus into Savannah today, for sightseeing, shopping and lunch. We took a "trolley" tour of the historic district- lots of beautiful, old homes and churches, another "Forrest Gump" location, and lots of references to "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil" (which Barbara is reading as I type this). The most memorable thing, however, was probably the system of "squares", 24 originally, 22 now, that are full of huge live oaks, dripping with Spanish moss, typically with a statue of a hero in the center. In several cases the hero is buried under the statue. The squares originally served as the "commons" for groups of homes surrounding them, but now function like lovely parks, scattered throughout the city.