Jekyll Island to Kilkenny Creek

June 1, 2011

We learned a while back that a long day can lead to poor decisions and possibly expensive results. With that in mind, we left Jekyll Island this morning at 0830 with no particular destination. The idea was that we go as long as we can and hopefully put some miles toward the progress to Charleston. A motor vessel docked at Jekyll left before we about 30 minutes. The boat name is Bucket List. As we spent the day crossing one sound after another, we encountered two negative things: bugs and lively heads seas. Consider that when crossing an inlet to sea, one will see either flood or ebb tide. The first is flow of water into the inlet and tributaries. The other is flow out. Now the trick is to hit the inlets with flow outflow and at the right moment the tide becomes flood and you get an assist beyond the inlet since the water is rushing back to the marshland. It is sort of a game to see how you do because about every ten miles or so along the waterway there is an inlet. As it worked today, we were opposed both directions until late in the day. In some cases, the passage through the sounds (inlets) was into a 25 knot wind. We got more salt on the boat than we did crossing the Gulf Stream.

As to the bug thing, we had visitations by platoons of horseflies. Now the idea is to kill or be eaten. However; we learned that if you don’t bug the bugs, they will leave you alone until about 1300 which is feeding time for them. We took several hits and they will itch for a day or two. Put a week on the waterway through here and one will either be wearing long pants or be one big itchy bump farm. Bug spray is minimally useful as the horseflies know where the spray did not hit. The crew had some fun with them. We have a long range squirt bottle filled with fresh water. It is a bit of entertainment to shoot them as the hang on the underside of the bimini. When we keep them flying they become too tired to eat--- or not.
Update:
6/2/11- 0530- we spent a wonderful, bugless night at anchor in gentle, cool breezes. Guess we fed all the horseflies and they got good nights sleep also. We will get underway today early heading for Hilton Head, SC. We will have traversed Georgia’s ICW in quick order.